Non-Lethal, But Troubling Nonetheless

By now too many questions have been raised for the Village of East Hampton to move forward with a second phase of its controversial deer-sterilization project.

At a cost estimated at $1,000 each, does were shot with an anesthetic-laden dart, then further sedated and their ovaries removed. Following the surgeries, the deer were tagged on the ears and returned to the wild. (Red tags, rather than white, were placed on the ears of males anesthetized in error.)

Money for the undertaking came from a $100,000 grant from the private Village Preservation Society and $30,000 from taxpayers. The goal was to reduce the birthrate among the village’s deer, eventually diminishing the number without using lethal methods of what many consider a population out of control. The village had been planning to evaluate whether to continue in the fall.

Animal activists, as well as several people who work with large mammals professionally, including at least two veterinarians, have raised concerns about the efficacy and ethics of the process. Other than its word, there has been no way to verify that White Buffalo, the company hired to do the work, actually sterilized what it reported were 114 deer over a two-week period last winter, operating on each of them at a speedy 15 to 20 minutes each.

In recent days several tagged does have turned up dead or been found emaciated and suffering badly with aborted fetuses, giving rise to widespread opinion that the procedure was significantly less humane than an outright cull by professional sharpshooters would have been. It is troubling, too, that in its own report, the company referred to the East Hampton work as a “research project.”

Now a photograph has emerged purportedly showing far from sterile conditions where the surgery took place — a folding table set up in a village garage. Back in January, when White Buffalo was doing the procedures, access by the media and other observers to the site was blocked and its location kept secret. This naturally fed suspicions that something was not on the up-and-up. At about the same time, a photographer assigned to the story was told to move on by a uniformed member of the village police force while trying to get a picture on a public street. He let it go at the time, but in retrospect, it seems there well may have been something to hide.

The village must not go ahead with another round of sterilizations without thorough, and openly reported, review. It must admit that the program was misguided if that is what the evidence shows. As Shakespeare said, “Discretion is the better part of valor.”