Ann Arbor could end up spending over $258,000 on deer management efforts next year.
The city's staff presented updated budget calculations to the City Council on Monday, showing $258,545 in expected costs if Ann Arbor carries out a combination lethal/nonlethal program.
It would include shooting up to 100 deer and surgically sterilizing up to 60 deer as well as doing more vegetation impact studies and other data collection.
The city hired Jacqueline Courteau, a local ecologist and biologist, last fall to study the impacts of the deer in Ann Arbor's natural areas by monitoring hundreds of newly planted red oak seedlings. She found that 54 percent of the unfenced seedlings were browsed by deer at least once.
The City Council is expected to make a decision on the lethal/nonlethal program next month.
