Preserving the Irvington Woods and the Big Debate
To my fellow Irvingtonians:
Big decisions are afoot this week, about protecting our Irvington Woods, and it’s going to be a battle.
It’s time to turn out and make our voices heard in person or on zoom. And tell two friends to come too.
Thursday, March 21 7:30pm to 10pm at the Board of Trustees room (Village Hall, 85 Main) or on Zoom, please join and be ready to speak and make public comments.
This is the hearing on managing our Irvington Woods and watershed area which are very much in trouble thanks to climate change and deer overpopulation.
The Woods Committee and the Parks Department has studied this for the last few years and commissioned scientists and experts to inventory our woods and deer population and make expert recommendations.
There are several bad ideas and only one good idea here, overwhelmingly backed by the Woods Committee: professional deer management. It’s the right thing to do. But there are some emotional and misinformed claims against this, so we need the vast majority of people who support it (once they understand the facts) to outweigh a few emotional protesters.
Let me boil this down to 3 rationales: The taxpayer economics. The ecological. And the humane approach.
As usual, I have a lot to share. Not a short post, be warned.
1) The Economics
The scientific survey by ecological experts showed that the Irvington deer population is 7x the normal number of deer per square mile in a woodland ecosystem. We have 57 deer where there should be around 8, or 142 per square mile instead of the natural 20 psm. No one disputes this. And because each deer eats 3000 pounds of plants annually, they are denuding our forest, devastating the understory that is habitat, food, and shelter for all the other species and the forest’s food web.
Humans are the reason for deer overpopulation; for millennia in this region there were wolves, bears, coyotes, and other predators (as well as native tribal hunters) to keep deer populations in balance, but fast-growing suburban populations especially since 1900 drove those predators far from any human communities or to regional extinction (e.g., northeastern wolves).
The cost of the right solution — a single professional bow-hunter, the same expert who carried out the deer management efforts for years in the Teatown preserve in Ossining — is $31K a year, so under $5 a resident.
By contrast, some people are arguing to the Trustees to discard this proper plan in favor of a nightmare of an idea: A fence “to keep the deer out” around the 260 acres of the woods at a cost of $2 million. 80x more.
As we know with calls to “build the wall,” any barrier in a vast area is only as good as its weakest point… The whole thing is useless if a single tree falls and takes out a stretch of fence. To maintain this fence would entail vast maintenance and surveillance costs, far in excess of the $31k professional bow-hunter. Any gap in the fence that goes un-repaired for a period makes the whole thing useless. And if the problem is 7x more deer that are already here, how will building a fence solve the existing overpopulation? Are we going to mail invitations to the deer to depart? I am told some claim a “human chain fence” would push out the deer… that just can’t work in anything the size of 260 acres.
And talk about an eyesore and how uninviting for residents and visitors to make our woods some kind of fortress… It just won’t work, and it’s a huge expense when a better option exists.
The self-proclaimed animal advocates who want a fence instead (see this letter on page 4 of the Trustee records) ask why not try the fence before a bow-hunter, to see if that solves the problem, and then proceed to the latter if not.
It’s just common sense that if you have two options to test, you would start with the $31k option and try that out, not the $2M option first.
Below, I will explain why the really cruel decision is to do nothing, and allow the die-off of many other plants, insects, birds, and small mammals if we fail to do our job to keep deer grazing in check. Before that, let’s remind ourselves just from the taxpayer perspective, why is this a good investment?
— Flood control: Our whole Irvington community is laid out on an incline from the Woods to the River. We ALL LIVE ON THE SIDE OF A HILL, essentially. There are literally millions of dollars of storm runoff and soil erosion projects and flood control coming down the pike for village expenses and the problem is worsening with climate change both increasing storm severity, tree pests like BLD, and the devastation of the woods from deer overgrazing. The undergrowth and young trees and bushes put in roots to hold soil runoff, but the deer are devastating the wetlands’ absorptive capacity by eating any saplings and small plants and impeding new tree growth when one falls. If new native trees cannot regenerate, then over time our forest will literally fade away.
