Deer Sterilization to Continue

While the village would not confirm dates, White Buffalo, a nonprofit organization based in Connecticut, has returned to East Hampton Village to continue a controversial multiyear program to reduce the deer population through sterilization.

Meanwhile, the East Hampton Group for Wildlife responded on Friday by filing for an injunction in State Supreme Court to halt the program, in which does are captured, sedated, taken to a temporary surgical site where ovariectomies are performed, and released. The group also plans a rally on Saturday at 1:30 p.m., in which it will march from the Hook Mill to Village Hall and back.

The village board, which paid $140,000 to White Buffalo for the first phase of a planned five-year program, budgeted $50,000 for a continuing phase in its 2015-16 budget, Becky Molinaro, the village administrator, said last week.

The first phase, in which approximately 114 deer were sterilized, was not without incident. In the spring, three of the animals suffered gruesome deaths that critics attributed to the surgery, which they contend was performed in unsanitary conditions. At least three more of the animals died as a consequence of capture or surgery.

Though neither village nor White Buffalo officials would disclose the location, the surgeries were reported to have been performed in a shed used by the village’s Department of Public Works. Tony DeNicola, president of White Buffalo, angrily disputed his critics’ characterization of the site, which he likened to a mobile surgical unit that he said was equipped with sterile equipment and staffed by professional veterinarians. 

Results of necropsies performed on two deer that had been sterilized were “inconclusive as to the direct cause of death of the does,” according a statement Ms. Molinaro issued in September.

“White Buffalo’s latest sterilization surgeries have been shrouded in great secrecy, handicapping legal action,” Bill Crain, president of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife, wrote to the group’s members this week. “But I believe our lawsuit can halt White Buffalo’s careless and gruesome work in the next four years.” Mr. Crain and his wife, Ellen, are also plaintiffs in the suit, along with Adrienne Kitaeff and Betsy Petroski, who are members of the Group for Wildlife.