I'm saying got to call the meeting to order. Can I have a roll call, please? Mayor Naplani here. Council members Aera here and Weinstein here. Uh, Councilwoman Kaplan will be here shortly. Can we stand as we have a
pledge allegian pledge of allegiance to the flag and remain standing as we do a silent prayer. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please
remain standing. You may be seated. The notice requirements of the open public meetings act for this meeting have been satisfied and a copy of the annual of the special meeting notice was sent to the Asbury Park Press and the coaster posted in town hall filed in the office of the municipal clerk on January
3rd, 2025. There are two emergency exits to the right that will take you to the front of the building and one to the left that will take you to the rear of the building. Please make sure all your all your cell phones are turned off and if you need to make a call, kindly step outside to make the call. Um, we have
one item for discussion this evening and then we're going to turn this over to New Jersey Fish Game and Wildlife regarding deer management. So, the first item for discussion is D1, which is a flag request. Um, so we received a flag
request from Garden State Equality for uh Gay Pride Weekend from May 31st to June 2nd. Um, so open for discussion. I believe Councilman Aser had uh some
concerns or um we had modifications to not noting modifications to the existing. So given that Yep. But modification the existing resolution. So given that this was placed well before
well it's already in that's fine from a I believe we discussed this at a previous meeting where we said that we would like to have any applicants be residents of Ocean Township that would apply for it. So that didn't happen. We
didn't create a resolution, but if we all agree to that, we can have Jesse draw that up so that we don't have people from out of state, out of country coming in and because we got a flag. And I get we can say no at any time, but it would probably be more effective and
more representative of Ocean Township if we can have just our residents applying for a application. I I agree with that. Okay. I think it makes a lot of sense. I I would I would probably think uh Councilman Councilwoman Kaplan uh would
probably agree and uh Deputy Mayor Fischer. So, the only thing I would say is let's uh maybe call them when uh Deputy Mayor's back. Uh Councilwoman Kaplan will be here so we can run that pastor and then I don't have a problem with, you know, getting that on the agenda for the 12th of June. Sounds like
a plan. Okay. Any other questions, comments, concerns? Nope. Uh let's go down uh the way you are. You good with the flag? I am definitely good with the flag. Uh yes, councilman. I am as well. So that passes uh for gay pride weekend
which will be uh next weekend um in Asbury Park. So with that being said, I am going to turn this over and I believe we have Brian Shum. Is that a sham from Fish Game and Wildlife and he's here to
give a presentation on deer management. Now, just so everyone that's out here in the audience and anybody who's listening or who will be viewing the tape at some point, um there have been numerous discussions
on deer management in the municipality. Um and honestly, this is a situation where my personal belief is that the town is completely split in half as to what we should do. We know
there's a major issue. We also know that the surrounding municipalities have not done any deer management. We are literally probably one of the only towns that's discussing this because we know the severity of what's gone on over the
years with the growing deer population. This is not easy for this council. I need everybody to understand that we do not take this discussion lightly because it is a split in the town. I I I really wish it
was a uh more of a uh situation where it was skewed one way and not the other. But this is why we wanted Fish Game and Wildlife to come in here and educate us on what we can potentially do if we do
anything. So, with that being uh said, I'm going to turn this over to Brian. And if you could, you know, kindly give us what you're going to show that you're doing for deer management. Oh, here. Brian, you need a mic? Yeah, I think you need a mic. Yeah, definitely
think it's better here. Okay. Don't push that button. Don't push the button. All right. Make sure it's always green. Um, would you guys mind if I stood here? Am I kind of in the way? I guess I'm sort of in the way. I can probably get over. How's that? not blocking anybody. All right. So, um I'm Brian Sham. I'm with
New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife. I'm a senior deer biologist. Uh and I'm an outreach deer biologist. So, I specialize in coming to communities and talking about deer management. Let me grab my clicker. Got to hold two things.
So, uh, just to preface this presentation, ultimately the goal of this presentation is to give everyone in the room the tools to understand why fish and wildlife makes the recommendations that it does. And so, we're going to do a little crash course
on deer biology so that everyone can um, make their own informed decisions um, but so that we're also all speaking the same language. We're all thinking about the same issues, the same concepts, and hopefully everyone at least leaves here
more informed about the decision-m process. So, what informs deer management decisions? um in New Jersey and really in any um more populated areas, we're always
considering human health, ecosystem health, and public feedback. And so, um it is kind of a departure from like what I thought about when I went to college for ecology. I really thought it was, you know, really strictly about the critters themselves. Um, and the reality
of it is that in New Jersey, we live in a mosaic where people are living right next to wildlife. Um, we have one of the we have the most densely populated state. Um, and that comes with a lot of human wildlife conflict. So, when we're thinking about human health concerns, we're thinking about a lot of the things
that you guys are experiencing on a near near daily basis in this township, which is deer vehicle collisions, tick. You can squeeze around there. Okay. Um, and that's my colleague Megan Mills. She's the uh the northern region deer
biologist. So, she's your local one. Whether or not we want to define Mammoth always as North Jersey, we can discuss that another time. But, um, so yeah, again, uh, deer vehicle collisions, tickborn diseases, um, and other deer
related diseases. Um, a big one currently, especially with climate change being a consistent topic in politics, a consistent topic in for our local parks, we're thinking about the plant growth impacts that deer can have. Uh, the loss of biodiversity
um, namely in plants, but um, the plant composition directly impacts insect composition and it directly impacts um, like our song birds and all these other rare and endangered species that rely on habitat. Um, deer are a keystone species, meaning that they have a dis
disproportionate effect on their environment because of the role they play as these large herbivores and the spread of invasive diseases. Um, and am I correct that I'm slotted for 25 minutes? Okay, we'll move quick.
