Deer Monitoring at Pea Ridge National Military Park

Visitors enjoy viewing the many deer that roam the park. They are one of the larger and more charismatic creatures encountered. It is hard to imagine that deer were almost extinct in the early 1900s from over hunting. Deer are very adaptable to human disturbance, however, and have since recovered in numbers. When deer populations get too large, the threat of disease, damage to the park’s landscape, and collisions with deer on nearby highways increase.

Deer per square kilometer, 2005–2022 adjusted for area surveyed in the park (solid line, left axis) with 95% confidence error bars and number of deer harvested in Arkansas County starting with the 2009/2010 hunting season (dashed line, right axis). Horizontal line is a trend line (not significant).

NPS

Maps of deer locations (dots) and number of deer adjusted for the amount of area surveyed. The shaded areas of any color show the amount of land surveyed. The highest number of deer were in 2013 and 2020. The fewest deer were in 2007, 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2016.

NPS

NPS scientists monitor deer at the park using nighttime spotlight surveys. Deer populations have experienced annual to biennial periods of declines or recoveries over the course of our monitoring at the park. A sharp decline in the population between 2005 and 2007 coincided with an outbreak of hermorrhagic disease. The decline between 2020 and 2022 coincided with deer dying from undocumented causes. Reasons for other declines are also unknown. Recoveries occurred as rapidly as declines but were not sustained for more than two years (e.g., 2007–2009 and 2018–2020). Even with the observed declines and short periods of recovery, the overall deer population increased 2.7% annually but this change was not statistically significant. We need more data to know if the population is changing. The number of deeer adjusted for area surveyed ranged from a low of 15 individuals per square kilometer in 2007 to 60 individuals per square kilometer in 2020.

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Data in this report were collected and analyzed using methods based on established, peer-reviewed protocols and were analyzed and interpreted within the guidelines of the protocols.