MyRye.com is entering the podcasting business with a new weekly podcast hosted by former Rye Mayor Doug French. Available on all major podcasting platforms, MyRye.com Conversations with Doug French will tackle the larger and sometimes intractable issues impacting the City of Rye through interviews with local, county and state officials and business leaders.
In Episode 16 of Season 1, French speaks to Ryan Fitzpatrick, chair of the City of Rye Deer Management Committee to discuss one of the city’s most talked-about issues: deer management. The conversation explores how the committee is using a scientific, data-driven approach to determine whether Rye has an overabundance of deer, and what that means for the community.
This episode of MyRye.com Conversations with Doug French was produced by MyRye.com. Feedback and story ideas are welcome.
Main Topics Covered:
- How the committee is measuring deer density in Rye
- Why forest health studies matter
- What the community is seeing: gardens, landscaping, vehicle collisions, and Lyme disease concerns
- Why relocation is not a legal option in New York
- Why sterilization is not expected to be approved for Rye
- Possible non-lethal and lethal management approaches
- The final solution, if one is needed, will need to be specific to Rye.
- Deer management strategies used in other towns may not translate well to Rye’s unique geography and development pattern.
- The committee is aiming for a methodical, science-based recommendation.
Timestamps:
00:12 – Introduction: the deer-management conversation
01:13 – How does Rye determine whether there’s a deer problem?
02:30 – The three measures: population, forest health, and resident impact
04:13 – Drone survey and estimating deer density
06:00 – Why deer populations can grow rapidly without predators
10:52 – Forest-health study and what it will reveal
11:23 – Gardens, vehicle encounters, ticks, and community experience
15:12 – Why relocation and sterilization aren’t practical options
16:48 – What a managed deer-reduction program would require
17:55 – Deer and Lyme disease: what’s connected and what isn’t
20:38 – Where residents are seeing deer around Rye
22:58 – Next steps for the committee and upcoming research
25:53 – Lethal versus non-lethal solutions
26:25 – Practical ways homeowners can protect gardens
27:27 – Lightning round: biggest surprises and challenges
29:52 – How residents can get involved
31:31 – Why the committee is following a science-based process
33:49 – Closing remarks
Watch:
Full Transcript:
Speakers
- MyRye.com (Doug French)
- Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee
MyRye.com (00:12)
Welcome to the MyRye.com podcast, Conversations with Doug French. I am your host, Doug French, the former mayor of the City of Rye. And this podcast is all about the people and the issues that impact Rye and our surrounding region. Our focus is to educate and inform you, our listeners, on the issues that matter to you so you can engage directly on those issues. And today the conversation is about managing deer in Rye. What are the issues? What are the solutions, and what is the community decisions?
And with us is Ryan Fitzpatrick, chair of the Rye City Deer Committee, the Deer Management Committee. Ryan, welcome to MyRye.com.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (00:45)
Welcome. Thanks for having me.
MyRye.com (00:46)
So what we’d like to cover in in this for our listeners on this episode is really three things. One is to define the deer issue and what the research says. to talk about the committee, how it’s set up, what its approach is and what are the some of the solutions that they’re looking at, as well as what have other communities looked at or have tried. And finally, what’s the ultimate threshold question that the community will have to decide and what’s really the long-term approach.
If we in fact have a problem, what are some of the solutions that we’re we’re looking at? So to open up the conversation, I guess I would say, you know, Ryan, how do we even know we have a deer?
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (01:19)
Well, we don’t know that we have a deer problem. what we’re trying to ascertain is the first question that was posed to us is do we have a deer problem? And we’re going through a methodical scientific based approach in order for us to determine if there is an overabundance of deer in the city of Rye
what we’ve done is we’ve leaned on experts in the field to learn what the processes and the orthodoxy is within deer management. The DEC, which is the state regulatory agency
And we’ve hired experts and we’re following what the orthodoxy is to tell us scientifically, do we have an overabundance of deer or is it okay that we have the number of deer that we have and how do we know what that number is and a bunch of different things. So that that’s kind of the starting point.
