Island 2000 Group

Something rarely seen on the Island: deer tracks and droppings. These were photographed today in a field in Brighstone, the pointed hoof slots and neatly cylindrical droppings strongly suggest deer and not sheep; there were three sets of tracks followed the field edge before disappearing. These are very likely escaped animals (there are one or two deer farms, perhaps more accurately described as deer collections) as the Isle of Wight famously has no wild deer, and a very good thing too! Why? Aren’t deer beautiful and lovely and ‘proper’ wildlife, none of your invisible bugs and boring mosses? Yes, but they eat woodlands, just go and take a look at the lengths the New Forest managers have to go to to foster any significant natural regeneration of broadleaved woodlands. And why is this such a big deal? Because the island is the best place in England for red squirrels and dormice – both specialist woodland rarities thriving here and yet extinct or nearly so across large parts of the mainland. Deer could not sustain a viable population here after the Solent land-bridge flooded eight thousand years ago – we are a proper island after all, we lack larger mammals, we lack the more sedentary birds (lesser-spotted woodpecker, nuthat textbook island biogeography.