— Our unique asset: The Irvington Woods (along with our historic riverfront Main Street) makes our village special and enhances property values. The village made a historic and visionary decision decades ago to buy 260 acres and preserve it as open space. But now our amazing woods are deteriorating very fast, and even in the decade I’ve lived here you can see the thinning out everywhere. Thanks to climate change, it’s projected that our Beech trees are likely to all die off in the next 5 years from the spread of Beech Leaf Disease (BLD) and the nematodes that are increasing due to warmer winters.
The beeches alone represents 20% of the trees in our woods, on top of increasing wind and storms felling trees. And our winters are only getting warmer each decade.
Because deer overpopulation means that any seedling or small tree, natural or human-planted, gets quickly grazed, the only way left to restore replacement trees into the forest is to purchase large adult trees too big for the deer to devastate. Those large trees are absurdly expensive. Instead of regeneration for free, it would take millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded, mature tree replanting. Or we lose this special asset that makes our lives better and our property values higher. And flash flood problems WILL worsen, hugely expensive for taxpayers and property owners.
— Climate benefits: Irvington’s trees aborb 1100 metric tonnes of carbon annually and clean our air. Irvington has a commitment to reduce its carbon / GHG footprint. The woods’ deterioration drives up the expense of achieving that.
— Disease spread, invasive species, and other costs: The deer increase is associated with Lyme disease, and to aiding invasive species such as Japanese barberry and Tree of Heaven and the Spotted Lanternfly, because the deer have evolved to eat the native plants, not the invasives. (It’s not a reason to initiate this program, but the deer overpopulation also means hundreds of thousands of dollars in landscaping damage annually to resident homes, because there is not enough food left in the forest due to deer population growth, so they end up in your yard.)
One other risk is that the expanding deer population collides with cars along Mountain Road or Cyrus Field Road or Broadway, harming humans and deer alike. Stats show 18 deer-car collision reports to the IPD in 2021–2023. Reducing the deer population means statistically fewer accidents.
For a very small cost, we can operate a five-year program that should bring the deer population into balance. Deer females tend to remain in a 200–400 acre range, so it would be very slow for new deer families to migrate into our woods, scientists note, and it’s manageable if we continue the low-cost program each Oct/Nov.
2) The ecological rationale
A small group feels that it’s wrong for humans to take the life of a deer or animals for any reason. (Nevermind that if you make this argument, and you’re anything but a vegan who never wears leather, you are falling into the omnivore’s dilemma of believing that your hamburgers come from plastic packages.)
I also dislike hunting if done only for sheer sport, but when practiced as indigenous tribes did, respectfully and for good use, or today when based on ecologists setting targets for common and thriving species to sustainable population levels, I support a well-regulated practice.
The reality is that NOT managing deer overpopulation is also a decision that will in effect kill … Nature involves a complex food web, and everything is interdependent. Ecologists who have studied our woods are seeing alarming declines in ALL OTHER SPECIES who depend on native plants that the deer are devastating… drops in native plants means fewer insects, pollinators, small mammals, foxes, and birds.
This decline is happening and documented as stemming from the deer. If there are fewer insects (because the deer ate the native plants that species need to reproduce and feed on), then creatures higher up the food chain will pay… small birds and mammals…. and that harms creatures higher up the food chain in turn, the foxes and the owls and hawks. If you do nothing, it’s the same as hunting birds, rabbits, mice, foxes, turtles, frogs and bees… You would condemn them all to a large volume die off. A silent spring for our time.
It’s modern humans who have created this problem. When indigenous tribes, bears, wolves and coyotes all did the deer management, there was no need to intervene. We’ve thrown things into an imbalance. Only we can fix it.
