No-one knows exactly how many there are but the Forestry Commission and the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) suggest there may be two million in Britain – a huge increase from the estimated 450,000 in the 1970s, according to the Forestry Commission.
Their impact is being widely felt, with the rising numbers leading to problems for drivers, farmers and businesses as well as wildlife and the countryside’s natural landscapes.
While there are no recent official estimates of the total cost to the UK of damage caused by deer, it’s clear that it is substantial. In 2021, Forestry and Land Scotland estimated the cost of the damage caused by deer just to young trees in Scotland’s national forests and land at £3m a year.
Lucy Manthorpe runs a 400-acre organic arable farm in Suffolk and says she was losing over £10,000 worth of crops a year to deer damage on three fields. To solve it, she has employed a full-time worker whose main job is culling deer.
The deer problem is “costing us as a country,” she argues.
Farmers and landowners can see losses easily run into the tens of thousands, according to the Forestry Commission, and some with high-value crops can see losses of as much as £1m in a year.
Tackling rising deer numbers is now seen as a priority by conservationists, farmers and the government alike – in 2022 Defra admitted: “We need to do more to sustainably manage deer.”
The real problem emerges when it comes to deciding how to do that – with some more radical-sounding approaches pioneered overseas, including reintroducing wolves to the landscape. The Countryside Alliance, however, says this would be “disastrous”.