[Homesteadingfamily] Another couple reasons to hunt deer!

Scientists are showing that deer are browsing the American Ginseng into
extinction.

They also quietly nibble away at the plants and shrubs that carpet the
forests, including wild ginseng.

"Almost all [ginseng] populations are very vulnerable to extinction over the
next century," said James McGraw, a conservation biologist at West Virginia
University in Morgantown.. According to the study, hungry deer-not human
harvesters-are causing ginseng to disappear. The two researchers concluded
that, unless deer populations are halved, wild American ginseng plants will
likely disappear within a hundred years.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0314_050314_ginseng.html

The bane of many a gardener, Bambi may be nibbling ginseng and other
forest-floor plants into extinction, scientists say. New study results
suggest that ginseng will largely disappear from the woods of eastern North
America in the next 100 years if white-tailed deer populations are not
reined in.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=000A1518-E233-120B-A2338341
4B7F0000

In a study of fruit-bearing plants in West Virginia, researchers found that
deer grazed over 50% of the fruit in the study area. In some plant
populations, deer completely consumed all the seeds generated that season.
By examining seed count of American ginseng in deer pellets, the biologists
further found that deer may be seed predators for American ginseng. Because
these deer were also feeding on corn and grain, their digestive process most
likely destroyed the seeds. The natural diet of deer, however, could result
in less destructive chewing and a greater chance of seeds being found in
pellets (Furedi & McGraw 2004). Deer may also influence mammals. For
example, deer are carriers of the parasite brainworm. Because this parasite
affects moose, deer may reduce the range of moose (Alverson et al. 1988).
Overall, deer may have degrading effects on ecosystems.

http://www.duke.edu/web/nicholas/bio217/ekc7/deer.htm

Jeanne

<http://community.webshots.com/user/atasetofcreole>
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<http://atasteofcreole.wordpress.com/> http://atasteofcreole.wordpress.com/

"When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not
far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is
that it WILL make it possible to go elsewhere." - R. Heinlein

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