I speak as a lifelong environmental activist. I am chairman of the board of Friends of the Earth, a US environmental organization with over 3 million members. (I speak for myself here, not FoE.org, but I am just giving context on my green background.) I worked on forest management in Latin America, on global climate policy in the Clinton White House, and organized some of the first energy efficiency and recycling programs in my college and grad school. At FOE.org, our organization fights for wildlife protection efforts, including protecting bees and other pollinators, and for saving endangered species such as rare whales from extinction or at-risk caribou herds in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or petitioning the Fish & Wildlife Service to stop trophy hunting of Grizzly Bears.
This here in Irvington is not about humans versus the natural world. It’s humans correcting our harms on the natural balance.
3) The humane approach
Opponents of deer management are spreading all kinds of misinformation. The most common worry repeated is that a young child might see a deer post-bow-hunt. This is just not consistent with how it will work.
How would the operation proceed? A single professional bow-hunter in October and November would operate deep in the forest about 20 feet up in a blind in a tree. The operation takes place between 4am and 7am, and cameras have run test views for weeks in some of the selected spots. No humans were seen on the cameras. Because the bow shots are aimed down from twenty feet away, with clear visibility, there is never any danger to any human or pet. The professional involved spirits out the animal immediately in a bag. So let’s be clear: No children are going to encounter any of this operation at 4am deep in the woods. This is just a made-up excuse because some people lack the courage to make a decision here.
There are no firearms and no open season, which would be illegal anyway,
Just as native tribes hunted deer and used all the yield in their traditional culture for food and shelter, the plan here is that the dressed venison would be provided to local soup kitchens and food banks to feed the hungry in our region.
The remaining deer population will be healthier (as will other species) and able to thrive in the proper balance with food and open space. That is why the Audubon Society is in favor of deer management and has publicly stated it is benefiting their Saw Mill Land Reserve, and the Rockefeller Preserve practices management as well. Our goal is NOT to remove the deer population, but to ensure the proper balance. It’s Ecology 101.
Our neighboring villages have quietly inquired in following Irvington’s lead if we proceed, including the Dobbs Environment Commitee, which stated Irvington’s exploration is inspiring them to take this topic up. We will benefit alone, but in coordination with neighbors the sustainability will be enhanced. It’s really not locals but out-of-town so-called “animal rights” protestors that local officials tend to fear. But protesters have never been able to interfere with a program, only to hurl insults and try to intimidate local officials. As noted, the studies show that these programs work, and Teatown Reserve ran a program for a decade with this same bow-hunter. Because deer families remain in a 200–400 acre radius around their matriarch, research suggests they would not quickly relocate from neighboring villages into Irvington, especially if we continue the program annually. (The “rose petal” theory of deer dispersal does mean over 5–10 years the problem would eventually return, but not if we continue deer management.)
If some trustees want to add any extra protections to keep this program from being seen by young children, I am sure the Woods Committee would be open to constructive suggestions and precautions on the optics, although it’s already almost impossible and mitigated in the plan.
For my part, I prefer educating our middle-school and high school kids over family meals about what environmental stewardship in an age of climate change means. My kids all volunteer constantly in the woods, and my eldest daughter is a volunteer studying the woods die-off with the Harvard Tree Project at the ENC. We owe it to the next generation to explain to them we are restoring the health of the woods and inaction would leave them a legacy of bare ground, scarce wildlife, and eroded soils.
Please share this post around, and show up and fill the hall on Thursday.
Please show your support and sign the petition from the Green Policy Task Force and the Woods Committee.
You can find all of the latest data and literature at IrvingtonGreen.org/Land/Deer
We know one opponent organizing non-Irvington residents and former residents to object, as on the letter linked above. We know one or two of the five trustees are opposed, with 3 waiting to hear from the public. We need 3 votes (including the Mayor) to proceed. It seems like actual citizens of Irvington should be centered in making this call, not those from outside the village. So please show up and use your voice.
— Jeff Glueck