Um, and then public feedback. A little more. You can have a little more. Okay. 26 27 27 27. All right. We're shooting for 27. Nobody knows when we started, so it's potentially infinite. Um, and public feedback. So, um, that's a picture of a soybean farmer who
excluded, um, a small portion of his, uh, farm. Um, you can see how, uh, deer are having a tremendous impact outside of the fence. Um, that would not be obvious without that exlosure present. And I didn't mention all of this, a
central theme is also a desire to live alongside this neighbor of ours, the deer. So, um, we should not forget that at all during this conversation. So, um, in college, we learned these terms. There's a social carrying capacity and then there's biological caring capacity. In some
ways, I wish I switched the order that I described these, but the social caring capacity is um those things that I just mentioned, human health, ecosystem help, and public feedback. And it's really just us as humans having this conversation in this room and many rooms around the state and deciding what we
can tolerate, deciding what uh harm can be defined as um and and having these difficult discussions. Whereas the biological carrying capacity is simply just the number of animals that we can cram into like a square mile. And so um
you can think about that a little bit more complicatedly and think about what is sustainable to host in a given area again with deer being a keystone species. But ultimately, you know, we're thinking about this as the social carrying capacity because we're we're
humans in the room talking about, you know, deer are obviously able to exist at a higher level um from a biological carrying capacity than the social carrying capacity. So, what factors limit the deer
population size? if we um you know can perceive that we're having these deer impacts um and it appears that we might be above that uh social carrying capacity. What actually is limiting the deer population size? And um we're going
to go through some biological terms here. Um the goal basically is again get people on the same page about um what do we even have to work with when it comes to modifying deer populations. These are the things that you'd have to think through. So on one side of the equation
you have birthing and development rates. So that's ficcundity the number of offspring that they have in a given litter. Um the gestation period how long it takes to for one to um be born. Um reproductive seasonality, sexual maturation. Um and of these things
ficcundity is the only thing that we can affect and um you know namely that would be things like birth control. So that is theoretically something that we could do. Um the other items on that list when it comes to birthing and development rates are you know we're we're really
getting into fuzzy territory if we start thinking about. So we're going to table the ficundity idea. So then we have uh survival rates. So we have uh natural deaths and human caused deaths. And this is going to balance our sheet between births and deaths. And that's ultimately
the number of deer that we're experiencing on a day-to-day basis. So from natural deaths we just have dying of old age, dying of disease and of predation. And um again one of those is more obviously reasonable to consider u
being predation. And I'm looping in human predation um in that although I have human caused right there. So um and then we have uh vehicle collisions um for human caused and lethal removal. So, human
predation. And so, once again, we're not going to hit more of them with our vehicles to reduce the population. So, we have intentional human uh removal of the critters. And then, um kind of moving on, the last couple
things are immigration and immigration. Um that's just natural dispersal rates. Um we can affect that by um trapping and relocating animals. Um so again these are kind of our four things uh ficcundity affecting birth control rates
um predation lethal removal and then trapping and relocating deer. These are theoretically sensible um that uh things that we can affect. And so really the the remainder of the conversation, the remainder of this presentation is looking at which of these four
um rates are reasonable for Ocean Township, reasonable for your municipality. Um that's the meat of the the conversation. So um and I didn't mention it before, if I'm losing anybody, just raise a hand, either council or or people. Um take clarifying
questions now. We'll we'll uh you know get into the meat and potato of questions after the presentation. So um in no real order um these are of of the the things we just discussed. These are the the management
options that we're left with. If we have if we agree that we have an overpopulation of deer, which is something we could also debate, um these are our options. And so this is really what I want everyone in the room to understand. um these complicated
decisions that go into these things. So um first off, kind of the easiest one to get rid of is animal predators. So um there are people that advocate for like releasing wolves back into New Jersey, releasing mountain lines back into New
Jersey. Um that's not even honestly that's not even that complicated on a state level, but let alone we're talking about Ocean Township here. So these are um you know these conversations are are not super helpful or relevant here. It obviously complicates wildlife conflicts
that we're going to have. You know we are we're talking about wildlife conflicts and adding more of these large mammals would complicate those things. So we can move on pretty quickly. The next easiest one to get rid of um is trapping and relocating. And that's
mostly from us as a like a bi biologist standpoint. um why this one's really unreasonable, but um we do have some reasons why it's unreasonable from your perspective as well. Um so, you know, as a a pro, it certainly does have more animal rights group support. That's
always the first thing we get asked. Well, can we just put them somewhere else? We have too many here. Surely there's somewhere else that doesn't have too many. And that's actually very hard to find a place in New Jersey that wants more deer. Um we see these deer human
conflicts statewide. um you have tremendous densities of deer in most areas of the state. Um but a big one really the biggest one why the state would not um we as the state would not issue any permits why it's illegal to move live servids live deer species
across state lines is for the transmission of deer to deer diseases. So the biggest one just to be brief is chronic wasting disease. If you've heard of mad cow disease this is chronic wasting disease is specific to deer. Um, it's in many states. It's in Pennsylvania. It's in New York. It's not
in New Jersey. We don't want it. We're not moving deer around. That's the short of it. Um, and so obviously from the township's perspective and from a taxpayer perspective, it's tremendously expensive to somehow trap, capture deer, um, and then humanely move them to a new
habitat that they're unfamiliar with. There's also, um, pretty hefty unintended mortality rates associated with this. So again, that's a bit of a theme here when we we're thinking about these ways to get around lethal management. There's often these unintended lethal consequences to these
animals. So this is much more relevant. This is probably the hottest debate right now is birth control. Um how effective is birth control in an open population? So again, it has large animal rights group support. people that um would rather humans have no impact on
wildlife. Um this is the next closest thing um in terms of a hands-off approach and it does have high control. You know, as much money as we want to throw at it, we could get more results. Um there's a lot of issues with birth
control. So um one it requires capture and so again with for brevity of time um it's there's something called uh capture myopathy and so it's just the death of an animal uh in this case a deer after
you capture it. for deer um in in rigorous studies that actually follow deer um about a month out after being captured and something's done with them. Um it's about a 5 to 10% death rate for those animals just from the stress. Um
so um it's a it's bit complicated but um so there's this unintended um lethality to it. Um there's it's really long time scales. Again, this is kind of complicated population dynamics, but
ultimately we're talking about attrition when we're talking about birth control because if you think about that balance sheet, if you haven't removed any animals, all you're doing is um you know applying some sort of fertility control, you still that next year have the same
number of animals that you began with. However, you you have less birth rates. And let's pretend like you're at 100%. you've gotten every single uh dough within your jurisdiction. So, you have a 100% uh uh fertility control for that
population. You're still waiting for that overpopulated population to get hit by those cars to bless you to um um all these, you know, the various ways that they get killed in in Ocean Township.
