By Donald Gilpin

As Municipal Attorney Trishka Cecil reported to Princeton Council at last week’s meeting, the town’s plans for deer management, using both lethal and non-lethal means, are at an impasse.

“I am very disappointed,” Cecil told Council members. “Your constituents, your Council, and White Buffalo [the town’s deer management contractor] all want to include non-lethal means. They want you, as scientists, as people committed to responsible deer management — they want you to be able to use every tool that is available in your toolbox, and you are being confronted with a division that for reasons I cannot understand seems dead set against it.”

Princeton’s deer management program has been in place since 2000, and the existing sharpshooting initiative carried out by White Buffalo Inc., which operates nationwide and specializes in population control of white-tailed deer, has helped to reduce the town’s deer population, with some assistance from recreational bow hunters.

For the last two years the town has tried to include non-lethal as well as lethal components in its application for licensing by the Fish and Wildlife Division (F&W) of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. This year’s deer management resolution, approved on July 8, 2024, called for “surgical sterilization — in those areas of the municipality in which other deer management methods have proven infeasible.”

Cecil described submitting voluminous application materials and repeatedly being met with long delays followed by more questions and demands for more details and more information.

“Where we are at the end of the day, they’ve made it pretty blatant that they’re going to continue to stonewall,” she said. “For three years we’ve been asking to meet with them, with representatives of White Buffalo, and members of the community to make sure we’re addressing all of their concerns. They’ve never so much as acknowledged our request to meet.”

Cecil went on to cite communities in other parts of the country that had received rapid approval for non-lethal deer management plans. Princeton is looking to become the first town in the state to gain a permit to use fertility control to manage its deer population.

“This is like hitting our head against a brick wall,” Cecil said, but she promised to persevere. “We’re going to come back to them with the information they’re looking for.”

Town Topics reached out to F&W requesting information about Princeton’s application and specifically F&W’s apparent stonewalling and opposition to non-lethal deer management, but had received no response by press time Tuesday.

F&W was expected to meet this week to approve the Princeton application for the lethal component of their deer management program as it has been implemented in past years, but the request for a non-lethal component seems to be still under discussion. Princeton authorities are hoping for a breakthrough before February when White Buffalo usually conducts its sharpshooting operation and would like to implement fertility control as well.

Councilwoman Eve Niedergang shares Cecil’s disappointment. “What is frustrating for us is that the reasons were not entirely clear why Fish and Wildlife seems to be absolutely set on preventing us from doing the non-lethal component,” said Niedergang.

Niedergang went on to explain that nobody really wants to kill deer, but Princeton does have a major problem with a deer population that is out of control. “We need some kind of tool in our arsenal to deal with the environmental impact and the motor vehicle crashes,” she added, noting that over the last 20 years, with the deer management program in place, the number of motor vehicle crashes involving deer has gone down by more than 50 percent.

“We’re saving lives and property,” she said, “and reducing the environmental impact of unchecked deer on both individual and municipal property.”

She went on to explain that sterilization is inoffensive and safe. “It doesn’t harm the animal, but it reduces the deer population. It can’t replace the lethal methods, but it can be really useful in supplementing it.”

Niedergang emphasized the need to accelerate deer management in Princeton with the addition of a non-lethal program. “This method clearly has the support of the community, and we feel we’ve answered every question and objection raised by F&W, and we want to move forward with this,” she said. “It’s an integral part of our deer management plan because of the very justified restrictions placed upon where you can discharge a gun or where you can bow hunt.”

She continued, “In a lot of the former Borough you cannot do any deer management unless you have the non-lethal component. And we hear from people who are suffering because of the deer and places where the deer are more likely to encounter motor vehicles.”

Niedergang expressed the frustration that is felt by many Princeton officials and residents concerned with deer management. “We’ve been asking for a meeting with Fish and Wildlife for a long time,” she said. “They won’t sit down and have a meeting with us. It boggles the mind.”