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Texas Parks & Wildlife recommends surveys, feeding bans to curb Willow Park's urban deer numbers
Summary
A Texas Parks & Wildlife biologist told Willow Park officials the first step in managing urban deer is a population survey and that feeding bans and processing (TTP) programs, not relocation, have been effective where chronic wasting disease concerns allow.
Kaylee Baduna Ott, a wildlife biologist with Texas Parks & Wildlife who covers Tarrant, Parker, Hood, Johnson and Somervell counties, briefed the council on urban deer management and answered resident questions about options. "The number one thing you can do is a deer survey," Ott said, recommending minimum-count spotlight routes or drone surveys to establish a baseline population before choosing management strategies.
Ott explained three broad approaches: long-range planning to keep wildlife in wild areas, addressing root causes such as intentional or unintentional feeding (including feral-cat feeding and landscape choices), and doing nothing, which leads to vegetation loss, more deer-vehicle collisions, and disease spread. On relocation, Ott said Texas no longer permits widespread translocation of live deer after chronic wasting disease (CWD) detections; instead some cities use a TTP (trap, transport, process) program that processes animals and donates meat.
Residents described seeing large local herds and raised safety concerns about coyotes. Jean Martin told the council he counted about 27 adult deer and 14 fawns in a roughly 100-acre area of his neighborhood. Ott recommended feeding bans, targeted community education to reduce unintentional attractants and volunteer survey programs: "You pick a main road, and then you have everyone has a sector... that's when deer are most active," she said.
Why it matters: Willow Park residents raised public-safety and property-damage concerns, and the presentation gave the council a menu of science-based options to consider, ranging from low-cost surveys and ordinances to more complex processing programs that require planning and financial commitment.
