The Town Board recently held a Public Hearing to consider the Deer Management and Education Plan to safely and effectively reduce the deer population, revitalize native plants, decrease property damage and decrease the tick population within the Plan designated areas.
Elaine Kutz spoke on behalf of the committee that was assembled to research this matter. She reviewed the work the group had done to find a method by which to humanely reduce the deer population with the goal of reducing property damage and disease. She explained that the group had conducted tick drags to collect & test ticks for disease, discussed the need for personal protection against ticks and public education about the dangers and solutions. She also explained both the lethal and non-lethal methods that were considered in order to reduce the deer population, noting that Shove Park, the Highway Department complex, and Camillus Parks are being considered as sites to bait and cull deer.
Also in attendance were Kristina Ferrare from Cornell Cooperative Extension and Courtney LaMere from the New York State DEC.
Ms. LaMere stated that the Town of Onondaga is using different methods to cull deer and has concerns about causing deer to move onto narrow roads, which would be a vehicle safety issue, so there is not currently a partnership on the deer issue. She explained that there are legal distance requirements that prevent shooting within 300’ of roadways or 500’ of homes, which limits the sites they can choose but, by drawing the deer to bait sites and then culling them should cause deer from the neighborhoods to migrate from the neighborhoods to backfill those sites and be culled in the future. She added that, because Camillus has so many open spaces, more bait sites could be established in the future as well. She explained that it is not so much a matter of a specific quantity to be culled, but an effort to reduce the population to the point that positive results are seen and the Town’s goals are met, after which maintenance culling can be conducted to keep the herd from increasing. She explained that while birth control methods could be used, they require annual maintenance or surgical intervention and it takes 10 years to see any impact.
She indicated that they DEC has offered an abundance of extra Deer Management Permits in this area, but there are 15,000 that went unrequested. She also stated that there is currently wildlife damage management bills under consideration by both the New York State Senate and Assembly, and encouraged everyone to contact their representatives to express their support of the bills.
Ms. Ferrare stated that the herd in Camillus is estimated to be 90 deer per square mile and that, while she doesn’t have exact estimates of the number of deer to be culled, other Towns have culled 70 to 80 per year, which yielded positive results. She stated that cost varies by Town, but it averages approximately $20,000.00 per year, adding that the Onondaga County Legislature did earmark money in its budget to help defray costs of culling for the Towns.
I did some investigating and there are bills in our state legislation pipeline to assist in this issues – the Senate & Assembly wildlife damage management bills as SB6853 and A8646.