MyRye.com (02:14)
Alright, so let’s d let’s dive into that then. Yeah, yeah,
okay. So that’s great. So so let’s paint a picture of the current deer population as you see it and its impacts in Rye in terms of gardens, landscaping, vehicle collisions, public health concerns like Lyme disease. I mean, just walk us through the picture we have you see right now.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (02:33)
So the way that we we understand whether or not we have an overabundance of deer, is to one, do assess the wooded areas or the forest to see if the ecosystem is being impacted by deer browsing. Now some will say that it’s not just deer, there are other animals and and so forth and so on, but it’s I asked every PhD that came to speak to us,
Is there hard data that will tell us if deer are impacting the forest or it’s something else? And they all came back and said, Yes, there is hard data. And that information is basically how the deer browse the species that they’re browsing. And they know that it’s a deer as opposed to a chipmunk or a squirrel or a rabbit or something else based on how it’s browsed, where it’s browsed, and the type of plant that is being browsed. and there are studies that are done by this and we actually had one of the authors of one of these studies, Dr. Bernd Blossey from Cornell come in and speak to us about it. And it you know, his his study is the Red Oak study, which is a really comprehensive ten-year study basically just on deer management.
MyRye.com (03:49)
So what is the metrics, what’s the what’s the metric that you’re gonna look
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (03:52)
so there’s three pillars, right? You have to understand one, what’s your deer density? How many deer are there per a designated area and you can do that in multiple ways. They used to do pellet tests, I think when you were mayor was the one that they did. because of global warming, that isn’t really a viable way of
doing it. They do trail cams where they’re counting physical deer, or a drone survey, which is kind of with the advent of drones and night vision and you know thermal imaging that was the way that we went. it was the most I think Stephanie and Jasmine on the committee actually went and looked at talking to someone to fly a helicopter over and then we would count the number of deer physic have someone in the copter counting the so there are different ways to approach it, but ultimately you want to find what the deer density is. And that’s not a number that’s going to say, we have a deer problem
Right, that’s a number that’s gonna give us where is the herd in terms of population over the area surveyed. So we had a metric of two hundred and fifty-six deer per square mile. Nobody for Rye based on the hundred and ninety-one deer that were observed over the where we flew the drones and that patchwork of land area. Nobody is suggesting that we have I think Rye has five point something square miles of actual land within its borders. Nobody’s suggesting
MyRye.com (05:24)
Right. Right.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (05:27)
that we have, you know, over a thousand deer walking around Rye. ‘Cause deer are not they’re not going to be dispersed evenly. Deer don’t the joke that we have is deer don’t pay taxes so they don’t stay in one place. They move. They migrate. They have a range. They go they could pop into Harrison, out of Harrison, into Mamaroneck out of Mamaroneck They move, they go from Edith Reed to the Marshlands and back and they move quite frequently.
So there’s no way for us to know the exact number of deer at Rye this is an estimate so that we know if there was a decision made that there was overabundance of deer that we’d have a baseline to start to say okay when we did this in 2026 we saw there were 191 deer over this over where we flew these drones we’re gonna fly the same pattern and did the deer population go up or down over that time and it or did it stay flat now we did this before the fawns were being born so if you walk around into the Marshlands or Edith Reed or the Nature Center you will see fawns running around you know and so without any real predators you’re gonna have a growth you should have a growth over time because deer need if without any natural predators in the area you you’re gonna have that an exponential growth after a point so there’s a study called the George Reserve study and Bryan Murtagh on the committee makes fun of me because I reference it a lot. it because it’s from 1928. But why it’s significant is that they took they took in the George Reserve, they started with two bucks and six does and they put them in an enclosed space. So there are no predators and they gave them all the food water, whatever they needed, and they had no pressure on them whatsoever. Within eight years they had over two hundred animals, close to two hundred and fifty animals or so. If you extrapolate what they would have had at the end of ten years, it would have been about nine hundred animals.
And the reason why is that deer have what’s called, and this is what we found out through this, age stage reproduction. Meaning that a yearling, so a one-year-old doe, can have after she’s a year and she come becomes mature, can have one doe. A two-year-old doe, if the conditions are good enough, can have two does.
