Dogs for Deer Management

One advantage of using trained herding dogs for urban and other deer management applications is that they replicate some of the behaviors of predators in an environment where predator introduction may not be feasible.  Deer are more likely to move around and not congregate in an area where focused browsing may be particularly harmful to the ecology or costly.  Of course, you can ask any sheep herder if a border collie can be a useful and safe manager of flighty ungulates.  Well trained herding dogs can reproduce the ecology of fear that keeps deer moving in the environment, distributing their impact without risk to the human population.  

With low cost wireless dog fence available that can cover 100's of acres, border collies acting on their own can safely keep deer from congregating in large areas at a very low annual cost.   It can take time to permanently discourage deer from trying to re-enter an area, so pressure from dogs needs to be sustained.