Have you herd? Deer population skyrockets in Michigan as human population stagnates
Timothy P. Carney
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) has launched an ambitious plan to stave off depopulation in the state. And if you look at the right numbers, it’s working!
The deer population in Michigan continues to grow, local news reports, causing more crop damage and more car crashes.
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The cause? Less hunting, which is partly because there are fewer hunters, which is partly because there are fewer humans.
Two years ago, Michigan’s population fell by about 44,000, and this year, it rose by only about 4,000. Michigan’s population of 10.03 million is barely higher than it was in 2000 when Michigan had 9.9 million people. In that same period, the U.S. population has grown by 20%.
For this reason, Michigan is primed to lose a congressional seat, which would be the third straight decade of shrinking congressional representation.
Whitmer, while a liberal, is a pragmatic politician. She understands that a shrinking or flat population is bad for the state. More people means more innovation, more liveliness, more hope. Michigan is one of the older states, with a median age over 40 before the pandemic.
Less than 22% of Michigan’s population is under age 18, which is below average and less than any neighboring states. Michigan has a slightly below-average birthrate (total fertility rate of 1.64 in 2021 vs the U.S. TFR of 1.66), and it’s steadily falling, down from 1.83 in 2014.
The number of marriages in Michigan is down 10% in a decade and more than 20% since 2000.
So how is Whitmer trying to reverse the population loss? First, she launched an advertising campaign that oddly focused on abortion and middle-aged lesbian couples. This is hardly the foundation for a population rebound.
More comprehensively, she ordered a study that aptly reported, “Michigan’s greatest strength is its people— and we are losing them. Today Michigan is 49th out of 50 in terms of population growth.”
The new study has some peculiarities. The word “child” or “children” appears only 10 times in 86 pages, with a full half of those mentions directly involving child care. The idea of helping and encouraging people to have children is almost absent from the document. The word “parent” appears only twice.
“Family” or “families” appears 20 times, while the words “college” and “business” appear about 50 times each. (“Neighborhood” appears only five times.)
Again, Whitmer is pragmatic, but she is surrounded by people who think either like bureaucrats (seeing only businesses and colleges as the keys to a happy life) or like ideologues. Specifically, her attorney general, Dana Nessel, is an anti-Catholic bigot who uses her platform to attack the Catholic Church’s pro-family teaching.
Nessel ran for reelection on anti-Catholicism, and she gratuitously attacks faithful Catholics for having too many babies.
In such an environment, Whitmer will have a hard time juicing the state’s population. That’s good news for deer populations.