A three year old deer, three year old doe can have up to three fawns if there’s enough food on the ground. So their body is being regulated
or their their reproduction is being regulated for the amount of food that they can consume within the area that they reside. Right? So
MyRye.com (08:18)
Yeah. Yep.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (08:19)
if you have no pressure and an abundance of food, then you’re you have a a massive curve to to that growth in the population. So this is what they found out during the study. But they didn’t just take it, we did the study once, that’s it. They did it again in nineteen seventy four and had almost the exact same results a as they did the first time they did this. So you’re talking about going from eight animals up to nine hundred in the course of ten years.
so without any predation or anything like that, you’re gonna have an exponential growth within that community. Now why you’re there like people are gonna say, well, why does that matter for Rye? Because this is what is likely happening and I don’t I can’t say a hundred percent, but I’m pretty convinced that the areas that we flew over, we flew over in the middle of the day.
Why? Because that’s where they should be bedding during the middle of the day. We I believe, and there are others, and Dr. Bagley Miller thinks it’s reasonable and the DEC thinks it’s reasonable and the county thinks it’s reasonable that this is what’s occurring. That you have a population of Rye that’s a patchwork of properties, and because of the traffic pattern that occurs in Rye,
especially during the school year, you’re seeing Rye wake up around six o’clock in the morning and these animals are going to the safe places that they have to avoid human contact. So they’re going into these wooded areas to bed down.
They’re going out at night, browsing their way in the wooded area. So they’re eating their way out, they’re eating their way in, and they’re coming out into the communities eating the landscaping that we’re providing. And we’re providing that landscaping. Not only we’re providing it once, we’re doing it every year. And they keep coming back for more and more and more. Right. So every night I have does in my front yard,
in in the middle of the night, you know, up till about five thirty and then they disappear. So that’s what it’s likely happening. I can’t say that every deer is doing this, nor can I say it’s a hundred percent happening, but this is what the pattern seems to be.
So with that, what the issue could be that we don’t know and that’s why we’re we’re gonna test, and which is number two, is do a forest health study, right? Pillar one, identify the the density of the herd. Pillar two, do a forest health study, understand and use the forest health study as a bellwether of what’s happening. is the herd going in and impacting the ecosystem of the forest around Rye.
And the answer is yes or no, and or somewhere in between, and that’s what we’ve hired Dr. Begley-Miller to to assess. She will be working through August and she will have a report to us by some point in September that will say, This is what’s happening in your forest, or there’s not an issue. And that’s what we’re waiting for.
Pillar three is a little more anecdotal and that’s what they call some call a conflict metric I like to call it a contact metric and the general purpose is like this is your car crashes this is your are is there a a tick is there a lot of Lyme disease in the area are the people’s gardens getting chewed up
So what this is trying to attempt to do is say, let’s say there’s a hundred deer in Rye, right? Just throwing out a number. Do the people in the community feel that there’s a hundred deer in Rye? Or do they feel that there’s two hundred deer in rye? Or do they feel that there’s thirty deer in Rye?
So when we first started, we went out and I went out and I asked a whole bunch of people, how many deer do you see? How many deer do you think and I asked about specific properties. Right? I asked about the Marshlands I asked about the Nature Center, I asked about about Edith Reed, I asked about down by Glen Oaks, I asked about over in Rye Gardens and we you know, all over Milton Point, up by Kirby and from the areas that we surveyed, now we we didn’t get all of these you know, all these areas on drones, but of the ones that we did, the majority of the areas were spot on to what was actually calculated.
So the citizens were actually saying, hey, this is how many deer we have, and they were it they were pretty close to what was actual the reality. Some were under, some were over, but generally it was within the realm of the anecdotal experience.
MyRye.com (13:01)
Well I just explained perfectly and that’s why I kinda let you talk because you really outlined the pillars and the process. So I’ve got a couple of follow ups on on everything you just said.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (13:10)
Sure.
MyRye.com (13:11)
You threw up the number one ninety one, was that just an arbitrary number or did was the count really one ninety one?
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (13:15)
That was a hundred ninety one. So we posted so we have so our big emphasis at our last meeting is that we’re posting documents for the community and I encourage the entire community to go to the City of Rye engage platform and look at the deer management site. Leave messages there, tell us your experience with deer. tell us anything if you have an idea, put it up there. I read it.
and the committee reads it and we will discuss it either offline or online in the meeting. but we’re also posting information for people. What we want to make sure that the citizens of Rye have is the information that’s relevant. ‘Cause there’s a lot of let’s call it, you know, information that people are getting from certain websites and it’s either out of date or it’s not relevant or it’s
and I’ll give you an example. I’ve been quoted cited the same statistics from a bow hunting study that was done in nineteen ninety six was a ten year study and it’s like comparing from from that time period to today, it’s like the equipment has changed so much that it’s like comparing a Model A Ford to a Ferrari.