Um, a really complicated um, factor in this is that it really has not been demonstrated to work at all in an open population. That's where the immigration and immigration rates really become an issue is that the deer in your neighboring townships and even if you
went to a countywide um program, which would be, you know, multi multi-million dollar program for this, um you still are going to have deer that are looking for that slightly less dense um area that they can live in to reduce their deer versus deer competition for
resources. So, immigration is constant. Um, and the only times that birth control has really been shown to have any significant effect is on islands. Um, where there's not deer coming in. Um, so it it's very inefficient. Um,
some studies have shown in marginally open populations where, you know, it's like a city like a 20% um, decline in the population after like five 6 years. Um, but you're talking, you know,
thousands and thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the case of Staten Island, obviously a much larger municipality. Um, they're at about the 78 million mark for that project. So, you know, it's very costly, but again, you have high control. If you want to keep throwing money at it, you want to
keep trying to capture deer, you will get some marginal uh results. So now I guess we we'll sort of explore the logical fallacy um behind once you capture a deer, if the if the ultimate goal is to reduce the population, it
it's a bit illogical to release that deer back out where it can be hit by a car um it can be hosting ticks um and all of these things that we're having these issues with. Um and then there's obviously the questions about if that's even humane or not to be doing that. But
um in general, lethal management has the general public's support. Um and I think it's I think it's valuable to consider um taking a step back at like a longer history scale is that this is a very new
conversation that lethal management is is potentially, you know, wrong, potentially inappropriate. Um, you know, I would say the last 75 years is the first time in probably 14,000 years that deer were not hunted where we're
standing right here. So, deer have always by humans. So, deer have been managed by humans for food um but also for protection of crops um for thousands and thousands of years. And so, really this this modern relationship we have with these neighboring deer is very very
new. This is a very new conversation um and one one that I find exciting. But in general um we have high public support for sustainable consumptive um use of that resource. Um and then
certainly if we compare to the other ones um it's obviously going to be more efficient because you're not releasing the animals back out. So you're going to have more immediate results. um you have again the high control that you you do with these other um human instigated um
measures and it provides you know local food and it's comparatively much more inexpensive. So um that is ultimately why we recommend lethal management as step number one whenever we're talking about a population scale you know over
overabundance of deer. Um and then obviously here I think the biggest ones um that we're going to be considering as the potential cons for this are the the requirement for land management coordination. So it's it's you know locals in the town that are used to not
seeing a hunter out in the woods and you know getting used to the concept that they that they are. So um so it takes land managers taking precautions um and working you know us it would be us working together to to make those precautions so that the public feels
safe. Um and then of course it lacks the animal rights group support which is not something that we're really you know here to resolve today if um it's a very respectful opinion um to not want to um you know to to view them as really precious uh wildlife and not want to
have that human impact. Um, but I think we would recognize that it's uh more of a minority. That's I think it's 97% of Americans eat meat. So I think everyone's coming at this with some context for the for the this human interaction with
wildlife. So I want to take a step back and consider what it would look like if we did um did management without um a population reduction. So, is it possible at at this stage in where the deer
population is locally um to not have um some sort of effect on the population? And so, um again, trying to be brief because I have not been paying attention to my time. You can keep going. I'm about I'm about to be over unless you count the flag salute.
Um so, you know, there's a study that looked at all of these methods um to reduce deer vehicle collisions. And you know, just to skip over this, really, fencing was the only one they found to have any success. Um, but the point I
want to make is that consider that if the only thing you do is reduce deer vehicle collisions, well, that's the highest rate of mortality for deer in your municipality. It's not predation. You know, you have a few coyotes, but it's not going to be predation. There's
no human management. So reducing deer vehicle collisions is going to increase um at least on a theoretical level it has a high probability of increasing your other negative impacts with deer because you're now increasing the population size.
So again, if we're thinking about just our forest health fencing disclosures, again, this might be something I might suggest to like a local gardener to fence their garden. But again, just to be brief, it increases anytime you fence
deer out of one area, you're effectively increasing the population density of the surrounding areas. So, you're really not being necessarily a good neighbor. Even thinking as a municipality or as maybe a slightly larger property owner, if all you're doing is protecting your own
property, those deer have to meet their minimum um nutrition needs. And so it's, you know, at worst with enough fences, um, at the most effective, I guess I would say, um, you're going to be really declining the health of the animals that
we we feel like, um, we're helping by not doing these lethal meth methods. Um, and repellence is another conversation. It doesn't really work. Um, and I think, you know, honestly, I think we could probably wrap up here.
