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For the past year the Science Division of Bryn Athyn College, in cooperation with the Pennypack Ecological Restoration Trust (PERT), has been working on a biology project tracking the movements of white-tailed deer in suburban Philadelphia. On April 19th, the group (which includes two Bryn Athyn College students, four Bryn Athyn College faculty members, and two members of the PERT team) presented a poster of their research at the meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Ecological Society of America. The tracking project is planned to continue for two more years, serving as a groundbreaking research opportunity for undergraduates and faculty at Bryn Athyn College.

The study aims to gain detailed information about how and why deer move in a suburban environment, from basic information such as how far deer move in a day, times of relative activity and inactivity, and areas where the deer are especially attracted, to more complex issues such as identifying targets of deer movement and patterns within the movement. One study aim is to measure deer density in the Pennypack area. PERT has been studying the deer population in the Pennypack since the 1970s. (In fact, no one in the state of Pennsylvania has done as much detailed research as PERT, whose consistent data sets on kills by hunters and road kills formed a basis for Bryn Athyn College's current deer tracking project.) But overpopulation of deer is an ongoing problem in the Pennypack Watershed—the presence of too many deer puts a strain on the local vegetation and creates a safety hazard on busy suburban roads—and PERT still struggles to manage the deer population. Once detailed information is gained about the specific movements of deer in the Watershed, steps can be taken to more effectively manage the deer population.

Bryn Athyn College holds a permit from the Pennsylvania Game Commission that allows them to capture, tag, and release these deer for scientific study. One of the most exciting moments of the deer study is when the group tags a deer, which requires a team of two or three people in a coordinated effort to constrain and collar the deer. The team uses a modified Clover trap (a metal frame with webbing between the bars) to momentarily capture the deer, while the team waits nearby to wrestle a GPS/GSM radio collar onto the animal. The process takes about five minutes, with human and deer hearts beating rapidly. Undergraduate Bracken Brown describes the experience this way, "I only helped jump on one deer, but it is very exciting. You have to try to get the collar on without stressing the deer too much. Deer are very powerful animals, but you don't realize that until you are sitting on top of it. I have really enjoyed it."

To date, the study team has tagged and tracked three deer in the Pennypack area.

Each collar takes a GPS location reading every five minutes and sends the information via cell phone tower to the host company in Sweden, whose program transforms the information into spreadsheet data and emails it to the BAC team.

The Science Division of Bryn Athyn College is building a sustained undergraduate research program under the direction of its faculty. Though the College has provided undergraduate research in cooperation with other universities in the past, this is the first time that the College has set up and managed the project independently.

Two members of the Bryn Athyn College deer research team, Eugene Potapov and Alex Rohtla, have also undertaken another research project on white-tailed deer in the Pennypack area. They have set up five cameras in random locations in the Watershed area to capture images of deer who come in range of the camera. The frequency of deer encounters with the camera is related to deer density. They are working on developing methods to measure deer density using this method, which has two primary advantages over other methods of counting deer. One, this method does not require baiting, and two, once the system is calibrated it does not require marked individuals. The idea for this project arose from an observation undergraduate Alex Rohtla made when he placed cameras in the Pennypack area to get pictures of the area's coyotes. He noticed that he captured images of deer no matter where he placed the cameras.

The Science Division is currently working on plans to expand the research opportunities at Bryn Athyn College by developing a Center for Environmental Conservation (CEC) at the soon-to-be-built Grant R. Doering Center for Science and Research. Based on models found at other small colleges (Bryn Mawr has a program in ecology and Haverford has one in molecular biology), the CEC will publish their findings through Bryn Athyn College and invite students and faculty from any discipline to participate.

LINKS:

Pennypack Ecological Restoration Trust

Project Map
(This link shows out-of-date GPS data, since the collar turns off automatically after 100 days.)

Unofficial Project Webpage

GPS/GSM Project Overview

Ecological Society of America

Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Ecological Society of America

Abstracts on Poster Presentations (pdf)

ESA Poster Text (document)