MyRye.com (14:34)
Okay. Yeah. Right.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (14:34)
it’s just not even in the same it’s not even the same conversation. And the newer studies, so that study cited fifty percent yeah, fifty percent wounding rate, meaning an archer hits an
MyRye.com (14:45)
Yeah.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (14:46)
animal, it gets wounded and they don’t recover it. That there have been studies in New York that say it’s about seven percent. There are other ones that the agreed upon is about ten percent. and the majority of those animals will survive those wounds because of where they’re hit. But I don’t wanna get into all that.
MyRye.com (15:02)
Yeah, the road. all right, the DEC that’s the Department of Environmental Conservation, that’s the regulatory authority that whatever the city of Rye decides they have to approve, ultimately they are the regulatory authority. Yeah.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (15:12)
Well for certain things. So there’s certain things that the the DEC can approve. so the DEC has told us, on the non-lethal side, that sterilization is not going to happen for the city of Rye unless we’re attached to a scientific study and there’s something unique about the biology of the deer that is trying to be understood.
and there is a some sort of other culling type activity that’s going along alongside it.
So sterilization is not going to happen for the city of Rye, and that’s from the DEC. That’s not the committee deciding that. That’s the DEC saying it’s just not gonna happen, guys. the other one is relocation is one that that people have talked about. So relocating animals
is illegal in the state of New York. You can’t pick up a bunch of deer from Rye and then go drop them off in Lake George. I don’t think the people in Lake George would like that so much. But at the same point, it’s it’s not legal or possible to do that.
MyRye.com (16:15)
Well that that’s great to know ’cause that’s what a lot of people think. Just let’s move the deer. Well you can’t do that.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (16:20)
So it’s just not possible. then on the other side there’s what’s known as a D MAP So that is a it’s a deer management access permit. So that would be like running a managed hunting program on certain properties and that’s what the county generally runs. and
I don’t see that as a great option, and that Is also approved by the county and you have to have meet certain criteria and you have to articulate why you want it. it’s not just, hey county, we want this tag, please get it, you know, this permit, please give it to us. Or hey state, DEC. It is this is what the issue is, this is why it’s an issue, this is what we’re gonna do about it, this is how we’re gonna measure success. it’s a well thought out document that the DEC.
has issued guidance on how to actually do this and we’re going to follow that and have been in contact with the DEC to make sure that if we do go down that road, which we haven’t, I’m going to say this again, we haven’t decided anything. If we go down this road, we have to do it and get it approved by the DEC and it has to conform to the methodology that the state of New York wants.
MyRye.com (17:33)
And I would imagine that the council would then have some kind of public hearing on what the recommendations are and before they make decisions on something like this. Okay. Okay.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (17:41)
I would assume, but we’re not there yet, right? So we we’ve we’ve kinda taken the approach that do we have a problem and then we’ll come up with a solution.
MyRye.com (17:50)
Okay. you mentioned Lyme disease. Okay.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (17:53)
another there’s another one that state has to do and that’s a deer damage permit and that gives more flexibility and all that kind of stuff. But it’s basically it’s for lack of a better term culling and and they would have to approve that as well. But that’s even a little more rigorous than a D MAP application.
MyRye.com (18:11)
So Lyme disease, that’s tracked by the county, correct? The health department from the county?
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (18:15)
Correct.
But so here’s the the tricky thing about Lyme disease. It’s very complicated. So deer do not catch or transmit Lyme disease. They have a protein in their blood.
that stops Lyme disease. So if someone says to you, the deer all have Lyme disease, that’s just not accurate. they get it from basically a field mouse or something along that line. Why deer why the black legged tick is called deer ticks is because the black legged tick will bite a a mouse or something and then they will get themselves on to a deer and the female needs a big blood meal in order for her to lay her eggs. And the deer are the best in the woods for to for them to have enough blood in order for them to reproduce. So that’s why there is. Now there’s controversy on Lyme disease whether it can be managed by reducing the herd.
