FEBRUARY 06, 2020 • THE VILLAGE BEACON RECORD • PAGE A5
Town Brookhaven Residents Say Town Needs to Do More on Deer Issue BY KYLE BARR KYLE@TBRNEWSMEDIA.COM With villages like Belle Terre and Port Jefferson taking steps in handling the issue of deer in their municipalities, Town of Brookhaven representatives say there’s things they can do at the Town level to stop the scourge of deer and their impact on the local environment. At a forum hosted by Valerie Cartright (D-Port Jefferson Station) and representatives of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, residents were split on how to handle the overwhelming deer population, but no one questioned whether their impact has been felt far and wide, whether it’s from them simply eating people’s gardens or the mass depletion of saplings and bushes in Long Island forests. “We have not played an active role in respect to deer management,” Cartright said. “It is an issue within our Town, and we can’t rely solely on our villages. So, it’s a question of how can we work with the villages, or how we can do something on our own.” Leslie Lupo, a big game wildlife biologist for the DEC, said that, despite some misconceptions, deer do very well living in a suburban landscape such as Long Island, especially since they have no natural predators. They are polygamous and have short incubation periods, which means, unchecked, their population continues to grow. “No management means more and more deer,” Lupo said. “Unless we eliminate them, there is no check on their carrying capacity. Despite residents’ constant complaints of deer eating plants and vegetables at people’s homes and gardens, deer have had an even more major impact on Long Island’s forests and biodiversity, the biologist said. Many of the saplings in forests have been eaten by deer, and their favoring of ground plants has meant the loss of habitat for some songbird species. “They are a huge changer of their own hab-
Above, Brookhaven resident and avid hunter John German speaks to the Town and DEC about the need for more places to hunt; bottom left, Leslie Lupo, a biologist for the state DEC, speaks on Deer; bottom right, Valerie Cartright hosts a deer forum to see what the town may be able to do to mitigate the issue. Photo by Kyle Barr
itat,” she added. “Deer will just eat everything Long Island. Even with nonlethal alternatives, here and move on to the next property.” she suggested it would be more effective comCartright said the forum was an example of bined with lethal removal. one of the first steps the DEC provides in its Both Lupo and several hunters who came to deer management guide, originally published the Jan. 30 meeting said, despite areas which in 2012, in starting to make have been opened up with cochange. Over the last several operative agreements with the years, the deer issue has balDEC, there are many parts of looned into near-crisis proporthe Island where they are retions. While state officials said stricted from hunting. they cannot give estimates of Not all municipal lands althe number of deer on Long low access. While the setback Island, due to migration and for bowhunters between propother mitigating factors, the erties was changed from 500 total number of deer shot and feet in 2012 to 150 feet a few tagged by hunters in Suffolk —Valerie Cartright years later, hunters said there County is around 3,200-3,400 are only a few public properin the last five years. ties on which they can actualMultiple North Shore villy hunt. The lages have gotten ahead of towns in dealing archery season, which runs directly with the deer issue. Belle Terre, for from Oct. 1 through Jan. 31, is example, has been allowing residents to bring much longer than the shotgun in hunters onto their properties as long as they season, which only runs from conform to state laws regarding setbacks from Jan. 4 to Jan. 31 and requires other properties. Belle Terre Mayor Bob Sandak a Town permit or landowner said this has already made a significant impact consent form. The DEC’s tagin the village’s deer population. ging system essentially allows for “an unlimited harvest of What More Can Be Done? With the need to reduce deer population deer,” Lupo said. “The harclear, the two major schools of thoughts are to vest has been increasing and either encourage recreational hunting or profes- increasing to go along with sional culls or by surgical or chemical steriliza- our increased population.” John German, of the tion. Lupo favored hunting, citing mixed-at-best Brookhaven hamlet and an results from sterilization initiatives. Lupo called recreational hunting the most avid hunter, said that, despite utilized tool for the DEC and said it is “safe and there being a large hunting effective” with a large bowhunting culture on crowd, the number of deer
‘We have not played an active role in respect to deer management.’
does not seem to have stymied. He and other hunters complained about Town-owned lands in which they are unable to hunt. “There’s more deer now than there ever was,” German said. Some called for the Town when it buys land for municipal purposes to allow hunters on that property, but Cartright said the majority of space the Town acquires is small and not conducive to hunting. Lupo said that residents or the Town could start organizing hunts and allow residents to interact with them to allay fears, but other residents strongly supported sterilization initiatives, including Elaine Maas, a board member of the Four Harbors Audubon Society, who pointed to data from Hastings-on-Hudson and its chemical contraceptive program, which from 2014 to 2018 sterilized about 60 deer, which the city described as about 75 percent of the population. Maas also said she has had issues with hunters on a neighboring property for years and described being “confined” in her own home during hunting season. Surgical sterilization can cost as much as $1,000 per deer, while chemical sterilization can cost anywhere from $500 to $3,000. At minimum, 75-90 percent of females would need to be treated to see some effect. Lupo also said another issue is that, in an uncontrolled setting, deer often migrate to and away from some areas, meaning that some chemical sterilization techniques that require multiple treatments become that much harder. “Maybe it will prove to be more beneficial in the future,” she said. Cartright said the next step is to get the rest of the Town council on board. While the board could form a committee in the future, there’s a few “low hanging fruit,” including doing a survey and speaking with villages and her fellow board members. She also mentioned changing Town code regarding fencing to make more residents able to buy higher barriers on property.
