An East Hampton animal rights group has filed a lawsuit against East Hampton Village over its continuance of a sterilization program that critics have said led to the deaths of several deer last spring.
The East Hampton Group for Wildlife and four of its members are plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which was filed in state Supreme Court on Friday and calls for an injunction against the village from continuing the deer sterilization effort.
The village began the sterilizations last winter, using veterinarians to surgically remove the ovaries of tranquilized deer. Over three weeks, 114 female deer were tranquilized and had the surgical sterilizations. The tranquilizing and surgeries were conducted by a deer management company called White Buffalo Inc., which has also performed deer culls in North Haven Village. The company was paid about $140,000 by the village, $30,000 of which was raised by the East Hampton Village Preservation Society.
“In January they sterilized does in unsanitary conditions,” said Bill Crain, vice-president of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife and one of the plaintiffs named individually in the lawsuit. “[The veterinarians] were in street clothes when they performed the surgery. They did it in the [East Hampton Village] Department of Public Works maintenance shed. They were negligent in the surgery and the village, knowing this, should have stopped the project.”
In the spring, at least a half-dozen female deer were found dead in the village, apparently suffering from infections and bleeding after giving birth to still-born offspring. Members of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife documented some of the deaths and the group’s president, Dell Cullum, has said that as many as 19 of the deer, identified by white tags placed on their ears, may have died.
Last week the village confirmed that White Buffalo had returned to East Hampton and resumed the sterilization effort. White Buffalo had said last year that after the second phase of the project they hoped to have sterilized as much as 90 percent of the female deer living in the village and that residents would hopefully see a reduction in deer numbers in the ensuing years.
The company was expected to be done with its efforts by this week, according to village officials, based on a recommendation by the state Department of Environmental Conservation following the deaths last spring that the sterilizations be done prior to the deer’s fall mating season.
Mr. Crain said that the village has violated laws to conceal the timing and process of the sterilization program from his group.
“We FOILed for information regarding White Buffalo and the village never responded,” Mr. Crain said, referring to the common abbreviation for requesting public information under the state Freedom of Information Law. “You could say the village outsmarted us by being secretive. But what are the ethics of doing something secretively in a democracy where the public has the right to know what’s going on.”
Village officials refused to comment on the lawsuit. Village business adminstrator Rebecca Molinaro said that the group's FOIL request had been acknowledged and is being met with the requested information. She said a final response would be delivered within the legally required time frame.
on Nov 10, 2015