Um, I think it's this is a more of a conversation about with um with your with your community's leadership um about what style of lethal management you might want to look at. Um, so we can certainly explore it. Um, but for the sake of time, I think we could pretty
quickly move on, but basically I don't think we're talking about unmanaged hunting, which is like if you're familiar with like Stoke State Forest or uh Brendan T. Burn State Forest, that's what's happening there. People have to get a hunter safety certification and that's it. they go out in the woods and it's legal um to go hunt and um but
we're talking about, you know, very dense um almost urban areas, you know, very densely suburban areas. So really what we're usually talking about is that managed hunting. It's it's your local leadership working with park staff working with us to figure out how we can
conduct this safely, vet hunters, do background checks, the whole nine yards. So again, with just the for the sake of being brief, um there's a lot it's probably would surprise most of you um and even you on council how many
regulations we already impose as the state to make sure this is occurring uh safely. So um to the best of my knowledge, you have a no hunting ordinance or you have a no discharge ordinance already. Okay. So then um well, we already kind
of did that for you guys. Anywhere that is within 150 ft from any building, including like a shed, or 450 ft from any school or playground, it's already not allowed from the state's perspective unless you have permission from the
person who owns that shed or the the you know, and so on. So unless you have a special permission, this has already actually been largely the safety aspects have already largely been um accounted for. And so um the goal if we were to move forward with some sort of regulated
uh managed hunt um would be to um build extra framework around that to be extra sure that um you guys everyone's everyone's equally aware of the context for what's happening. So
um again there's a number of things um that you can do to increase the safety. That's an example of like a safety zone buffer that we um we can do with our software. I'm sure your township has similar capabilities. Um we offer signage um to help make the public aware
so that they know to stay on trails and really that's the extent of it. We usually recommend safety zones around trails so that hunting's not occurring with anywhere close to a trail. And um yeah, I think that you know, this is just basically to show how
complicated the regulations get and it kind of shows um how much thought any urb more urban suburban um municipality that has these programs, which is um you know about I would say at least about 40 in the state um that are similar to you
guys, similar enough to you guys, um are putting a lot of thought into making sure it's occurring safely. So, with that, um, I'm definitely open to questions. Um, I'm going to, uh, start down with Councilman Weinstein. Just want to preface this again and let
everybody know that this council is not taking this, um, matter lightly. You know, we know there's an issue. We know we need to deal with it. Um, and how we deal with it, we're going to discuss that as a council and, uh, make recommendations. So, let me start down with Councilman Weinstein. See if you
have uh, questions uh, for Brian. Yeah, thanks for the nice presentation. Really appreciate it. Yeah, uh pretty uh pretty enlightening. Um I have some data questions. Um that because I'm really not sure where we're kind of at here. So I don't even know like how many do you know how many deers we kind of actually
have in this. Yeah. And as a biologist I I'm supposed to be hesitant to say um because we haven't specifically measured yet. Um I would not be surprised if you're in the ballpark of 100 deer per square mile. That's typically what we see for um areas that have decent enough
habitat, are constantly replanting gardens, um replanting ornamental ornamentals. Um typically, how many are we supposed to sustain though in a in a square mile? 35 per square miles on the high end, especially on three times the amount at least. That would that would
be my professional guess. Um but it's good to measure it. And let me let me just ask you two questions about the lethal part to this. Okay. So, one question is on the safety side, how many incidents have there been where there's
been some kind of hunt or, you know, in a neighborhood like this where somebody has gotten hurt because of that? Yeah, absolutely. So, in New Jersey, we've never had a non-hunter injured by a hunter. Um, so there there have been with with firearms
there have been cases of negligence where um somebody like shooting a shotgun not thinking about what's way down range and then like maybe a pellet breaks a window or something like that. Um, but in terms of archery um for deer management programs, we haven't had
those issues. Um, just to be frank, most of the issues are hunters hurting themselves climbing up to a treeand. Um, for those not aware, um, we would definitely be making the recommendation to be, uh, mandating tree stands so that the hunter is elevated and shooting
downwards with good visibility. Um, that creates a natural back stop so that that that projectile is not going sideways, you know, parallel to the ground. It's going downwards. Um, that's um, and so again, you know, you have these hunters climbing these stands and and sometimes they don't wear their safety harness and
they fall. what you should require they wear. There's two other questions and I'll pass it on to somebody else. Well, the other question is So, one thing that you said was which is a little interesting to me. So, let's pretend we uh get rid of 30 or 60% of the deer.
You're basically saying that the neighboring towns are now we are now going to receive those deer from other towns. Yeah. So, that's they're going to migrate back in. that that is a um frustrating dynamic and it it is what
makes non-lethal programs unfeasible. It makes a uh lethal program um just a little bit more long-term I would say um ultimately all of these any any population level management is
essentially in perpetuity. These animals are reproducing at about 30% annually. So if you stop reducing it by that 30% annually with you know adding together deer vehicle collisions, fawns being killed by coyotes um and then the
intentional lethal management that 30% annually um needs to be stayed on top of and that's why we recommend getting to a lower population um quickly and then you're able to maintain it. If we're going to if we do something and Tin Falls decides not to do something, then
I'm basically we're basically getting tin falls of deer, you will get neighboring deer. And that's why Bergen County um is starting and it seems very promising. They have currently a 13 municipality um cooperative that they're engaged with. Um I will also say that we we have
presented at your neighboring municipalities. um even within my career of about three and a half years at this point um I I've visited your neighboring municipalities. So there's there's a lot thinking about it. Um it does take some local leadership. In the case of Bergen
County, which essentially we had what maybe 70 deer harvested in the entire county um annually um only one municipality was in that situation and um but that local leadership ultimately led to this cooperative. Okay, last
question. Do we know how many deer? Do we know how many deer have been killed by cars in our town? John, do you know how many deer have been killed? Uh, we do. And I believe the last count when we did the drone fly over, which was several years ago, they had indicated in
Player Park alone, there were 300 deer, which was roughly, if I'm not mistaken, 10 times what we should have in there. We should have roughly 30. And we have about 300 right now. And that was that was years ago.
