Panels advise PGC on deer herd

A citizens advisory panel will be assembled next year for residents in portions of Potter, McKean, Tioga and Bradford counties to share input with the Pa. Game Commission on deer management policies.

The panel will include residents living north of Rt. 6 in the four counties, an area designated by the PGC as Wildlife Management Unit 3A.

Similar groups have already met in five other management units. Their reports were recently posted on the Game Commission's website, pgc. state.pa.us.

Each panel is charged with providing a recommendation to the PGC staff to increase, decrease or stabilize the deer herd over the next five years. The agency combines that input with its own studies of impacts on forest habitat health, health and productivity of the deer herd and deer-human confl icts.

Panel members consider deer population trends, forest habitat health information, as well as public feedback.

In two of the management areas where panels met last year, PGC deer biologists chose not to follow CAC recommendations, which were to increase the deer population by 20 and 15 percent, respectively.

"The primary reason for not following the recommendations was that forest habitat health in both units currently is considered fair," the PGC said in a news release. "Forest habitat health must improve and meet a specific quantitative target for an increase in the deer population

"We'd like to go along with every recommendation," noted Jeannine Tardiff Fleegle, a PGC deer biologist. "But, it's not that simple. We have to responsibly address all goals in the agency's deer management program. Deer populations must be balanced with habitat to ensure healthy forests and whitetail and wildlife populations and limit human confl icts."

There will not be a citizen advisory panel appointed for Area 2G, which includes all of Cameron County and the southern halves of Potter and McKean, until at least 2010.