Fire Island Deer Management Plan Survives Challenge

The National Park Service’s plan to curtail the deer population of New York’s Fire Island complied with the National Environmental Policy Act, the Second Circuit ruled.

The 2015 management plan for white-tailed deer within the Fire Island National Seashore relies primarily on culling and hunting to reduce the deer population.

The Park Service sufficiently considered alternative options before it decided on a combination of direct reduction and fertility control, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said Monday.

The government considered and rejected a non-lethal alternative because it found that fertility control alone would take too long to ...