So that my question would be, you know, before I go to council uh councilwoman Kaplan, um looking at how this has exponentially gotten worse, how bad does it get each and every year, three, five years? Well, it's a good question and
and actually it raises a good ethical question because without human intervention and the only natural predator being the occasional coyote um and really people hitting them with their cars. So, you're actually relying on the reduced fitness or the lack of
health of individual doess to be able to breed more um to have higher litter sizes. So when I mentioned ficcundity as an option, you're currently exploring that option by um lowering the health of the individual deer um and that's why you would see litter sizes of maybe one
deer on average in your municipality rather than two or three when they're healthy. And so um you know it's an interesting ethical question um if that is you know best for the individual animal um to be sustained like that. So eventually, to answer your question
specifically, eventually you would reach some sort of homeostasis between uh the deer getting hit by cars, uh the fawns not surviving due to the lack of the mother's fitness, not enough food left, and the fact that Palea Park is getting destroyed. Precisely. So they get more
and more desperate. They go from their their best nutritional food sources to relying on some of the worst. And we say that uh winter weakens, but spring kills. Most of the the the deaths of deer by malnutrition occur in the spring
because so the main so the main thing is to figure out how to get fever fever the deer. I would I would argue that from the individual steer standpoint they have um evolved with predators. Um and so um one of them being humans you know again like I said for 14,000 years
humans were uh very integral part of deer management in this municipality that we stand. Jeff, to answer your question, in 22 there were 58 uh car deer by car deaths. Deer by car. Car by deer. Deer by car. Dear vehicle
collisions. Deaths. Deaths. Uh 20 and the deer, not people. The deer. Correct. That's why it was tough to get the way I said it. U 22 was 58, Jeff. Uh 23 was 59. In 24 we had a a jump to 76.
So, we're we're definitely not in a good spot right now. Anything else? C Oh, thank you, Councilwoman. Hi. Thank you. It's very uh helpful towards helping us think about this. Um so, just in terms of how it would work, when,
where, you know, you explained the how, let's shoot down. Okay. But I'm just curious, you know, that's something and and ultimately it's a longer conversation, but um we would recommend beginning any of these endeavors within the confines of our traditional hunting
season. So in this area, because of how many deer there are and the limited access, we have extremely liberal hunting regulations so that a few hunters can harvest more deer. So that means your season actually begins in September, midepptember, and extends through fe midFebruary. Now, that's not
necessarily what I would recommend doing. Um, each park you might have different considerations based on, uh, the seasonal usage from park visitors. Um, how large of sections of wood lots that you have between trails. Um, and if you might occasionally want to have park
closures to allow some sort of management to occur, say on every Thursday from mid December to mid January when the least amount of visitors are there. So, apologies, but it it's a complicated question and it it just requires um planning and
forethought and uh you know reactive considerations, but we would um consult with you guys and help you to uh figure out what those considerations are. Um Okay. And then what happens in your
experience when you shoot a deer and there's a loud noise and the rest of them run away? Like is that a problem? Excuse my sure naive. No, no, it's it's an extremely uh valid question and it's actually one we get pretty frequently.
Um, so if if you're hunting in a very small wood lot there I I would not negate that there is a safety concern um with the deer running across the street in reaction. I don't think that's impossible. So I think it's something to consider. But I'm talking less than an
acre at that at that scale. What occurs is that and and this actually gets into the capture myopathy um that unintended death is that we think of these animals at these like fit. I mean that thing looks crazy fit. Um but they're actually not extraordinarily fit. So they'll run
just far enough away and then they'll turn around um and see like what the heck was that noise? Um and they um will often quickly come back to that exact area to investigate. So, it's not like they're running for miles. Um, to help
answer your question, um, they're really running a handful of yards. Maybe, um, you know, in the in the case of one that was actually the one shot, um, it's about 100 yards that it would run, um, before it it expired. So, so that's kind
of the scale that we're talking. Okay. And then, is it possible to do this during um, non-daylight hours? Yeah, that would that would get into um a special permit from us. It's not off the table. Um but you would have to apply
for it's called a community based deer management permit. And basically a community based deer management permit is any if you want anything outside of the traditional hunting season. That's what you're applying for to give those hunters that special permission. So, what I would recommend if you're
considering that is to restrict it to probably dawn um hours um to conduct that for those especially sensitive properties that get a lot of visitation during um you know broader daylight hours. Um but if you wanted them to hunt
at night, you would start you're entering the conversation of professional sharpshooters. Um, and you're kind of exiting the conversation of what a traditional hunter would normally do. You're talking about spotlights, maybe infrared scopes. Um,
and it it sort of starts to exit uh, you know, sustenance hunting, the traditional sustenance hunting, and you're and you're starting to talk about we mandate those deer get donated um to the hungry. Um, that's, you know, where
you're kind of starting to split off from the conversation. But we can explore all of those ideas um you know certainly if any future talks. Okay. And then sorry I have a lot of questions. Sure. Um what's your experience when there's neighbor like a neighboring town
close to where you're hunting and what kind of mitigation measures can you take to make sure that the town's people feel safe or are not scared by loud noises in the middle of the Right. And and so archery equipment is not loud um just to start off. So that's not a concern. um
only the archery. That's our recommendation to begin with. Yeah, certainly. Because you you don't know you would you you can't possibly know if that would be enough if you didn't try it exclusively. And that's going to be by far the easiest to implement because
you're um you're no longer talking about a firearm being discharged in uh a fairly densely populated town. You're talking about archery equipment, which there's probably people shooting archery equipment in their backyard illegally now. Um so the um so that would be our
recommendation to begin with. Um and I I really believe in uh like that signage that I showed on the other slide. I really believe in just making the public aware that this is occurring off the trails and you should just stay on the trails. Um but these uh you know I I'd
say that there's also going to be a subset of the population that never feels comfortable with it. Um, and I think that's ultimately any conversation that we have. Um, I I I think about these safety conversations somewhat similarly to how I we think about just generally think
about um people being allowed to drive cars is that there are some people that do it very negligently, but we would perform background checks um for your permitted hunters. The select few that are allowed to do it have demonstrated safety, demonstrated good good ethics.
