Wyoming’s mule deer are in trouble. Their numbers have dropped 36 percent since 1990. Fawn production has declined 20 percent in the last quarter century. Mule deer habitat has been sucked dry by drought, invaded by development, cut apart by highways. Always-fatal chronic wasting disease infected 57 percent of hunter-killed deer in one area three years ago.
Parts of Wyoming were once known as a “mule deer factory,” and the state still strives for a population of more than 564,150. But they number about 374,400 today and their plight is such that advocates doubt whether the slate-hued muley can make a comeback.
“We’ll never get back to historic numbers,” Miles Moretti, president of the Mule Deer Foundation, said of a nearby herd as he addressed a gathering in Daniel Aug. 6. A group of 45 biologists, hunters, ranchers, administrators and land managers shared recent research and brainstormed how to boost the population of the beleaguered species.
To some, the Inaugural Wyoming Mule Deer Summit was yet another committee, to others a vehicle to focus statewide conservation efforts, including collaboration from non-governmental groups and landowners (see sidebar). What wasn’t in dispute was the precipitous drop in the mule deer population across Wyoming.
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