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Cooperative Extension

People and Wildlife

Wildlife management involves striving to achieve a positive balance when it comes to human-wildlife interactions. There are many factors that must be considered, including ensuring healthy wildlife populations, benefits associated with wildlife, damage impacts, and safety concerns. This is especially challenging in the most densely populated state in the U.S. where development has created fragmented landscapes. People and wildlife live in close proximity and interact more than ever before.

This site includes recent research, management successes, and stories of how people interact with, and in some cases, are impacted by, wildlife in New Jersey.

White-Tailed Deer Impacts - Forests, Farms, and Communities

This full-length,10-minute video incorporates all of the stories of the 3 excerpts – Crop Damage and Farmers’ LivelihoodsForests, Open Spaces, and Communities; and Monitoring Deer Numbers. In the full-length feature we follow Bob, a local farmer, for an entire growing season as he loses half of his crop to deer damage. Ecologists tell us about forest research, restoration, and management efforts as they combat high deer numbers and extensive browsing of native plants that has led to invasives taking over the understory and hindering forest regeneration. We also hear how drones have been used to monitor the success of a community-based bowhunting program that has also provided those in need in the community with over 13,000 meals while helping the forest, addressing landscape and agricultural damage, and working to reduce safety concerns such as deer-vehicle collisions.