Um, and you know, we can consider them to be more trusted to to conduct this activity. Again, it's the difference between what might be occurring in Stoke State Forest versus what we what we want to occur um, you know, next to where our kids play and things like that. Um, but
these are ultimately in all of the parks that are implementing this currently. Um, we're talking Essex County Parks, Union County Parks, both of those with firearms. um and um Bergen County um municipalities um looking at archery
only. You know, there's there's a a vast array of examples in New Jerseys of these management programs and it's really just getting past the first year and then people are used to it. Um the only reason why we're having this conversation is all is because it stopped for a period. If it didn't stop,
all of these towns um in New Jersey and neighboring states where it never stopped, people are just kind of used to it. So, um, but certainly there's there's safety precautions that we can take. Okay. And then my last question, you mentioned something about donating
the zir. Are there any other um creative ideas that you have done in the past or that you think that we can implement to actually have some positive result out of this exercise? Absolutely. So, that that's that's the easiest one. Um, I will say that it's looking very likely
that Mammoth County Parks is going to host a refrigerated trailer for the donation of deer um in Turkey Swamp Park, I believe, is their is their county park. Um, so you would actually have your hunters, whoever they may be,
if it occurs, would have a very convenient drop off location relative to what it was previously um to get those deer donated. Um, honestly, you're asking me to be creative. I don't know if I'm going to be that creative on the spot. Um, but I
would say that is the biggest thing that you can do. Um, beyond all of the safety measures, um, would be just seeing that at least, um, if it is available for the sustenance of those volunteers, um, you're probably going to be asking those
select few individuals to be harvesting multiple deer. And after it fills their freezer, um, if you paid for like the se uh about a $100 to donate to to pay a processor to butcher that deer and then
donate it, um, if you paid for the hunter's deer to do that, um, that would be a pretty progressive thing that we've seen a bunch of success with. And likewise, I'm I'm almost positive that Mammoth County Parks uh, pays for those deer. Is that correct? Okay. So they turn the the revenue from the
applications for the for the hunting, they turn that into the the venison donation funds. Great. Thank you. That's it for my questions. I thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just have one. Um, great presentation. Thank you. And full disclosure, the mayor and I obviously
met with you folks a month or so ago. Um, you didn't do this presentation, but you provided us with a lot of information. One of the things that you mentioned tonight and you mentioned in our meeting was the Staten Island example and the fact that it is an island and yes, there are some deer that do swim there, some that try to get out
and swim away, too. But you said they spent $7 million and either of my notes and tonight I don't see what the actual reduction was. So yeah, um it's a non-lethal program. That's
strictly non-lethal. So yeah. So, um, give a a small amount of background. They're doing surgical sterilization of bucks, which already is not recommended. If if we were ever going to recommend this practice, we would recommend it on doese's because one buck will breed with
many doese's. So, if you miss that one buck, you don't sterilize that one buck. It is still breeding with many different doese's. So, real loss of efficacy there. So, um, there the numbers they produced show
about a 40% decrease after about 8 years or so, I think it's been. So, it's it's something. Um, certainly it's it's not nothing. Um, but but again, I would urge you to consider that much of that was due to an increase in deer vehicle
collisions. Um so you know you reduce the birth rate but you're still waiting for attrition to actually reduce the population. So um they put out kind of odd public statements I guess I would say about the success of deer vehicle
collisions but if you look at that first 3 years it was about 164% not about I did the math it was 164% increase in deer vehicle collisions after they started the program. So, um, but they got that with the $7 million. Um, they
did get about a 40% reduction in de and deer population. Again, aside from the deer vehicle collisions going up, um, their forest health u impacts have actually still gone down somehow. So, it's a it's a curious situation, but um, that's what
I can offer on it. Thank you. That's all I got. So the only comment I have really is uh you know obviously we're affected by let's say West Lawn Branch, Titan
Falls, Neptune a bit. It would almost behoove us before we even consider any decision that we have the discussion with the neighboring municipalities because you know if we were to ever consider this it would definitely I I I I don't know if it would work based on
what you're saying that uh they would we would take care of some of the problem and then we would probably have more of a problem down the line if they would come over the border because you know they don't they're not going to follow residency requirements. Yeah. And I I I should preface that by saying that's a
tremendous impact. That's a tremendous issue with the non-lethal approaches. Um but we have many um examples where the immigration rates were significantly below um the call rates or however you
want to describe the the lethal management rates. So despite the surroundings um we we did see those positive results. And I would also um just urge you to consider that um while I 100% agree with the approach of
looping in as many neighboring um stakeholders um Mammoth County Parks potentially has properties that are currently unmanaged and they would be very happy to include Mammoth County Parks harvests about 700 I believe annually in their in their programs. So,
an extremely successful um deer management program coming out of Mammoth County Parks and R.J. would be a good person, their their natural resources guy would be a good person to consult with, get getting a second opinion. If Ocean did make a move on it, I I'm pretty sure that they would uh the
county would go into Walts Park in a heartbeat. I mean, I think they're waiting for us to kind of make a move, but you know, obviously everybody up here is apprehensive. I mean, none of us I mean, they're beautiful creatures. I mean, I you know, you you you can't argue the fact that they're beautiful
animals, but we also know there's a problem and we have to grapple with this as a council and make a decision because I mean, obviously, it's getting worse and worse and worse. Um, our parks, you
know, property property homeowners, you know, getting destroyed. uh gardens, plants, uh arbor vites, you name it, it gets eaten. So, you know, it's a tough decision for us up here. I, you know, and I want everybody to understand that that this is not one that's taken
lightly and it's definitely one that's probably the most difficult um issue that I think as a council we've ever had to deal with. Yeah, absolutely. And if you allowed me to expand on um my thoughts on on that issue with immigration being something that's
confounding and and challenging. Um I I would also just um urge you to consider that when you do let's say remove only 15 deer from the municipality on your first year. um that would from a
population level standpoint that would probably not cut it for even a short-term um visible reduction. However, it may feel bad that you know you put in that little bit of effort or even maybe a decent amount of effort and
you're not seeing drastic results, but that is a deer that is not getting hit by a car. So that's not you know changing someone's outcome. Um it is not going to be hosting ticks. It's not and um considering it a little bit more broadly getting into a little bit more
complicated ways we think about it. But again um those deer are leaving those neighboring municipalities because they need somewhere to live. Um and so it's not as though it's not even like it's it's it's a positive for the deer
themselves. So it's frustrating. Um, I would certainly say that if you're in the center, you make your own little island of of doing what I would consider the right thing and your neighbors are not doing the right thing. Um, but I think historically as Americans, we we
don't really um, you know, we'd rather be the ones doing the right thing. I I generally think, now that's not to say that you shouldn't, you know, carefully consider um, these decisions, and I I think the way you're thinking about it is logical and practical. Um, but I do
think that there even in what I would consider are probably not super successful from a population level standpoint. I think you're going to see some small impacts, however little. Um, and it would provide you that room to grow. And again, in the case of Bergen
