Deer damage: A review of repellents to reduce impacts worldwide

Abstract

Mammal herbivores, and specially deer, can cause severe damages to agriculture, producing economic losses. Repellents based on odor, visual and/or taste stimuli have been tested to minimize these damages, but their global effectiveness has not been quantified. A systematic literature review on the use of repellents to reduce damage by deer was carried out, and an evaluation of the effectiveness of different repellents and application methods was performed. A Beta regression was employed considering the percentage of vegetation unbrowsed at the end of the essay as the response variable. A total of 246 essays testing ten different repellents and 236 essays testing four different application methods were extracted from 58 articles. Odor-based repellents, such as those including “meat and blood” and “urine, hair and feces of predators”, were found to be the most effective to reduce damage. Non-lethal methods, such as repellents, could be valuable tools to manage this human-wildlife conflict.