New Jersey Town Advances Plan to Surgically Sterilize Individual Deer to Reduce Herd

The town of Princeton, New Jersey, wants to use surgical sterilization to help control its overabundant whitetail deer herd. On July 8, the Town Council approved a plan submitted by Princeton’s deer management contractor, White Buffalo Inc., that would use an elaborate procedure to capture and sterilize at least 40 does this winter.

According to the neighborhood news site Tap Into Princeton, sterilization teams would shoot does with tranquilizer darts and transport the deer to a temporary surgical unit at an old fire station, where “the wildlife biologists will have about 20 minutes to remove her ovaries, staple the wound, apply a tag and radio collar, and return her to her original site before the drugs wear off.” The operation would be conducted at night, and biologists would remain with each deer until it regains consciousness.

The sterilization program would cost the city $70,000 (about $1,750 per surgery) and would be used in conjunction with an existing sharpshooting program conducted by White Buffalo. Princeton also allows recreational bowhunters to hunt on some publicly owned properties to help reduce the town’s deer population. Those programs have been in place since 2000, but the town has not yet met its deer-reduction goals, which call for cutting deer density to 30 animals per square mile. The current deer density in the town of 30,000 people midway between New York City and Philadelphia is estimated at 43 to 51 deer per square mile.

Surgical sterilization would be used in four neighborhoods that generate the highest number of deer complaints and are also considered too densely populated to allow the safe use of firearms.

But before the plan can take effect, it must be approved by the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife—which has twice before rejected Princeton’s requests to start a surgical sterilization program. The town’s municipal attorney, Trishka Cecil, is taking a new approach, Tap Into Princeton noted, by asking the agency to grant the town a Permit to Inhibit Wildlife Reproduction. If she succeeds, Princeton would become the first municipality in the state to get such a permit for deer control.

“As determined as you guys are to use non-lethal [methods], as determined as I am, White Buffalo Inc. is exponentially more determined,” Cecil told council members at the July 8 meeting. “As scientists it drives them crazy that the state is not allowing this. It just drives them nuts. They are determined to make sure that they succeed in getting Princeton to do this.”