Last night at 9:00 PM, Mr. Anthony DiNicola, President of
White Buffalo, Inc. began his work in the South Shore of Staten Island. He is taking the first baby steps in the
city’s deer management plan, and it has been a while in the making...
In March of 2015, I invited Assemblymen Mike Cusick and
now-Councilman Joe Borelli to Borough Hall.
The purpose was to meet with me and former NYC Parks Department employee
Kevin Heatley, a restoration ecologist, so that we might have a candid and
forceful conversation with the press about the dangers of the growing deep
population. We spoke of the
inevitability of ecological devastation, a rise in tick borne diseases and an
increase in vehicular/deer collisions.
And we spoke about the inevitability of one of those collisions
resulting in serious injury or death.
This was a clarion call to city and state officials: the
novelty of seeing deer on Staten Island was over, and the four individuals
sitting in Borough Hall that day were demanding that action be taken.
If you have been following this story you know the city
selected a rather unorthodox approach – bucks would be tranquilized and given
vasectomies. Most islanders following
the story found this peculiar and voiced their opinions, with a recent epic
rant by Senator Diane Savino leading the charge on Facebook. I completely understood. Until our introduction to Tony DiNicola, my
staff and I had been working diligently with state and federal officials to
prepare for a cull, led by USDA personal, much like many other jurisdictions
with similar population densities.
I was committed to seeing this unpopular approach taken,
because while I’m not that good at math, I recognized and accepted the
statistical probabilities for what they are.
Since Fall of 2014 I’ve been saying that when - not if - there is a
serious injury or fatality, this debate and dialogue will stop on a dime, and
even the some critics of culling will demand action.
I still fear that scenario.
Unfortunately, and I do think it is regrettable, the
culling approach was never going to get the support of the NYPD or the de
Blasio Administration. Additionally,
even if we’d been able to convince said critics, we undoubtedly would have been
confronted with multiple legal challenges, as there have been in many other
jurisdictions, resulting in years of delays.
So, vasectomies it is. Yes, snicker if you will, I get
it. But the good news is that a deer
management plan is underway. We will
know relatively in relatively short order if this approach has a chance to
work. In the meantime, you drivers
please be careful as the risk deer pose to motorists still very much exists.