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New York City gave 1,719 whitetail bucks on Staten Island the “big snip” the past four autumns as part of an 8-year, deer vasectomy experiment. The program hopes to reduce the herd population, Lyme disease, browse damage, and deer-vehicle collisions. It has cost the city $6.6 million so far.
As of early March—before coronavirus devastated NYC—City Hall remained committed to the vasectomy program, which began in 2016 as a 3-year, $3.3 million project. Wildlife experts opposed it publicly as early as 2015, warning that taxpayer money can’t buy alternative biology and happily-ever-after results.
The experts cited previous contraceptive experiments that targeted female deer, and generally failed to reduce herds and their problems. Vasectomies were previously tried in mostly futile, prohibitively expensive research to control free-ranging coyotes and feral cats, but might help
reduce wild horse numbers.
As Cornell University ecologists predicted in 2015, original herd size estimates on Staten Island proved too low. Therefore, the program’s costs climbed to $4.1 million by the third year as contractors tranquilized, sterilized, and ear-tagged more bucks than planned.
At $4.1 million, the mass vasectomies have cost $2,385 per buck. Even so, the city’s parks department extended the program in September 2019 for five years by agreeing to an additional $2.5 million for the contractor, White Buffalo, a nonprofit from Connecticut.