DEP division gives OK to township deer plan

Fish and Game Council is next stop on Feb. 15.

By: David Campbell
   The Division of Fish and Wildlife of the state Department of Environmental Protection has approved Princeton Township’s amended deer-management application, division spokesman Al Ivany said Thursday.
   "Now it’s up to the Fish and Game Council to decide whether they will approve the plan or not," Mr. Ivany said.
   The amended application is now expected to go again before the state wildlife council Feb. 15 at the Pequest Trout Hatchery in Warren County.
   Last month, the council, in a surprise decision, rejected the township’s proposal to undertake a third year of culling with rifles and captive bolt guns in conjunction with an experimental birth-control program.
   The captive bolt is a slaughterhouse device that kills with a retractable bolt to the animal’s head. Bolting is used in residential areas where the discharge of firearms is prohibited.
   In an equally unexpected move, the Township Committee on Jan. 27 moved to resubmit its core application with added concessions to hunters despite misgivings expressed by some Fish and Game Council members about net-and-bolt and the experimental SpayVac vaccine the township proposes to use.
   "I’m pleased that they have again seen the importance and the public need for our deer-management program," Mayor Phyllis Marchand said Thursday of the division’s decision.
   Falk Engel, one of the attorneys who sought to convince Fish and Game Council members to reject the township’s original application, said he was not surprised by the division’s decision.
   "The bureaucracy over there has been helping Princeton for some time," Mr. Engel said. "This is going the way we expected it."
   Foes of the township lethal program joined with sports hunters to lobby the council, charging that the township’s program violates hunters’ rights.
   They also disseminated a 90-page packet alleging, among other things, the safety hazards posed by the use of high-powered rifles.
   Township Attorney Edwin Schmierer has characterized the packet as "misinformation" and has said the revised application addresses its claims, an opportunity he said the township was denied prior to the first vote.
   At the council vote last month, Susan Martka, lead biologist with the division, told members that deer killed by bolting are dispatched humanely in about 20 seconds, and said SpayVac does not pose a safety threat to the public.
   Mr. Engel said Ms. Martka’s statement contradicts a court certification by Anthony DeNicola of White Buffalo, the Connecticut firm the township has hired to undertake its program, saying it takes three minutes to euthanize deer with bolting.
   Mr. DeNicola was unavailable for comment Thursday.
   Mr. Engel would not comment when asked whether his group has approached Fish and Game Council members to persuade them to reject the revised proposal.
   Under the proposal, the township also agrees not to conduct culling on private lands under contract with hunting clubs, and to work with the division to study the possibility of opening some public lands to sport hunting in time for the 2003-2004 hunting season.
   The township also proposes to continue its roadside deer-reflector program, and to gauge the effect of deer browsing on forest regeneration with field enclosures.
   Last winter, White Buffalo killed 303 deer with sharpshooting and captive bolting. In 2001, White Buffalo sharpshooters killed 322 deer.
   Township officials have said the program is a safe and humane means to reduce deer-car collisions, the spread of Lyme disease and damage to gardens and the ecosystem caused by deer overpopulation.
   The township’s goal is a herd of about 320 deer. A survey conducted by helicopter in December counted about 680 deer, township officials have said, compared to an estimated herd of 1,600 before the start of the cull in 2000.