Letters

Ginnie Frati and the staff at the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center have rescued thousands of animals throughout the Hamptons. I’m urging Hampton residents to rescue them now.

Earlier this year, a hunter shot a deer within 6 feet of Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center, killing the deer — which had been rehabilitated and released from the hospital — and blowing a hole through a wildlife enclosure, endangering the lives of recovering animals and of a staff member working nearby.

Ginnie Frati, who runs the center, tried to render aid to the wounded animal, but the doe sadly died in her arms.

Frati had sounded the alarm several times since the 200-acre parcel known as Henry’s Hollow was opened to hunting in 2004 — four years after she opened the hospital at Munn’s Pond County Park. Over the years, she found hunters trespassing on hospital grounds and stray arrows around caging areas, as well as heard gunshots frightening recovering animals and posing a danger to Evelyn Alexander staff, volunteers and park-goers traversing the park’s nature trail.

Regardless of how one feels about hunting, it is clear that hunting next to a wildlife hospital is wildly inappropriate. Wildlife rehabilitators should not have to work in fear of being shot and killed at the Hamptons’ only wildlife hospital, where many patients are recovering from being shot and left to languish by hunters in the first place.

Please call Governor Kathy Hochul and urge her to sign A9895/S9345, which would stop hunting adjacent to the wildlife hospital, today. She only has until December 17 to sign it into law.

John Di Leonardo

President and Executive Director

Humane Long Island

Di Leonardo also is an anthrozoologist and wildlife rehabilitator — Ed.