Antler Points

Deer management is no longer (if it ever was) just a field activity. It involves working with many people with very different views on what is best for the deer, their lands, or people. There are great conflicts and there are wise managers who attempt to help resolve them. These conflicts come singly and in groups among annual income from a wide range of hunt-related activities and services, crop damage, opposition to any kind of hunting, damage to flower gardens and landscape plants, unsafe hunter behavior, vehicle strikes, aircraft takeoff and landing obstruction, threats of livestock disease, concern about the role of the deer in the well-functioning ecosystem, and large populations destroying rare and threatened plant species.

In many cases, there are no solutions. Everyone cannot be pleased. Seeking a reasonable middle ground that includes the best knowledge available, acceptable valuation of alternatives, clear views of likely consequences, and means to reduce costs and losses are all parts of a process that may include mediation. Mediation is as much a tool of deer management as planting forest roadsides to suitable grasses. An R* Deer manager describes mediation in the following hypothetical situation.

It has been a long time since we first discussed getting together about our problem. Sometimes, good ideas to take a long time to get started. Even meeting is a decision and a risk that "things may not go well." A clear view of what is "well" is rarely seen. The unclear view is that we're meeting because we know we have some problems and we are committed to develop a joint paper or document (we'll not call it a "plan") for managing the deer resource of the region over the long-run. That includes later checks on whether we still agree and on how we put it into practice. We've not reached open confrontations on these issues and do not intend to do so. Reasonable people can reason together. We've seen conflicts with winners and losers, scores of 10 versus 2 or zero. We believe there may be joint winners, benefits for the good of us all, scores of maybe 8 and 8 or 9 and 9 between groups that previously hardly talked. We can join together in productive collaboration. The courts, confrontation, dispute - these are not the ways to gain maximum benefits with low costs from natural resources over the next few centuries.

There are examples where disputes have been resolved by meeting and discussing together ways to overcome the dispute.

The ways that this has worked in the past and the ways we suggest following are:

1. Collaborative fact-finding
2. Analyses of information available
3. Discourse
4. Finding solutions that seem to be practical.

In the way we work, we have only included stakeholders - not just anyone with an interest in a topic or something to say to a group - but people genuinely and significantly affected by (or likely to be) the deer resource and the way it is used and protected. You are here because you find "keeping on" in the same way unacceptable. You may be here because you think that others can completely block some efforts. We realize together, that none of us has the power, alone, to achieve our objectives.

We want the process to be as fair and inclusive as possible. We are working toward a solution. The problem is difficult and we may not find it quickly. We just have to work together in "good faith", meaning that we are not simply meeting to meet. We have no hidden agenda and this is not a mere exercise. There are solution and we shall be better off after our meeting.

We'll spend time on objectives (or goals) and our common interests and clarify them. In all reasonable work together, we stay flexible about our means and actions. We decide, later, on what are best actions ... because best actions are these that achieve objectives. We just have to work out these objectives together first; then we can decide on how to achieve them.

Then we have to write what we agree to and sign it. We need a binding agreement - some formal mechanism for seeing it promoted, implemented, checked, and action taken to be sure that corrections, if needed, are made. At least a local advisory "council" may be useful in a long process in which agreement cannot be reached for political, financial, legal or other reasons. Suspicion and mistrust can only be reduced (but the speed at which it can be done need to be done carefully and with planning) over time with action.

We can decide things together but we need to look at the public good because it is not just the sum of all private interests. We have to find some solutions for the long-term, not just next year.

This Web site is maintained by R. H. Giles, Jr.
Last revision January 17, 2000.