The Deer Initiative
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The Deer Initiative |
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Deer Collisions | ||||||||
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Assessing deer impacts on Woodland A joint event: The Deer Initiative, The Silvanus Trust, Duchy College Business School, RDPE Friday 23rd April 2010 A course designed to equip you with the knowledge and skills to identify and assess deer activity and their
impact on woodlands. This one day course will consist of both a classroom based session and practical
experience in a near-by woodland. Training will be provided by Norman Healy, South West Deer Liaison
Officer at The Deer Initiative.
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A Conference organised by The Deer Initiative Partnership
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Deer Aware - launched September 2009 DeerAware is a programme to raise public awareness of the danger of deer on roads in the UK. Research indicates that over 42,500 and up to 74,000 deer may be involved in vehicle collisions each year in Britain. These have significant human costs and are a major animal welfare problem. The DeerAware programme is supported by Highways Agency publicity material that is available to regional road safety initiatives targeting local deer collision “hotspots”. This is the latest development of the UK National Deer-Vehicle Collisions Project, which was set up in 2003 by the Deer Initiative. Funded by the Highways Agency and other bodies, this study records detailed information about deer related collisions, to identify high-risk areas and key factors. Trials have been carried out to test the effectiveness of different mitigation measures. You can find more information on this project on our Deer Collisions website. A Driver Information Programme has been produced and made freely available to raise awareness of the issue. The material contains a combination of artwork, radio adverts and website banner. The choice of different products has been chosen to allow for seasonal and regional differences. Please visit the Highways Agency website for more information about this Programme. You can also download posters, artwork and radio clips from the same site.
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Amendment to the Wild Game Guide (June 09) The Hunter exemption in the Wild Game Guide has been amended to clarify that game meat supplied under the Hunter Exemption cannot be sold under the Retail to Retail (Wholesale) exemption. The revised Wild Game guide and the accompanying annexes are available from the Foods Standard Agency's website
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| Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology POST is an office of both Houses of Parliament, charged with providing independent and balanced analysis of public policy issues that have a basis in science and technology. POST Note number 325 Wild Deer in the UK: Impacts of rising deer populations was published in February 2009 and considers the current status of wild deer in the UK, their ecological, economic and social impacts and legislation on their management. Click here to view or download the Note on the UK Parliament website.
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FSA published a new Wild Game Guide on 1st October 2008. Click here to view or download the guide on the FSA website.
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Deer Vehicle Collisions Project Jochen Langbein has provided the following update. Traffic collisions involving deer have presented a major animal welfare problem in the UK for many years, and lead to around 500 human personal injury accidents and several human fatalities every year. Ever increasing numbers of deer vehicle collisions (DVCs) are also reported throughout much of Western Europe and North America, with figures in the US alone now running at over 1,500,000 DVCs per year. The UK National Deer-Vehicle-Collisions Project was set up in 2003 through The Deer Initiative with lead funding for the study coming from the Highways Agency and the Scottish Executive. The main aims of the project for the first three years were to assess for the first time the true nationwide scale and geographical distribution of the problem, and build a database to help identify hot spots and priority areas for mitigation. As there is no legal obligation to report collisions with deer or other wild animals to any authority, the research could at best aim to obtain as large and stratified a sample of records as possible via a wide range of potential data sources including roads authorities, police, insurance companies, forestry managers, animal welfare organisations and others involved in dealing with injured deer at the road side, along with additional reports logged by individuals at the dedicated project web-site www.deercollisions.co.uk. By December 2005 over 30,500 distinct records had already been collated by the project, providing a good basis for national mapping; and through comparison of data samples captured by differing sources enabled estimation that the true toll of deer involved in collisions with vehicles in Britain is unlikely to lie below 42,500 and may well exceed 74,000 per annum (Deer Initiative, 2007). Over 80% of DVCs each year are recorded in England, with highest frequencies consistently from the South-East where traffic volumes are also greatest. Given that Scotland has somewhere in excess of 50% of Britain’s deer population the low percentage of DVCs recorded here may seem surprising, but once traffic volume is taken into consideration the actual risk of involvement in a collision with a deer is in fact roughly twice as high per vehicle-mile driven in Scotland as compared to England. With ever increasing traffic levels and continuing spread of deer into peri-urban areas it is inevitable that this problem will continue to worsen unless concerted action is taken. The project has now been given further support by Highways Agency and the Deer Commission for Scotland to continue to monitor trends in DVCs over the coming years, focussing mainly on the best national sources of data including RSPCA and SSPCA, road maintenance contractors, police accident records, and forestry and deer managers. In addition, since 2005 the Deer Initiative project has turned increasingly towards looking into preventative measures, both through media releases to raise public awareness at a national level (timed to coincide with annual peaks of DVCs during late autumn and spring), as well as initiating practical roadside trials to assess the potential of novel wildlife deterrents and interactive road signage. To date evidence remains lacking for any lasting effect of acoustic or optical wildlife deterrents under UK traffic conditions, or indeed for most other individual preventative methods. At high risk sites best results are likely to be achieved through working in close partnership with road authorities, forest and deer managers to develop local DVC prevention strategies which carefully integrate those roadside measures most suited to the local situation with action to raise public awareness and management of the deer population. (For fuller reports on the DVC project link to http://www.deercollisions.co.uk/pages/latest.html J Langbein, July, 2008 |
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This page updated April 2010 |
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