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Deer Sterilization Has Begun

By
Christopher Walsh

The East Hampton Village Board’s deer-sterilization program has been under way for two weeks, but village officials are offering little information about it.

The board appropriated $30,000 for the program, in which does are captured, sedated, and sterilized in a surgical procedure. The Village Preservation Society, citing a proliferation of deer fencing, the destruction of landscaping, deer-vehicle collisions, and tick-borne diseases, had urged the board to take action to reduce the deer population and donated $100,000 toward the effort.

In September, the village hired White Buffalo, a nonprofit organization that works to preserve native species and ecosystems, to carry out the program, at an estimated cost of $1,000 per doe.

Asked to comment, Becky Molinaro, the village administrator, emailed that “once the program is complete we will release the results, but the village is confident the desired outcome will be achieved and will remain committed to this as a multiyear program.” She declined to disclose the location or locations in which the captures and surgeries are being conducted, and said that the final costs would not be known until the project has been completed. The sterilization program will continue for a few more weeks, she said.

Barbara Borsack, the deputy mayor, referred questions to Ms. Molinaro, but did express satisfaction with the program to date. “We think it’s going very well,” she said yesterday. “I know they’ve gotten quite a few, but I don’t know what the latest numbers are.” Anthony DiNicola of White Buffalo, Ms. Borsack said, “is pleased, and we’re pleased as well.”

John v.H. Halsey, president of the Peconic Land Trust, also praised the program. “The deer population on the East End continues to grow, and we applaud the village for taking proactive measures to address the issue,” he wrote in an email. “We understand that wildlife management programs can be controversial, but we all need to take a balanced approach and look for solutions.”

While groups as disparate as sportsmen and animal-rights activists have opposed the town’s efforts to cull the deer population — members of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife led a rally outside Town Hall on Saturday to protest expanded firearms hunting this month — Ilissa Meyer of Equine Sport Science, whose husband is Dr. James Meyer, a large-animal veterinarian, criticized the village’s sterilization program. In September, Ms. Meyer told the board that veterinarians in the town and village were concerned about White Buffalo’s involvement in the effort, which she called an experiment. The American Veterinary Medical Association, she said, has called sterilization both expensive and ineffective.

Ms. Meyer cited a 2009 program by Cornell University to reduce the deer population through sterilization of does. While it decreased the number of fawns, it had the unintended consequence of attracting bucks to the area, and five years after implementing the program the deer population was unchanged, according to a September report in The Washington Post.

Ms. Meyer also questioned the ethics of performing surgery in subzero weather, and said, in a letter to the editor in this issue, that the anesthetics used are intended for non-food animals. Sterilized does are tagged for identification, but “tags can easily fall off,” she said.

“The sedatives used on the deer are ones specifically used to minimize recovery time,” Ms. Molinaro said.

 

 

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