In case you haven’t heard, the City of New Braunfels has an ordinance that prohibits the feeding of wildlife. This ordinance was put in place in 2018 and was created as a tool to protect the water quality of the Dry Comal Creek and the Comal River, as well as to protect the health and welfare of the animals.
When humans feed wildlife, there is a chain reaction of consequences. Artificial feeding begins to change their natural behaviors, which results in them staying close to their new food source. And the food you feed them is probably pretty tasty, but it isn’t healthy or nutritious for them, just like table food isn’t always safe or nutritious for your pets at home.
Let’s focus on white-tailed deer: Many people love to put out deer corn, and the deer love to eat that corn. But white-tailed deer do not have mouths that were designed to eat lots of corn or pick up food off hard surfaces like concrete driveways. Their mouths become injured, which causes long-term health problems for the animals.
Deer corn also has essentially no nutritional value for the deer…it’s like feeding them candy! A lot of people think that they need to put out food like corn to help the skinny deer. But the truth is that the deer in town don’t look skinny because there isn’t enough food for them. They look skinny because they are filling up on junk food (deer corn) and not foraging for food with nutritional value. White-tailed deer are meant to search for food and eat soft native plants and fruits.
Feeding deer also encourages them to congregate in ways that they wouldn’t normally do in nature, which can lead to the spread of diseases and parasites. And deer feeding also causes a high concentration of animal waste, which pollutes our waterways after stormwater washes it into to our creeks and rivers.
It's also difficult to find someone in New Braunfels that doesn’t have a story about a deer and their vehicle. Those stories range from how they hit a deer, or the deer ran into them while driving, or they had a close miss. In fact, my wife and I have both had deer/vehicular accidents. With more deer in areas that they don’t belong, like in neighborhoods and along roadways, increases in collisions with vehicles are expected. The City’s Animal Welfare division removes an average of 500 deer carcasses each year, and most of those deer are deceased from vehicle accidents. Those accidents are a result of deer overpopulation, and, in New Braunfels, that overpopulation can be linked to the amount of artificial feeding that is happening, leading to deer reproducing more rapidly.
The City understands why people want to feed the deer. They are beautiful animals, and most people enjoy seeing them around town. We don’t ever want to see the deer leave New Braunfels, but we also don’t want the deer population to cause more harm than good. That’s why, beginning this month, the City of New Braunfels will begin efforts to enforce the wildlife feeding ordinance more aggressively. The ordinance is not limited to parks; it also applies to neighborhoods and commercial areas. Citations for wildlife feeding are a Class C Misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $500. The reality is if we cannot decrease the deer population by reducing artificial feeding, the City may have to consider trapping and euthanizing deer to reach a healthy balance for the deer population.
This ordinance doesn’t just apply to deer, but all wildlife including ducks and squirrels. You can still set up your bird feeder, just be sure it follows the ordinance and is at least 5 feet above the ground and has nothing but bird food in it. If you want to learn more about the City’s ordinance prohibiting wildlife feeing, please visit the City’s website at www.newbraunfels.gov/wildlife.
So please, enjoy seeing the wildlife in New Braunfels…just don’t offer them a snack! The animals and our water resources will be better for it.
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Mayor Neal Linnartz