Can we reverse our impact on wildlife?

Except for the times when Mother Nature sticks her nose into things, most of the successes and failures in wildlife populations and fisheries are of our own doings.

Take the current state of South Carolina’s deer and turkey populations, which have been documented as well below their highest levels from 10 years or so ago. Part of that decline is a function of habitat. As Charles Ruth, who heads up the deer and turkey projects for the S.C. Department of Natural Resources, said a year or so ago, South Carolina really got into the deer business in the 1970s when thousands and thousands of acres of timber were cut and replanted in pines.

In the first few years of their existence, young stands of planted pines function as a “deer nursery” — hence, the explosion in the deer population over the past 30 years. But those pines are usually on a 25- to 30-year rotation, and as they mature, the habitat they provide for deer, turkeys and other wildlife species declines. A decline in habitat quality generally means a decline in the overall wildlife population it can support. So that’s the first function of our influence on wildlife.

The second and third effects we have had on deer and turkeys are coyotes and wild hogs, two species that will be more and more in the crosshairs of hunters in future years. The state legislature is already trying to make it easy for hunters to thin out the burgeoning populations of coyotes and hogs across South Carolina.

The hogs that are destroying plenty of wildlife habitat are both true wild hogs and feral hogs that have gotten out of their farm enclosures and turned wild, reproducing at a fantastic rate.

Coyotes have naturally migrated into the Southeast from the west over the past decade, but biologists believe that many came from high-fenced enclosures where they were kept for hunters who wanted to run their fox hounds. One tree down across one section of fence — in North Carolina, Hurricane Hugo caused one such breach — and you’ve got coyotes on the loose, reproducing and spreading out and eating fawns, poults and whatever else they might target.

If the legislature makes it “easy” to take hogs or coyotes 24/7/365, sportsmen need to take advantage of those opportunities, especially if they’re concerned about the effect on their beloved deer, turkeys, quail, rabbits et al.

A sure-enough organized program of baiting and killing hogs on a local basis might be able to head off the further expansion of that population. Predator-hunting techniques are not going to eradicate coyotes, but taking the occasional song dog off your hunting land is certainly going to help, especially if your neighbors are taking the same tact. Trapping is likely the best way to thin their numbers, short of Mother Nature sticking her nose in with a Parvo outbreak.

Come to think of it, we could use the help, Mom.