So there in Stamford, Connecticut, which is not far from us, there was the ability for them to greatly reduce the tick population through the management of deer. I have my doubts that we would be able to do that in Rye for several reasons. One of them is that we don’t have a closed system, meaning that replacement deer can come in from a whole bunch of places. The other thing is that in order for them to get down to manage the deer to a level where the ticks started dying off, you would have to get to a deer density of about 15 deer per square mile. So you’re talking about a massive reduction in deer and I just don’t see that as as being viable as a solution to to manage ticks. I don’t think that’s going to be very palatable. but it is it possible?
Yes. do I think it’s reality for Rye? Probably not, but i it it is possible. So if someone says that
MyRye.com (20:11)
Okay.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (20:12)
it can be done, it can be, but I don’t know that it can be done in Rye.
MyRye.com (20:16)
And you mentioned kind of the daytime where they kind of they they look to hide out. And we’ve got plenty of places for them to hide out, in the Nature Center, all the county properties, correct? So during the day we may not confront them, but later in the evening when they do come out, that’s when people confront them.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (20:30)
correct. And so I know that there are certain areas like Milton Point, they lounge out in people’s backyards. in down in Rye Gardens on Colby they’ve been spotted lounging or Moorhead they’ve been lounging out in people’s backyards. And there are other areas that, you know, like Midland towards by Midland School, you just don’t see a lot of deer because of the traffic and the and the size of the yards and the access to the yards and etc. But you know, in areas like mine with my house which is by Glen Oaks
We have deer all the time. We’ve had unsolicited emails coming in from what are six residents. To be fair, you know, four of them were married couples. So is that two or four? I mean however you want to slice it. But you know, unsolicited concern that we weren’t flying drones over their neighborhood and they didn’t want to be left out of any potential solution.
that would be taken. And the answer to that is that we we have to do what’s best for Rye holistically and not one neighborhood over another etc etc.
MyRye.com (21:40)
Right.
I would say I’m in the Indian Village area, it’s the same two or three deer we see all the time, right? So I wouldn’t count that three different ones each day. It’s usually the mother and the and the baby and sometimes another one. Is that so it could be the same just moving around, up and down the brook?
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (21:55)
No, so it could be, but when we did the the drone survey, what we did was we did it in over the course of two days. And so based on where we were doing it, how we were flying it, the length of flights and the flight pattern, I mean, could there be double counts in there? Sure. however
We also didn’t count a whole bunch of areas and we probably missed some based on, you know, tree coverage, you know, bamboo is always ever present, and they do like to hide out in it. So it’s could could it be the same deer running up and down in Indian Village For sure. but I can tell you from my front yard it’s different groups coming in.
MyRye.com (22:36)
Okay.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (22:37)
because you’ll you’ll see two
at nine o’clock at night and then there’ll be three and sometimes you can tell the does apart and sometimes you have antler deer in there. So it is definitely a different bunch at my house.
MyRye.com (22:49)
Yeah, guess I’m referring
to the conflict ratio though. I would confront really the same one, so you wouldn’t be saying it’s different deer
all right, this has been excellent by the way. So thanks for for all of your insights. I mean, so where do we go from here? You guys are doing your research, you have your approach, you’ve got your three pillars, you’ve got the doctor doing the drone survey. what are some of the next steps over the next couple of months into the end of the year that people can expect the process to lay out?
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (23:14)
so I would
think that we should have a report from Dr. Miller by some point in September. we as a committee we’ve started trying to think about what happens if there is an overabundance of deer. I specifically am focused on trying to figure out a non-lethal solution. I’m trying to make sure that my confirmation bias as a hunter does not sway me in in one direction or another. So I’m thinking long and hard of how do we deal with this patchwork of land to come up with a solution.
And that being said, I think that any solution that we have, whether it is lethal or non-lethal, would have to be specific to Rye. We cannot mimic what other communities have done, because in Lower Westchester, right? So the the three big ones, right, are you have Teatown, you have you have the woods over in Irvington and you have Dobbs Ferry.
all of those are big long swaths of of land, and those do not represent the same
challenges that we’re going to face when we come to a design of an approach if there’s a decision that there is an overabundance of deer. Which again I’m going to state for everybody listening, we don’t know that there’s an overabundance of deer. We’re gonna wait to let the data show us and tell us what the actual impact is. and we would like to hear from you if you’re having conflict issues with animals or contact issues with animals.
