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FISun Deer Update Feb-2017
ANOTHER YEAR FOR THE DEER
Fire Island Deer Dodge The Bullet
By Jeannie Lieberman
The Deer Management Project (Deer Hunt), aka The Ultimate Solution, which caused so much public attention last summer, has been postponed until after Summer, ’17. The deterrent is a matter of funding. “Our park is competing with others across the country and a September budget planning meeting is scheduled”, said Mike Bileki, Chief of Natural Resources Management. He asserts that the Ultimate Solution has been arrived at and will happen as soon as funds are acquired. In the meantime they will continue studies of deer population, and the impact on vegetation.
For those who have forgotten:
The Deer Management Plan
FINS will repeat this killing procedure periodically to maintain this level. Deer browsing management actions would include fencing of an area encompassing the historic core at the William Floyd Estate (approximately 80 acres) and small-scale fencing to protect special-status species, as well as enclosure fencing in the Sunken Forest (approximately 44 acres of maritime holly forest). The deer population would be reduced to an appropriate deer density to achieve the plan objectives (estimated at 20-25 deer per square mile across Fire Island and 20-25 deer per square mile at the William Floyd Estate) through a combination of sharp shooting, capture and euthanasia of individual deer (where appropriate), and public hunting (within the Fire Island Wilderness only).
John Di Leonardo, president of Long Island Orchestrating for Nature, uses a bullhorn to lead protesters in a chant of "Contraception over hunting," next to the Fire Island National Seashore headquarters in Patchogue on Friday, Feb. 12, 2016. Photo Credit: Joseph D. Sullivan
That plan was met with fierce opposition and resulted in a petition that eventually garnered more than 5,500 names and a protest on the grounds of the FINS Patchogue office on Feb. 5, 2016
Rumor has it that another element: “Deer observed approaching humans within the Fire Island communities would be captured and euthanized to reduce the risk of negative human-deer interactions and prevent other deer from learning this behavior through observation”, has been temporarily abandoned due to public outcry.
FINS is deliberately ignoring animal advocates who have demonstrated that deer control should be achieved solely through reproductive means, and an acceptable vaccine already exists. Fire Island is the first place on earth where free-roaming deer have been successfully contracepted with a remotely delivered dart. Between 1995 and 2009 the deer population was cut in half.
“That is matter for the EPA to determine and they have not approved the drug…we have no contact with them” reiterated Chief Bilecki.
Those who object to the hunt please follow link to petition below or call 631 687 4751, 215 597 7059 to stop the hunt
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As Deer Chew Up Suburbs, Some Say a Good Fence Is the Best Defense By LISA W. FODERARO NOV. 4, 2016
TARRYTOWN, N.Y. — Given her home’s location near the corner of Deertrack Lane and Whitetail Road, it should come as no surprise that Ellen Shapiro, an ardent gardener, had a serious deer problem.
They were eating her beloved hostas, nibbling the hydrangea and devouring the arborvitae. It was maddening. But then she struck upon what so far has proved to be the ultimate weapon: a deer fence. Now, the deer here look longingly at her lush backyard through a six-foot mesh barrier that has restored her landscape and sense of well-being.
“It cost $5,000, but it was a good investment,” Ms. Shapiro said. “I had tried everything.”
Across the New York region and in many other parts of the country, the population of white-tailed deer has soared in recent years, driven by the abundance of food in populous and heavily landscaped suburbs. The animals are eating their way through local woodlands and suburban plots, feasting on flowers and shrubs and menacing the tranquillity of backyard living.
Homeowners have used all manner of methods to fend off the intruders — restricting their diet to supposedly deer-resistant plants, spraying repellents like Liquid Fence and Deer Away and installing ultrasonic devices that emit a high-pitched tone. Some communities have even tried birth control. But the deer keep winning.
Many homeowners are resorting to a simple, if ungainly, solution: putting up a really big fence.
