A discussion about adding up the deer in East Hampton Town ended instead with plans for how best to subtract them at Tuesday’s town board meeting.
That wasn’t the plan. In fact, Councilman Tom Flight, the board liaison to both the wildlife management advisory committee and the tick advisory committee, said at the beginning of his presentation that it wasn’t about deciding whether the deer herd should be culled or sterilized, but rather if it was worth spending $40,000 budgeted to the wildlife committee to take a census of the animals.
“The deer count is what’s before the board,” he said.
The idea came from the tick committee. It’s widely accepted that deer are the main vector for tick reproduction. The math is simple: More deer equals more ticks. And deer are a main food source and breeding host for the lone star tick, whose population now far exceeds that of the black-legged or deer tick.
Councilman Flight noted, however, that neither the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation nor the town’s own Land Acquisition Department supported the tally. It quickly became clear that a majority of the board didn’t either.
Andrew Gaites, principal environmental analyst in the Land Acquisition Department, said it’s difficult to get an accurate count of deer populations. In 2006, the East Hampton Group for Wildlife found 3,300. Just seven years later, in 2013, the town passed a deer management plan and an outside contractor using infrared technology detected 877.
Neither number was considered definitive. “Any deer count is just an estimate,” said Councilman Flight. “There is no way to do a literal census.” Another issue is cost. A townwide survey of the deer population could run up to $100,000.
United States Department of Agriculture guidance says once you have more than 20 deer in a square mile, ecology suffers. East Hampton is just over 74 square miles, which equates to about 1,500 deer for a healthy situation.
“When you look at the data of about 500 car collisions each year and the 2013 hunter harvest of 477, it doesn’t take much to add it up and figure that number cannot be close to correct,” Mr. Gaites said of the 2013 count. “Our department is in agreement with D.E.C. recommendations that counting is not really the best route to take for managing deer, and we should be focusing on impacts.”
On top of increasing tick populations, the impacts of deer are many. Councilman Flight said exclosures on town land prove that where deer are unable to browse, biodiversity blooms.
“We’re not seeing the forest regeneration that we should,” agreed Mr. Gaites.
Then there are road safety matters and the cost to homeowners who landscape with plants deer love. All agreed, however, that deer eat just about anything if they’re desperate enough.
“I would be more interested in expending money to see what our options would be about actively decreasing the deer population right now,” Councilman David Lys said. “It could be cull. This is something that is just obvious to me. I know we might want the numbers to see the baseline. My baseline is, I’ve only known East Hampton for 50 years, and it’s only gotten worse in the last 30 years.”
“I share Dave’s opinion of going right to ‘How do we control the population?’ ” Councilman Ian Calder-Piedmonte said. “Of course, nobody, me included, dislikes deer. I think they’re beautiful animals and I respect them, but ecology has to be in balance and right now we are not. There are just too many deer out there and they’re having great impacts on human life and nature and everything else. So, I would not be in favor of a count, but I would be in favor of taking action to control the population.”
The board showed no interest in exploring the 4-Poster program, which has proven effective in managing tick populations in the Village of North Haven.
Councilman Flight gave two reasons: cost and manpower to manage the feeding systems. Also, stringent D.E.C. notification laws requiring homeowner approval if a 4-Poster unit will be placed within 750 feet of a residence, which is ironic considering that the weak and unenforced notification laws pesticide companies must follow to spray the same permethrin-based pesticides used in the feeders also create a barrier to implementation.
Mr. Gaites said John Rocchetta, owner of Woods and Waves Management, who has worked in Sagaponack Village since 2018 managing volunteer hunters to thin the herd, could be a compromise between a heavy cull and a count.
“With Rocchetta it’s not like we’re removing half the population,” Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez said. “Does the board support Andy pursuing someone like John Rocchetta?”
They did.
Mr. Gaites said he would invite him to the next wildlife committee meeting. Ms. Burke-Gonzalez urged him to move quickly, as Mr. Rocchetta would likely offer a multiyear plan and the budget is due at the end of September.
The least enthusiastic board member was Councilwoman Cate Rogers, who seemed to want a more scientific approach.
“What is the data we’re basing the action on?” she asked. “I know it’s obvious, but we need an idea of what’s the right number. We can all agree that something needs to be done, but what’s the number?”
Absent deer population numbers, Mr. Gaites said he had been monitoring the impact of deer herbivory on the local woodlands for 12 years, and deer-vehicle accident data could also be a measurable metric to see if a cull would be beneficial.
“We’ve been talking about this for 13 years and deer management for 20-plus years,” he said. “I think we are in a place where we do have the data to start taking action.”
