The Passaic County Freeholders last week reached an agreement with the United Bow Hunters of New Jersey to conduct a controlled hunt in both parks on various days in January and February. The county plans to close both Garret Mountain Reservation and Rifle Camp Park on alternate weekdays to allow bow hunters to thin out the whitetail population.
“There’s simply too many deer,” said Freeholder Pat Lepore, who also is the mayor of Woodland Park, where Garret Mountain Reservation and Rifle Camp Park are located. “It’s a dangerous situation and environmentally, it’s a disaster. This is the right thing to do.”
The freeholders last week allocated $20,000 for the culling operation, which will be conducted by the United Bow Hunters of New Jersey. The group has been doing culling operations for 20 years for municipalities, among them Livingston, Milburn, Mountain Lakes, and Denville.
“Not only is this the right thing to do, it’s long overdue,” said Marc Weiss, who is organizing the Passaic County hunt for the United Bow Hunters of New Jersey. “The idea isn’t to eliminate the herd; it’s to reduce the herd.”
The deer herd on Garret Mountain is estimated by Passaic County to number 400 to 600 animals. Weiss estimated that the current deer population was “at least 30 times” higher than the carrying capacity of the land. Many of the deer, he said, are underfed and will likely starve this winter.
The Passaic County Parks Department has yet to set dates for the culling operation. Lepore said that the county was looking to close Garret Mountain Reservation and Rifle Camp Park on alternate days in January and February to allow teams of hunters in.
Parks would be closed on hunting days.
Passaic County would decide how many deer would be hunted.
State law that prohibits hunting within 450 feet of an occupied structure would be waived.
The plan adopted by the freeholders calls for the Passaic County Sheriff’s Department to provide security. Bow hunters would erect tree stands and lay down bait. The county would operate a deer check station, and all the meat would be donated to the Center for United Methodist Aid in the Community (CUMAC), a Paterson-based anti-poverty agency.
To survive, the deer have browsed their way through the under story of both parks, and into the backyards of homes. Along the way, they’ve eaten just about every plant and shrub in sight — and destroyed the habitat for other species, particularly the migrating songbirds that land on Garret Mountain during the Spring and Fall.
Many of the deer that have survived appear weak and underfed — while others wind up dead in the road, struck by vehicles. Recently, two deer carcasses were discovered in the parking lot of Kohl’s department store on Route 46.
Although the population has been growing steadily, Passaic County has never had a deer management plan for Garret Mountain. Woodland Park residents, tired of having their gardens destroyed by roaming deer, have long been pressuring the freeholders to do something. They’ve been joined by environmental groups such as the New Jersey Audubon Society, which this fall sounded the alarm over the destruction of Garret Mountain’s ecological balance.
Troy Ettel, the director of conservation for the New Jersey Audubon Society, said Garret Mountain is one of the most important resting points in New Jersey for migratory birds. And deer are the number one danger to that ecosystem.
“Forests that are impacted by whitetail deer are like critically ill patients,” Ettel said. “The forest could die. You have to drop the deer population and keep it low in order to give that forest a chance to recover.”
E-mail: cowen@northjersey.com
Thanks to Vegan Virago for originally posting this(arriving in my inbox) so that I could post it as well and get my thoughts out to the editor and town officials as well . As always, my blog is public and comments are welcome. People are entitled to their opinions though I may view many as being ignorant or narrowminded and that is okay. I do ask that you comment without vulgarity. Any flaming towards us (me and the vixen) will result in our engaging in true human like behavior and hunting you down. With that said, have a good day. I am going to post more on this very disturbing topic in a bit.
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