By John Tredrea, Special Writer
Members of a Hopewell Township Deer Management Advisory Committee were appointed at Monday’s Township Committee meeting.
They took the oath of office, administered by Municipal Clerk Laurie Gompf.
Under a recently adopted ordinance, the committee’s duties include the filing of an annual written report on deer management.
The ordinance also states that the advisory committee’s purpose “is to help mitigate the adverse impact of the white-tailed deer on the health, economics and ecology of Hopewell Township.”
The committee will meet at least once monthly, and its meetings will be open to the public. Its first meeting was scheduled for last night (June 15).
Former township Mayor and Committeeman Bill Cane is a member of the committee. He’s been appointed to a three-year term ending Dec. 31, 2013, as has Denise Moser.
Michael Van Cleef, Charles Noona, who is a hunter, and George Stires, who is a farmer, have been appointed to two-year terms.
Morton Rosenthal has been appointed to a one-year term. Alternate members James Gambino and Francesca Calderone-Steichen were appointed for one-year terms.
Formation of the advisory committee came at the recommendation of a Deer Management Task Force, which filed a 56-page deer management report in September 2010.
That report said that the dramatic rise in the township’s deer population has resulted in a number of negative impacts, including Lyme disease, deer-vehicle collisions, agricultural losses and landscape planting damage.
THE TASK FORCE, created in 2009, recommended in its September 2010 report that, among other things, hunting should be encouraged as a way to control the deer population. Mr. Cane and Ms. Moser, who also headed that group, told the Township Committee, that the report reflected the opinion of most of the task force members.
Strategies recommended by the report include encouraging and facilitating hunting access on public and private lands and among neighboring landowners.
The report said more hunting and other measures are needed to reduce Lyme disease, which is spread by deer ticks, motor vehicle accidents involving deer and damage to crops and landscaping.
Development of strategies to access “pockets” of deer in residential areas also are needed, the task force said, along with deer management programs that focus on female deer and facilitate the donation of venison to local food banks, which could include the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen and similar facilities.
Education also is important, the task force said. Needed are improved awareness of methods that reduce vehicle collisions with deer, Lyme disease and crop and landscape damage.
The report said there had been an annual average of 170 reportable cases of Lyme disease in the township from 2007 to 2009 and an annual average of 567 deer-vehicle collisions during that same three-year period. Some township farmers had reported crop losses due to deer at more than $5,000 annually.
Then Mayor Michael Markulec closed the discussion by saying the committee would continue to confer with the task force on developing strategies on the deer problem.