The result is sometimes more penitentiary than pastoral, with six- to eight-foot barriers looming over picket fences and low-rise hedges. But residents who chose the nuclear option in the deer wars say it is the best, maybe the only, way to stop the decimation of their gardens and reduce the threat of Lyme disease, a potentially debilitating illness spread by deer ticks.
“It’s very nice,” said Philip Whitney, who lives in Irvington, N.Y., and has surrounded his 1.3-acre property with an eight-foot enclosure. Mr. Whitney was describing the absence of deer, not the look of the fence. “It’s just absolutely beautiful and peaceful,” he added.
From the sylvan enclaves of Fairfield County in Connecticut to the bosky boroughs of northern New Jersey, fence installers say that business is thriving, particularly because deer are most active at this time of year, with the breeding season peaking in mid-November.
A major reason deer have proliferated is an increase in hunting restrictions fueled by the spread of suburbs. In New Jersey, hunting with a firearm is prohibited within 450 feet of an occupied structure, putting many areas off limits. In New York State, where the deer population has ballooned to 900,000 from 450,000 in the mid-1970s, officials here in Westchester County, which has densely packed communities, allow only bow hunting.
Stephen King, who owns Numat Fence in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., said orders for deer fencing had jumped 30 percent in the past four years. “People were fed up well before that,” Mr. King said. “But then some people started to do a deer fence and others noticed it and decided to install it, too. Fencing has a domino effect.”
Some municipalities restrict fence heights to six feet. Others allow eight-foot fences, as long as they are not solid. From a distance, black mesh blends with the landscape, but Mr. King conceded that the taller the fence, the more it stands out.
“An eight-foot-tall fence is overpowering, no matter what type you choose,” he said. “But people are worried about Lyme disease and can’t plant anything and so it’s a trade-off.”
In Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., where Mr. King has installed many deer fences in the past few years, the village government had proposed culling the deer population through lethal means. But after a fierce backlash from some residents, the mayor decided to reduce the deer population through birth control, a time-consuming process that began in early 2014.
While about 50 deer have been tranquilized and injected with a contraceptive vaccine so far, residents have yet to see any marked change. And without similar efforts by neighboring Dobbs Ferry and Yonkers, it is unclear whether deer from those municipalities will simply move into Hastings-on-Hudson.
In Greenwich, Conn., Kim and John Conte, who own a landscape architecture business, erected an eight-foot deer fence on an acre of their five-acre property last May. Mrs. Conte said the fence was keeping out not only deer but also woodchucks and coyotes.
Next spring, the property is scheduled to be featured in a local garden tour. “So I definitely don’t want deer in here over the winter, eating the evergreens in our rock garden,” she said. “In the past, I had to net each.
The fences, which often encircle an entire property, are expensive. A style that features black netting fastened to black pipes runs $18 a foot, while a so-called game fence, with 6-by-6-inch wire mesh panels, costs $22 a foot.
A faux wrought-iron fence made from black aluminum can set its owner back as much as an in-ground pool. Mr. Gannon said that installing such a fence on one acre, with an electronic security gate across the driveway, costs about $40,000. “And that’s not fancy,” he said.
That may be why some homeowners choose to install a fence themselves. At Academy Fence Company in Orange, N.J., deer fencing material is one of the company’s best sellers. “We can’t keep it in stock,” Donna Del Master, the manager, said.
Mr. Whitney of Irvington said the transformation in the landscape — particularly his parents’ property, where he now lives — from when he was in high school to when he returned as an adult motivated him to put up his fence.
“I have a picture of what the yard used to look like,” he said. “It was pristine and verdant, and shrubs were untouched by deer. In 2003, when I moved back here, it was devastation. The shrubs were eaten down to nubs and were dead or dying.”
He tried spraying the plants with a repellent containing egg yolk and garlic, but it washed away after rain. “And the whole yard would stink,” he said.
Like other homeowners, he felt the nudge toward a deer fence when a particular flower succumbed to the deer's’ voracious appetite. “They were eating the forsythia,” he said of the bright-yellow flowering shrub. “That’s when I reached my breaking point.”
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