County, Saddle River Township Burrow, only burrows up there. Um, Saddle River has been doing their own program on their little island in the middle of Bergen County for about four years now, I think. And finally after some help from us giving these presentations up
there now they have that 13 municipality cooperative. So um honestly some m municipalities their council doesn't even want to start the conversation because they're thinking about their elections the next year. So um it is really noble that you guys are
approaching this complicated um you know really you know valuebased discussion um to begin with and it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to my from my perspective if you became local leaders on on the subject. So that that that would be my response. Thank you. Uh with
that being said, I'm going to open it up to the public for any questions, comments, concerns. Um, if you do step up to the microphone, uh, state your name and address for the record. Uh, please understand there's a threeminut limit. Um, and if you have any comments, questions for Brian, please, uh, express
what you want to express and then, uh, you know, he'll answer what you know, whatever question you have here. What do you like? Hi, Trisha Donovan, Delaware Avenue. occurs. So, you said that the county's
waiting for us to do something. They won't touch Walts Park unless Ocean Tatchup does something. And why is that? That wouldn't that be like the perfect solution to let them try it out over there and kind of alleviate the responsibility of the council to
implement? I think that's a great idea. Great point, Trish. Maybe we'll make a call tomorrow. Um cuz they hunt all over the county. Yeah, that's right. Like Brian said, it's an election year. Every year it's an election year for them. Um,
Trish, we could Trish, that's it's that that's a good point. I mean, I you know, we have all of us have a very good relationship with the uh with the board, with the commissioner board, the county. So, I mean, I I don't have a problem reaching out, and I'm sure Rob doesn't either. So, and it's not like they are
not doing it. Not like this would be a totally new program for them. I have a question. Have they indicated why they won't touch uh welts without us doing anything? Um you know it is it is a burden for their park rangers to have
small islands of um you know pretty uh important management uh activities occurring. They would want to be able to check those hunters have uh the proper permits from the county and from us. um and having those rangers get sent out
more often at early hours, late hours. Um without you guys already being involved with it, without your municipality residents already being used to it, um it it this sort of question is happening um all over the place. And I I will also add a little
bit of biological complexity to this discussion with with that recommendation is that deer and suburban habitats have a home range of on average about a tenth of a square mile. So if you only had one little island of management activity
occurring in that one small park, your municipality is much larger than a tenth of a square mile. And so you have a lot of doese's breeding without any impact from these management activities occurring all around. And so if you're talking about that island effect that
was already concerning to you, you know, again, something is better than nothing. Um but now you're really talking about something quite close to nothing. Um it maybe will help maybe will help that park alone. But um again just something
to consider that um you know when you're taking these approaches you are looking for um uh more areas um to reach more of these resident deer the D but it would be a trial you would
see how everybody reacts and what you know they would get used to what the ramifications would be or wouldn't be. Now I have a question for you on the permitting for the um uh lethal management. Do you allow the hunters to
take a deer or everything has to be um given to a food bank or um no. So we we refer to these as bag limits. um a normal licensed hunter in New Jersey, let's just say in this area,
um they're actually allotted unlimited um antless deer. Um so we don't even put a a limit on the number of doese's that a hunter can harvest. Pardon? Sorry. Um and they're allowed a
handful of bucks because we're trying to urge these hunters to harvest multiple doese's to impact that population. So all of those deer um jeez they would be able to bring home um and that would be normal. It would be the exception for
them to um certainly be forced to donate it. That's not normal in these programs. You want some incentive structure. They're already paying a fee. Um and what they get is to feed their family from locally sourced u meat. So yeah.
Um, anyone else wishing to be heard before you step up? Um, Brian, real quick, is there a cost to the municipality if this is decided? No, I mean it ultimately cost depends on how much of that control that you want. So, a lot of municipalities um once it's
instituted, you've done all these planning processes, um it's actually uh bringing in a small amount of money, very nominal amount. Um, but a lot of municipalities charge between $75 and $100 for the application fee. And again,
it's we would recommend that you turn that back into um offering to pay for the donation of these deer. Um but um now if you want to do annual drone surveys um if you want you know to do park closures where you're starting to
talk about um PD having to get involved um you know so again I would say money and and control are tightly associated good our former councilman John Hus there Mr. H. Hi. How you doing? Uh,
couple couple of things. In fact, he's underneath the speaker. One of the one of the biggest problems I have in is not so much the deer. What do we do with the Canada geese? How do you get rid of them? You know, you're talking about
geese, the deer. And dear, I I have probably I think I counted 52 plants over the three years that I've been in the matter. I have lost none to a deer. None. Now, if I can't don't lose them,
I'm If this what I'm planning, plant something that the deer won't eat. And and then we're we're looking 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 What have we got? Less than 10 people here. Is this your management terrible
thing? I mean, if we had 100 people here, maybe I could listen, but I can't listen to what 10 people. It doesn't make any sense. And then if you you you put you put some a rifle shotgun in somebody's hand in my in my backyard, I
don't think he's going to make it, you know. Uh I can't I don't I don't but you can't you know there's if if there's an accident for for one of those the township is responsible and you're going
to end up paying the insurance on it and I don't think you want to do that and the lastly as far as Welsh is concerned I somehow the county cut their nose into the welts track the welts track is was purchased by the county
through a conservation program. The conservation program sat with Sam Weltz in my arms with tears in his eyes, his wife's being honored by that Welsh track
and said, "It's going to be beautiful." I know, you know, and I could just manage see picture walking her through walking through the trails, you know, with Louise and the deer would just look at me and and smile and say if Well
Track has some deer, I don't think you're allowed to touch them. I had a truce if you look look at the conservation easement on that thing and I don't think you did the you I don't think your world's track is in in that you you just can't do it. I don't know
we my mind used to be up here and still it's it's tough coming out that's all sounds. Thank you John. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else wishing to be heard? Please state your name and address for the record. Hi, I'm L Benoan and I'm
from You're on this colonial come over here where where the stand is from Colonial Terrace. As a medical person, I'm also um uh I'm also worried about, you know, the health of the kids, especially when
they're in the book um playground because aside from a medical person, I'm also a mom who had who has a a son who um had a a tickborn disease that uh you know affected half of his body. So I'm
wondering if you guys have a data about um like you know tickborn diseases from you know affected by uh dear tick and also probably if we have like information about you know increase in
um you know tickborn diseases maybe there would be an increased participation of other you know township cuz that's also you know helped um concern. Yeah, absolutely. So, um when you start
to talk about tickborn diseases, um you're starting to look at pretty broad things um that are difficult to study just in nature. Um so, here here's what I can speak to on it is that um it's actually the blacklegged tick that
transmits limes disease. And the life cycle of limes disease is that it's actually um a young tick will first feed on a mouse and that's the required host for limes disease where the tick receives it from a mouse. So you're already talking about multiple species.
