The buck stops right here.
State officers are asking Lengthy Island hunters to assist slaughter deer and skinny out the hovering inhabitants that’s leaving a path of wrecked vehicles and ruined crops whereas spreading tick-borne ailments.
The state Division of Environmental Conservation is pushing for extra locals to get deer administration permits this season as deer thrive in Nassau and Suffolk counties, the place the animals don’t have any pure predators and entry to an abundance of meals sources.
“The DEC strives to handle deer populations at ranges which might be in stability with the obtainable habitat and in alignment with public wishes by incentivizing harvest of antlerless deer by hunters,” the state mentioned of the new push forward of searching season this fall.
Functions have to be filed earlier than Oct. 1 for the permits, which permit hunters additional tags for antlerless deer. Hunters are allowed two beneath common searching licenses besides the place overpopulation is rampant — and the state can also be providing “bonus” permits to assist scale back the animals’ numbers.
Lengthy Island hunters did handle to take out extra deer this previous season than the 12 months earlier than, based on the DEC, however not sufficient to make the dent wanted to regulate the booming inhabitants.
The island stays one of many hardest spots to handle, officers mentioned as fewer individuals take up searching and swarms of deer push deeper into suburban neighborhoods.
“We’ve been involved about deer overpopulation for fairly a while,” mentioned Leslie Lupo, a wildlife biologist with the DEC.
However animal rights activists imagine there are higher strategies to get the deer inhabitants beneath management in Suffolk.
“The Division of Environmental Conservation ought to be supporting conservation — killing will not be conservation,” mentioned John Di Leonardo, government director of Humane Lengthy Island.
The group is pushing the state to have a look at non-lethal options for inhabitants management like contraception for deer, planting naturally advanced vegetation they gained’t eat, putting in fencing, and even easy deterrents corresponding to placing up radios, cleaning soap, or human hair to maintain the animals away.
Deer are accountable for $59 million price of crop losses annually and greater than 70,000 automobile crashes statewide, with Suffolk County rating third in New York for probably the most deer-caused collisions, based on officers and figures from State Farm.