Post it on to engage, let us know. we’re happy to understand what’s going on in the community. Correct. It’s
MyRye.com (24:47)
And that’s on the City of Rye website. Okay.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (24:50)
there’s also the repository of the documents that are that are fundamental to what we’re doing. Some of those are state ones. There’s the Birdsall report that was done a few years ago there’s
a bunch of different documents and we have a process set up that Bryan Murtagh on the committee if I want to propose that the red oak study get posted to the website, Brian will review it and he will determine if it’s fit to go to the rest of the committee to vote on and then we will vote to determine if it goes up onto the website. So it’s we’re we’re making sure that we’re putting up relevant information for the community
Yeah.
MyRye.com (25:29)
I saw
that. You have your meetings on YouTube so you can watch the meetings. You also have transparency of documentation of what you guys are looking at that’s posted for the public. So really the the threshold question ultimately would be if we have a problem, do do we look for a lethal or non-lethal solution?
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (25:44)
Well, we’re gonna look for both.
MyRye.com (25:46)
Okay.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (25:47)
and then we’re we’re and then we’re gonna make a recommendation as to which of those are more appropriate. and some of it going to depend on h what the damage is and what the everything is dependent on Dr. Begley Miller’s
MyRye.com (26:01)
Right. Okay.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (26:01)
report. Like we can’t
say that there’s a problem, not a problem, or we’re somewhere in between without knowing what what the actual science says.
MyRye.com (26:10)
So the takeaway for a resident is if you see something, go to the engage site on city and and post what you what happened so you guys get all the information that you need. but what about if they if they confront a deer or are there steps that they should take for their own properties? I mean, what are the recommendations or practical
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (26:27)
someone asked me this question at the last committee meeting. if you’re concerned with deer eating your so they just hammered my hydrangeas and they’ve destroyed my hostas already. you can get deer repellent on you you can get the the temporary fencing as long as the city doesn’t, you know, tell you you can’t. you can get deer repellent, spray your bushes and stuff.
certain certain flowers deer don’t like right like I believe marigolds is one of them so if you have a vegetable garden plant marigolds around it I also believe keeps away bunnies but in the end that’s that’s about it that you can do if you’re looking for something another type of solution
I can’t really point you in a direction as to to how to get that.
MyRye.com (27:13)
Okay.
before we jump to our lightning round, I do want to remind the audience if you have a topic or person that you would like to hear on the MyRye dot com podcast, Conversations with Doug French, just email me at French at My Rye dot com or just let me know around town. So the Ryan, we move to just a lightning round, just one word, short answer.
and then then we’ll let you go. This has been incredibly
insightful in terms of your wealth of knowledge in the committee too. I watched the the YouTube meeting. It looks like you guys are really rolling up your sleeves and in and getting your arms around it. So what’s the most surprising fact about deer in Rye?
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (27:45)
This isn’t very lightning. So let’s see.
MyRye.com (27:48)
Silence is good, you’re thinking.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (27:50)
knowledge. It for me it’s the amount of knowledge I’ve gained by this process. So not really a one word answer, but sorry.
MyRye.com (27:57)
Right, what’s the biggest challenge
that you your committee is facing?
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (27:59)
I think it’s knowledge. Towards the community to make sure that they’re getting all the knowledge they need instead of people reading headlines and then making assumptions and not actually understanding what is being said.
MyRye.com (28:14)
I know we’re different than other towns, but have there been solutions that have worked in other towns that you’re aware of?
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (28:20)
Well yeah, so Irvington is so Irvington and Cayuga New York, which is up by Cornell.
they’ve had different methods. I don’t like the method that Cayuga is currently doing. I don’t find it morally appropriate where they’re doing what’s called a dart and destroy. So the police are going around darting the animals and then injecting them with saline solution I find and then they’re just throwing the animals away basically. So to me that’s that’s horrific. Like it’s a waste of of an animal and that’s the hunter in me coming out
MyRye.com (28:57)
Right.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (28:59)
and then Irvington has hired a guy by the last name Kelley who apparently is a very good bow hunter and he basically has a couple people and they’re they’ve been able to reduce their deer density from when they started up from 141 and over the course of two years they’ve got it down to o about a hundred and nineteen or so. So they’ve they’ve had success there, but again, I don’t know if that that’s really viable for our situation because he’s just using his own tags. and
MyRye.com (29:32)
Right.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (29:33)
and because we’re located where we are, he basically has unlimited doe tags that he can use to to reduce that herd.