Then it will go on to when it when it goes through several nymph stages as an adult, it will then um latch on to a larger mammal to um get the blood meal to produce young and offspring. So in
actuality, it's the tick population itself, not specifically limes disease that is so in so closely linked to deer. And so studies um have found that when you reduce deer populations, the density
of ticks decline, but you're starting to get into like third order interactions um when it comes to specifically the number of limes disease cases. Now, if we also um think about why that might be complicated, um me as an outdoors
person, um I'm not just going in my backyard to be outside. Um I'm going bird watching in the local park. I'm going two hours south to go bird watching or something. And um so it's also difficult to say the specific locality where a person got that tick on
them. Um you know I've gotten I've pulled like 15 ticks off of me that are bitten in in the last couple weeks. Um so some people are just higher uh risk users for that stuff. But what is known has been um observed multiple time like
several times in exhaustive studies is that blacklegged tick populations which transmit limes disease are very closely related to deer populations. Does that make sense to everybody? Yes. Um it's you know you have to actually detect Lyme disease. My ex-girlfriend um half
of her face was paralyzed because of limes disease pausy. um and um whereas other people may not see any symptoms of it for years and so it's not always um it's not always uh necessarily even
detected. So it can be a challenging uh disease to study and again often lifealtering um ramifications from it but hopefully that if that makes sense to everybody. Thank you Brian. Sure. Anyone else wishing to be heard?
Hi, Katie Williams. Uh, Franklin Parkway. Didn't we have this on the ballot a couple years ago? Uh, yes. And we didn't do anything because it was 50/50. Is that kind of why nothing was happened? The wording on the ballot was
a bit confusing and the answer that we got back was even more confusing as to what was decided. I mean, I I don't have that ballot question in front of me, but the way that it w the way that it came out, um, it was I I believe, if I'm not
mistaken, it was a bit convoluted the way that the question was written. That's another consideration. We could do another uh question as a referendum that's way more clear than it was last time. That was my second question. Would
you, the council, take on this by saying yes or no? Or or would you put it back on the ballot? Um, I don't have a problem with it. I mean, but I would run it past our colleagues. I mean, you know, there's five of us up here and, you know, if we decide as a as a group that that's the way to go. I I
personally, my opinion is, yeah, we do another question on the ballot, right? Sorry, Jesse. I I would also caution, and I'm not sure a way around this, but you guys, how many people are here? 10 that heard the pros
and cons of the different options. When you see it on a ballot, you know, you I might I might always say I'd rather um you know, like some birth control measure, but but if you're telling me it doesn't work, then this was very this was very informative. I mean, it didn't
change my personal opinion, but it's also, you're right, how much information can you put on the ballot so somebody understands that it's a bow and arrow, they're going to be in the top, they're going to be shooting down. Nobody's going to hear that. The way I don't know if that's the right thing either. The way that it was worded, it was worded
that uh yes, no, or a hybrid. And when the h like we we couldn't figure out if the hybrid meant that they wanted to kill the deer or not kill the deer. So that's why I think that the wording of that qu of that question on the ballot was confusing and if we do another
question on the ballot we need to make it way more clear and consist that and I think like like uh Gita said it there needs to be context behind it so people really understand the difference. Agreed. Thank you. Thank you for your input. Can I just add one comment to that? Uh Katie the the answer to the
first part of the question is yes the ballot question had some cha it was challenging. We also didn't not act. We continued to try to do something. And whether it was the state or whether it was the county as we were putting
applications in, needing to do studies, gather more information, we've been literally at this up until 5 months ago. All four years I've been Well, all four years he's been there, but we've been at I've been on the council 10 years. We've been discussing it since then. But um
Mr. Brown and Tracy um have been putting applications in up until I think we stopped four months ago, five months about that. There was some information missing on the applications that went into the state that the council was not
aware of either. Applications for what? when you put in the application to the state to ask them if they would approve a uh hybrid model and when we put or when it was put in there not by uh
manager Brown but a former manager uh there was some information that was missing and unfortunately the council was not aware of that. So, uh, as we were waiting for the information, we didn't know why we weren't getting an answer. And the answer really was it was
missing some information. Now we know then that's why we're here now. Yep. Anyone else? Uh, any other questions in regard to the deer? Okay, Brian, thank you and your team. We
appreciate that. Excellent. Excellent presentation. Thank you very much. Do I have a motion to adjurnn? So moved. Second. Second. All in favor? Hi. Hi.