No Acorns for Bambi?

First posted on 08-31-2010

Heat-plagued trees may mean meager wildlife food supply.

As this summer’s triple-digit temperatures continue to prompt trees to prematurely drop leaves and nuts, wildlife may suffer with a significantly smaller food supply for the fall and winter.

“Shedding leaves and fruit is one of the easiest ways for a tree to conserve energy in an attempt to stay alive,” said Tamara Walkingstick, associate director-Arkansas Forestry Resources Center for the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture.

“Hickory trees are already losing their nuts,” she said. “If there is a continued shed of fruits and nuts, animals might not have enough sustenance in coming months. Some wildlife won’t make it or will be malnourished.”

Walkingstick thinks the amount of stressed areas, with fruitless trees and hungry wildlife, will be as spotty as the amount of rainfall Arkansas has received this summer. “Because of the sporadic rainfall, some areas are arid and some are green,” she said.

While hickory nuts are falling months too soon, shortages of seasonal vegetation might spell further trouble as wildlife resort to eating other plants. Walkingstick’s outlook on a persimmon or muscadine crop is bleak.

Grasses, herbaceous flowering plants, and shrubs are also drying up, Walkingstick said. Despite the summer’s unusually high temperatures and its effects on plants and wildlife, it’s part of the natural process, Walkingstick said.

“These species have co-evolved in an ecosystem that is subject to periodic drought and heat. This is nothing new at all,” she said.

Rebecca McPeake, Extension wildlife specialist for the U of A Division of Agriculture, agreed that wildlife are conditioned to undergo periods of stress.

“There are certain times of the year when animals are stressed,” McPeake said. “Just prior to the spring green-up or during dry times like this when the supply of food is threatened,” animals go through high-stress periods, she said.

McPeake said there has not been enough rain this summer to sustain a dependable amount of food at a time when does still have fawns, bucks are growing antlers and bulking up for the rut, and birds are readying to migrate south. “It could mean trouble when you look at it from a physiological standpoint,” she said.

Animals respond to shortages of food, McPeake said. Wildlife will move to green spots where sustenance, such as acorns and nuts, is still producing. Too much competition for food still suggests that starvation will occur among some animals.

McPeake said wildlife most likely to be affected by an acorn shortage are white-tailed deer, wild turkey, gray and fox squirrels, black bears, feral hogs and some bird species such as blue jays.

Arkansas wildlife biologists have reported sightings of thin, bony deer, possibly from the lack of food from drought-stricken trees, McPeake said.

“It is not clear whether the deer suffered from lack of food or disease,” she said. “I’ve heard of two cases of a skeletal doe with one fawn. Typically mature, healthy does have two fawns. These are anecdotal reports, but this seems to be atypical.”

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