Mayor de Blasio thinks there will be no bang for Staten Island’s bucks once he launches a $2 million vasectomy plan to sterilize the borough’s male deer this fall.
Maybe City Hall should have “The Talk” with a wildlife biologist first.
“This proposal has no chance of success whatsoever,” said Dr. Paul Curtis, a Cornell University deer expert.
You see, Mr. Mayor, when a boy deer loves a girl deer very, very much . . .
In reality, female white-tailed deer go into heat in the autumn rutting season. They emit a powerful scent that attracts males, who chase them and battle each other until every last doe is pregnant. Normally, the rut lasts a month or two.
But with bucks shooting blanks, the does will go into heat repeatedly throughout the fall and winter. They would become “buck magnets,” according to a Cornell study.
“Every 30 days or so for up to six months, right into March,” said Dr. Bob Warren of The Deer Laboratory at the University of Georgia.
The hot-to-trot does could attract bucks from near and far for many more months — including still-potent potential mates swimming over from New Jersey.
That, of course, would be the exact opposite of the city’s goal — which is to reduce Staten Island’s deer population. A 2014 survey found 763 deer in the borough, up from 24 in 2008.
But an influx of horny New Jersey deer is the least of the plan’s problems, according to experts.
“It won’t even get to that point,” Curtis said, “because I think it would be extremely difficult to get even 50 percent of the bucks” in order to sterilize them. Even a few intact bucks can keep the herd growing exponentially.
During an extended rutting season, there would be more perilous encounters with humans as the mad-with-lust bucks heedlessly run around looking for mates.
Also, snipped bucks would be sterile but still have a strong sex drive. So during an extended rutting season, there would be more perilous encounters with humans as the mad-with-lust bucks heedlessly run around looking for mates.
During the 2015 rut, a young buck busted through a strip-mall store window on busy Forest Avenue and bled to death inside. Another trapped itself in a backyard above-ground pool in Annandale. Bucks gored family pets, careened into highway traffic and collided with city buses, police cars and private vehicles all across the island.
The city’s vasectomy-only deer policy would be a nationwide first. The mayor said it was chosen in part because the procedure is easy to perform on male deer.
“That’s absolutely false,” said Curtis, who has done buck vasectomies. “They do not respond well to the immobilization drugs . . . It is far more stressful on the animals.”
Five towns and villages across the country are experimenting with surgical doe sterilization, mainly by removing their ovaries, to control free-ranging deer. Chemical contraceptives are ineffective for more than a year or two, and culling — using archers or sharpshooters to kill a portion of the herd — is the only other alternative.
Large drop nets and clover traps can typically capture the least wary animals. “But then they get trap shy,” Curtis said. “They are that smart.”
Tranquilizer darts must be used to bring down the rest. Once sedated, a deer may be operated on in the field or taken to a veterinary facility for surgery.
“We are very confident in our proposal,” said a spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office. “It’s a smart approach that can be implemented quickly, before the problem increases.”
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