iDeer: An Integrated Deer Management Platform

Wild deer populations have increased dramatically throughout the northern hemisphere during recent decades. The UK is home to six deer species that can substantially impact the natural systems that we all depend upon. Capable of rapidly colonising newly created woodlands, deer can inhibit growth by browsing young trees, saplings, and seedlings. Consequently, deer present a serious challenge to the government's ambitious target to increase woodland area from 13% to 18% of UK land area and achieve net zero by 2050. It is therefore essential that people involved in woodland management plan for deer impacts.

Whilst managing deer populations and designing planting schemes to mitigate their impacts is more important than ever, managing deer is challenging. They are highly mobile animals that cross man-made boundaries, and their local foraging decisions are driven by environmental characteristics of the broader landscape. Consequently, local management actions on a single property can elicit effects that cascade across entire landscapes and influence deer impacts on land elsewhere. For example, fencing a woodland might displace deer to neighbouring farmland, or planting trees locally will alter woodland cover and configuration at the landscape scale, influencing deer movement and impacts elsewhere.

Rural landscapes across England and Wales are comprised of patchworks of land uses and landowners with varying and even conflicting management objectives, including different views on deer. Indeed, while considered a 'pest' to many landowners, deer are culturally and economically valued by others. In such situations, woodland creation and management decisions that influence deer behaviour and foraging preferences are necessary to ensure successful woodland expansion. These decisions could include, for example, where to locate new woodlands, fencing, alterations to woodland tree species and structure, or the provision of alternative food resources or deer repellents. However, landowners may not be aware of these options, their effectiveness, or the scientific evidence behind them. Indeed, while scientific understanding of deer ecology, impacts and mitigation is evidenced by a vast literature from across the temperate zone, much remains to be done to translate this knowledge into management practice, in a way that integrates local expertise and multiple stakeholder objectives. Project iDeer has been designed to address this incorporation and implementation gap.

Project iDeer will deliver a co-designed interactive decision support tool - the 'iDeer tool' - to facilitate strategic woodland creation and management that minimises deer impacts on new and existing woodland and other neighbouring land uses in England and Wales. Landowner consultations from previous projects have established a clear desire for digital decision support tools that integrate local with scientific knowledge to inform land management plans. The iDeer tool will output 'risk maps' that enable users to see how choices in woodland management made by one landowner will influence deer activity on neighbouring land and the wider landscape. For example, how the creation and fencing of one hectare of woodland on one land parcel might increase crop disturbance by deer on the neighbouring land parcel. Users will be able to output and compare these risk maps enabling them to make informed decisions about how to manage their land whilst also considering impacts on neighbours and the wider landscape.

We propose to bring together an interdisciplinary team with collective expertise in woodland and deer ecology, conservation conflict, animal behaviour modelling, social science methods and web tool development. Solutions-focussed from the start, we will work with stakeholders that are involved in woodland and/or deer management, including farmers, woodland managers, public forestry bodies, and conservation practitioners, to ensure that the iDeer tool will achieve its aim.