Rye wants to know just how many deer are roaming its neighborhoods — and it’s turning to drones to find out.
The City Council OK’d a $7,000 proposal on Wednesday night to launch a thermal study to determine the severity of the deer population in town. The project will be carried out by VersaDrone, a New Jersey-based company.
The city Deer Management Committee called the survey a key step in developing a “comprehensive understanding” of the city’s herd of whitetail deer, which data indicates has grown to the point of harming forests and neighborhoods.
The number of deer range from 135 to 229 across properties like Con Edison, Marshlands, and the Rye Nature Center, according to the committee’s data dating back to last October. With little new growth left in the woods, the animals are turning to local yards in Rye for food, fueling resident concerns.
For roughly $1,000 per day over a seven-day period, VersaDrone will track male bucks and female does across the city’s golf courses, parks and marshes, providing coordinates on whereabouts along with photos and videos.
Councilman Keith Cunningham, a Republican, asked whether knowing the sex of the deer would be useful in planning herd management.
“If there’s three-quarters does versus bucks, are you going to want to cut that down to … an eighth bucks and the rest does?” he said.
But Stephanie Gomez, a committee member, said the city’s immediate focus should just be on getting a total count. At this stage, she told the council, “I don’t know that that necessarily makes any difference. I think what we need to really determine up front is the amount of view that we currently have here.”
Rye first formed a working group to explore the city’s deer problem in 2015, after residents raised concerns about property damage, disappearing forest growth, and an increase in Lyme disease cases.
Last August, the city returned to the issue when it tapped a seven-member committee to help control the animals’ overpopulation. While it builds on the work done a decade ago, the current group is using updated data collected by the city support with guidance from the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Deputy Mayor James Ward, a Democrat, asked whether the survey was “the result of some process” that concluded the city has “a number of deer problem” or whether it was simply “on the road to figuring that out.”
Gomez said the deer issue is a long-term project that the city will have to deal with “for years to come.” Once the population count is ironed out, the next step will likely be a forest understory analysis to see how the deer are affecting plants and trees.
Gomez added that the vendor is focused on getting the number right and is careful to avoid double-counting deer. Because of that, there is a “critical timeline to start,” with the best window falling between April and early May, before foliage fills in.
The new City Council labeled collecting initial information as its top priority, in its first time addressing the issue Wednesday night.
It’s a “critical first step” to determine if there is “an overpopulation,” committee member Jasime Zhu.
