A dispute over the scientific basis of Princeton’s sharpshooting plan.
By: David Weinstein
In her recent booklet about community-based deer management – "White-tailed Deer: Blaming the Victim" – Susan Russell presents arguments against the lethal culling of suburban deer herds.
In one section, she specifically targets Princeton Township as a municipality following what she describes as a shortsighted solution.
Ms. Russell began by writing a similar report on New Jersey’s trap-and-transfer management program.
When rumblings arose two years ago of new state legislation allowing the administration of lethal deer management by local governments, she took up another facet of the same cause.
The legislation was passed in June, with Princeton Township as one of its most vigorous backers.
"We were caught unaware by the new bill," Ms. Russell said Thursday. "We were not involved in the bill."
Ms. Russell is the co-founder of the League of Animal Protection Voters, an organization that represents a number of local, state and national animal-protection agencies.
Her arguments are not just based on emotion, she says, but on scientific and state evidence. But so, too, are her opponent’s arguments.
Ms. Russell presents numbers from three previous deer-reduction programs in New Jersey – Monmouth Battlefield State Park, Watchung Reservation and Lewis Morris County Park. The results, she says, prove the deer population will increase, not decrease, following six weeks of sharpshooting expected to begin in the township in mid-January.
Tom Poole, who helped develop the township’s local management plan, said he was not familiar with two of the controlled hunts cited by Ms. Russell but was familiar with the Watchung hunt, and said it "was fantastically successful," and was part of the research he had done while developing the township’s options.
"To say the township’s deer will increase following a hunt as we’re proposing defies arithmetic," Mr. Poole said.
As one of a few vocal opponents of a plan approved by the township, Ms. Russell has continued to seek support for her cause and works regularly with one of the organizations the league represents – The Mercer County Deer Alliance, perhaps the most vocal opponent of Princeton’s plan.
Ms. Russell has spent the better part of the last two years consulting wildlife specialists, seeking allies and developing her own arguments against what she calls unethical, immoral nonsolutions.
"The information is there," she says. "We might as well make it available."
Ms. Russell maintains that deer and humans can co-exist. Though many may consider deer to be a nuisance, that is not enough, she says, for such lethal solutions.
In the township, however, there have been few objections to the committee’s plan. And even though a full audience gathered Oct. 30 to see firsthand how the committee would vote, and to speak their minds, a large majority of those who did speak were in favor of the local plan.
Too many traffic accidents, dangerous amounts of deer everywhere, the possibility of increased susceptibility to Lyme disease, the ineffectiveness of alternate solutions – all were cited by township residents looking for action from the committee.
All these complaints, Ms. Russell says in her booklet, can be turned around without so much as one dead deer.
And Princeton Township’s "mismanagement" of its deer population, Ms. Russell says, is a matter of public record. The sharpshooting program, she says, will only continue the poor record of the last 15 years.
But Mr. Poole said he is very confident the township’s management plan will be successful because not only will the hunt be undertaken by professionals, but 80 to 90 percent of harvested deer will be does.
"In other instances where hunts have not produced successful results, it was probably sport hunters trying to take a buck," Mr. Poole said.
Ms. Russell writes that Princeton Township, in its zeal to bring in sharpshooters, and in its lobbying efforts, ignored an Assembly bill that, if passed, could have brought $250,000 for the purchase and maintenance of roadside reflectors to the municipalities. Reflectors have been proven to work in reducing accidents, she says, and have done so throughout the country, including New Jersey.
Mr. Poole said township residents put such reflectors alongside a few roads several years ago. Although the township did not study the effect they had, Mr. Poole said, the roads on which they were installed – Cherry Hill Road and Quaker Road – continue to have some of the highest rates of deer accidents in the township.
Reflectors were later part of a multipoint recomendation to the Township Committee from the Environmental Commission, Mr. Poole said, but that option was not undertaken.
The reflectors, a solution Ms. Russell says the township never fully considered, would have played a positive role in reducing traffic accidents after 1991, when the township amended its firearm discharge ordinance to allow a limited shotgun deer season.
That year, the township claimed a herd of 800 deer. Seven years later, Ms. Russell says, the township claimed 1,300.
One thousand deer were killed under shotgun permits in that time, but still the population rose significantly, Ms. Russell says.
Mr. Poole said he is not surprised the numbers have gone up.
"There is very little legal shotgun hunting in Princeton," Mr. Poole said. "It’s one thing to change the law, and yet another to actually have people take advantage of it."
And, Ms. Russell says, even more deer than were killed by guns were killed during that same period from traffic accidents and an annual bow hunting season. But still, she says, the population rose.
Monmouth Battlefield State Park had similar results, Ms. Russell says.
In 1991, the park had an estimated deer population of 150 to 200, and the state Division of Fish, Game and Wildlife said farmer complaints sparked the authorization of a hunt there. The park had not been a hunting ground since 1976.
Park officials planned to reduce the population, over a five-year period, to 70 to 80 deer.
Ms. Russell says Division of Fish, Game and Wildlife memoranda show that the hunts took place, and as of 1998, the division estimated the population to have grown to 254 deer, while the division "cleared over $30,000 in permit fees."
Similar results occurred in two other state locations, her booklet indicates.
And the same will happen to the township, she theorizes.
"Fifteen years of escalating, inhumane kills have failed to reduce deer numbers, car accidents or feeding on ornamental plants," Ms. Russell writes.
"The township continues to scapegoat deer for human-caused problems," she writes.
She goes on to cite a state Department of Transportation study that showed traffic volume on The Great Road – a possible township sharpshooting area long plagued with deer-car accidents – doubled between 1992 and 1998.
And the continued association of Lyme disease to the deer herd by township officials is ridiculous, Ms. Russell says.
She cites David Cantor, author of "The White Tailed Deer: The Phantom Menace."
"Even the American Lyme Disease Foundation has stated that it does not recommend killing deer as a way to control" the disease, Mr. Cantor writes.
All this information is out there, Ms. Russell said Thursday.
"We might as well have it for people to use, and for people to make an informed decision with."