MyRye.com (29:43)
And then What if somebody wants to get involved, the resident wants to get involved? Not necessarily just reporting back what they saw, but they they’d like to learn more about the committee and help is how how should they get involved?
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (29:52)
Sure, I mean I they can come to a committee meeting. Our next one will be on Zoom. we have a session where or part of the the meeting is where the community can give us their opinion. and you know, we will listen to it. if they want to engage further, I’m always available to talk. and if they have specific
concerns or questions, I’m happy to try and help someone. I don’t have all the answers. right now I don’t have any answers, unfortunately.
MyRye.com (30:21)
Right, right, right.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (30:22)
I think what we’re trying to do is right we’re still in gathering data and then once we have that then we can start thinking about what are we gonna do because we just don’t know.
MyRye.com (30:33)
All right,
and and do you have a recommendation for a topic or a guest for this podcast? Does not have to be deer related.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (30:39)
I would have you talk to Steve Miller, in town, who runs a business where he actually helps kids use athletic leverage to get into school or get people to him and Adam Kessner are partners in that business. and I think it’s really fascinating. just having gone through this with my son,
And seeing, you know, kind of what he’s gone through, I think it would be very informative and interesting
MyRye.com (31:06)
Good idea.
Okay. any final thoughts for the listeners about the Deer Management Committee?
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (31:10)
I think that the the thing is that I want everybody to know is that we what we did when we set out, I actually went on a a conference for the Natural Areas Association where I saw Dr. Kalisz and Dr. Bernd Blossey and heard from other states
equivalent to the DEC about deer management. I had Dr. Kalisz Dr. Blossey come to our committee and kind of lay out what
deer management looked like. we spoke to the county, we spoke, we had the DEC come in, we asked them what they needed to see or what they thought was the orthodoxy and doing all of this stuff, and then we’re following that. So it’s not that we’re making up stuff as we go, and it’s just like, hey, we decide we’re gonna fly a a drone. That’s not what’s happening here. We’re following what the standard methodology is and the specific question
I asked everyone that came and spoke to us or PhD, even the county, is there real hard data or is it squishy? Because I don’t understand how looking at plants can be hard data. and you know, they all came back and said, No, this is hard data.
So I’ve learned a lot about garlic mustard root and trillium and all sorts of different plants that I didn’t even know existed previously. so what we’re trying to do is we’re taking that and then we’re going to apply it and use the science to kind of determine, A do we have a problem and then we have to figure out what is the best solution for the city.
and I’m not convinced on anything. I will say that the one thing that I did have turned on me or or flipped on me through this process was that in Dr. Blossey’s red oak study, he found after they sterilized ninety percent of the herd in up in Cornell
Or they had recreational hunting, meaning a guy like me goes out in the woods and is hunting. There was no impact on the birth rate
MyRye.com (33:13)
Wow.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (33:14)
of the herd by either of those things
MyRye.com (33:16)
Either
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (33:16)
solutions had zero had negligible impact because there’s always replacement deer and it just isn’t enough for that to happen.
MyRye.com (33:25)
Well that’s a great stat end on.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (33:27)
the fact that we can’t do sterilization, that’s one thing, but the recreational
MyRye.com (33:31)
Yeah.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (33:31)
hunting thing alone is not
MyRye.com (33:33)
Right.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (33:34)
going to be a viable solution. Nor does it make sense for Rye based, on city property.
MyRye.com (33:39)
Yeah. Well Ryan, I I can’t thank you enough for your insights and your service to the community and leading this process. Seems like you guys are well organized and you’re taking a very methodical approach. so thank you very much.
Again, listeners can go to the engage site on the on the city site to post information or to reach out to the committee. If you are interested in this episode, you find the full transcript on MyRye.com along with local news and other information at MyRye.com If you enjoyed this episode, please give it a thumbs up or comment and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. So thank you all for listening. And that concludes the MyRye.com podcast Conversations with Doug French. Thanks again Ryan
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Chair, Rye Deer Management Committee (34:19)
Thank you.
