A deer-reduction program is expected to be developed by Princeton Township soon after the governor’s expected signature.
By: David M. Campbell
In a 21-14 vote late Monday afternoon, the state Senate passed a bill allowing community-based deer-management programs such as the one expected to be acted upon quickly in Princeton Township.
The bill, passed by the state Assembly in March, allows municipalities to seek waivers to state hunting regulations in order to develop deer-management plans.
"This gives Princeton and other communities the enabling legislation that will permit us to cull the herd," said Township Mayor Phyllis Marchand.
The township’s burgeoning deer herd has been estimated at 1,300.
Mayor Marchand said township officials plan to act "immediately" to come up with a municipal deer-management program.
"We can now move ahead with some of the options we’ve looked at," she said.
The most prominent option is the hiring of White Buffalo Inc. of Hamden, Conn., which had offered to kill up to 300 deer at bait sites during the night with rifles fitted with silencers. Mayor Marchand said Monday that White Buffalo "is an organization that deserves a great deal of looking at, because they have a very fine record, are sensitive to community concerns and needs and they would certainly be able to help us."
The township has also considered sending its deer to a farm in upstate New York, a plan which would involve corralling deer in pens and trucking them out in cattle trucks. From New York, the deer would have been transferred to a zoo or sent to farms that breed deer for venison. But township officials have said they thought deer transfer would prove costly and would be traumatic to the deer.
Bill Dressel, executive director of the New Jersey State League of Municipalities, who worked on the revised bill, said lobbying efforts on behalf of the legislation continued up until the vote Monday.
"We are absolutely delighted with the outcome," he said. "We worked harder on this vote today than we did on the bill to date. We earned this."
The Senate and Assembly bills are revisions of a similar bill that was pocket-vetoed by the governor in January. The governor’s veto came as a shock to local and state officials, who scrambled to determine why the bill had failed, and what revisions could be made in answer to the governor’s concerns.
Gov. Whitman said in a written statement at the time, "The bill delegates this authority to the (Fish and Game) council without providing sufficient standards or criteria to apply in determining the specific circumstances under which the waiver of an existing law or regulation is appropriate. For example, such a waiver should not be granted where public safety is compromised."
Assemblywoman Connie Myers (R-Holland), who sponsored the bill in the Assembly, has said revisions to the new bill involved a tightening of the language in the original version. For example, to meet the governor’s public safety concerns, the new bill requires municipalities to obtain approval from the county prosecutor before silencers can be used in any proposed deer-management plan.
More broadly, Mr. Dressel said, the new bill stresses state oversight of municipalities by the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Fish and Game Council and more thoroughly delineates areas of responsibility between municipalities and the state. In order for municipalities to adopt deer-management programs, he said, an ordinance has to be adopted at the local level, subject to public hearings, and approved by the state.
"Under the law, there is ample opportunity for the public to voice concerns, and to discuss and debate locally, as it should be," he said. "It’s the responsible thing to do."
But Nielsen V. Lewis, attorney for the Mercer County Deer Alliance, a group opposing the legislation, said Monday that the deer bill is "fatally flawed" and the group will consider its legal options.
"The legislation amounts to an unlawful delegation of powers to municipalities by the state to enact wildlife-management laws without adequate standards," he said. "There are really no meaningful standards in the law for a municipality’s development of deer-management techniques.
"This is a blatant and unlawful delegation of power," he added.
Sen. Robert Singer (R-Lakewood), the bill’s sponsor in the upper house, could not be reached Monday for comment.
The new bill was held over from the last state Senate session in May by Sen. Singer because it did not have the 21 votes it needed to pass. In May, the bill received only 15 votes when Sen. Singer decided to pull it off the board and hold it over for a later vote.
The vote Monday, which had been delayed since the bill was pulled in May, came at the second-to-last state Senate session before summer recess begins June 30.