Perspectives of New York State residents to deer management, hunting, and predator reintroductions

High white-tailed deer abundance in the United States represents an ecological and human health threat. Reducing deer populations by lethal means and facilitating return of large predators are two potential, but controversial, management options. We used an online questionnaire to measure perspectives on deer management and predator return among a stratified sample of New York State residents. We found widespread acceptance (>70%) for reducing deer populations using lethal means if doing so would reduce Lyme disease, increase forest regeneration, protect native plants and animals, and improve road safety. Acceptance for shooting more deer was unaffected by ethnicity but strongest among respondents who were older, identified as hunters or conservationists, owned more land, and considered health and safety while answering our questionnaire. Respondents who identified as animal protectionists were least accepting. Restoring regionally extirpated wolves and cougars had limited acceptance (< 30%) but was strongest among those who identified as hunters or conservationists.  Contrary to commonly held beliefs, preferences for deer management or predator restoration did not differ among urban and rural respondents. This common ground needs to be reflected in deer management in the state due to legal obligations to represent interests of all residents. 

Methods
This dataset contains data from an online questionnaire we used to assess perspectives of New York State residents on deer management and potential return of large predators. Qualtrics LLC (www.qualtrics.com) recruited 1,206 adults (aged 18 or older) living in New York State who answered our questionnaire from 6 - 28 June 2022. To reduce sampling error and increase external validity, we stratified our sample to approximate the population of New York State in terms of age, ethnicity, and gender identity according to the most recent American Community Survey statistics (U.S. Census Bureau, 2020). We oversampled from rural areas to permit more powerful rural-urban comparisons. Respondents reported beliefs about who should participate in deer management; how acceptable it would be for people who shoot deer to use meat and other parts in various ways; how acceptable it would be for land managers to allow shooting more deer if doing so would help achieve various ecological and socioeconomic objectives; and how acceptable if would be for wolves and cougars to return to New York, either by natural recolonization or deliberate reintroduction, in order to help manage deer. We recorded responses using seven-point Likert-type items with the additional option of “I don’t know”. Individuals indicated relevance of ethical concerns when responding to previous blocks using four-point ordinal scales. Respondents described their perceptions and experiences with deer using a combination of ordinal and seven-point Likert scales.  Respondents provided additional demographic and social identity information. 

To discover potential distinguishing characteristics of individuals who perceived shooting more deer generally to be more or less acceptable, we created a composite score of their responses to 11 items on deer management. We first converted the seven-point Likert scale to a numerical scale (strongly disagree = 1, disagree = 2, somewhat disagree = 3, neither agree nor disagree = 4, somewhat agree = 5, agree = 6, strongly agree = 7), and calculated the mean of these values across items for each respondent, excluding “I don’t know” responses. Following this method, we also created composite scores for responses to questions on whether wolves and cougars should be allowed to return or be reintroduced, and whether respondents would welcome them to their local area. The composite deer and predator scores served as our response variables in analyses, with respondents' answers to other survey questions as the predictor variables.