July 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 31

concentrations of urban population. " 16 U.S.C. § 459e(a).
Although there were very few
deer on Fire Island before the Seashore was established, the deer
population quickly grew as the
number of people on the island increased. By the 1970s and 1980s,
the deer population was " established " in private residential communities interspersed within the
Seashore. Although deer densities
vary throughout the Seashore, the
deer remain most densely concentrated in the western portion
of the Seashore, likely because of
the easy availability of humangenerated food in these private residential communities.
The explosion of the deer population in the 1970s brought concerns about Lyme disease and the
deer's destruction of the Seashore's
vegetation. As a result, in the
1980s, Seashore staff, along with
academic and agency scientists,
began to study the deer, including
their movements, interactions with
residents, and impact on the Seashore's vegetation.
Because the information gleaned
from those studies demonstrated " the need for a management
plan to address impacts associated with changes in white-tailed
deer abundance, distribution,
and behavior, " NPS initiated the
NEPA planning process in October 2010. The goal of this NEPA
planning process was to " develop
a deer management strategy that
supports protection, preservation,
regeneration, and restoration of
native vegetation and other natural and cultural resources at the
Seashore and reduces undesirable
human-deer interactions in the
Fire Island communities. "

NEPA Scoping Process
To prepare for the development
of the EIS, NPS began a " scoping
process " to determine the issues
the Plan should address. Internal
meetings were held to identify the
" purpose, need, and objectives " of
the Plan. The meetings involved
members of an interdisciplinary
team (IDT), which included NPS
staff from various offices, NPS
consultants, and staff from the
U.S. Geological Survey Patuxent
Wildlife Research Center. The IDT
continued to meet throughout the
NEPA process; its role was to develop the alternatives that the EIS
would evaluate in further detail.
In June 2011, NPS convened a
Science Advisory Team (SAT) of
14 experts to answer technical questions from the IDT. SAT was tasked
with considering how the deer population was affecting natural and
cultural resources and creating social issues, particularly within residential communities, a maritime
forest and a historic area within the
National Seashore. The SAT provided two reports to the IDT, a summary report in December 2011, and
its final recommendations (the SAT
Final Report) in February 2012.
The IDT then conducted a series of
workshops to develop and refine the
range of alternatives that the EIS
would consider for dealing with the
deer problem at the Seashore.

Final EIS Alternatives
This NEPA process culminated
in the issuance of a Final EIS in
December 2015 and a Record of
Decision in April 2016. The EIS
considered four alternative plans to
manage the deer problem at the Seashore. NEPA requires a " no action
alternative " to consider the environ-

mental impacts of retaining the status quo and doing nothing. Among
the four alternatives, the requisite,
no action alternative, Alternative
A, involved the continuation of
" current management actions, policies, and monitoring efforts related
to deer and their effects. " Alternative A was rejected because it did
not further the Plan's objectives as
" no-action would be taken to reduce
deer numbers or effect a change in
conditions that are the basis for the
purpose of and need for action. "
Alternatives B, C and D, the
action alternatives, all contained
certain common elements to manage the adverse effects of the deer
population, including: enhanced
public education and outreach,
fencing, enhanced deer population
and vegetation monitoring, and
coordination with the New York
State Department of Environmental Conservation.
Each action alternative also proposed a Seashore-wide target deer
density of 20 to 25 deer per square
mile. The EIS considered, but dismissed from further analysis, the
use of site-specific target deer densities for different areas within the
Seashore, rather than a Seashorewide target deer density. The methods used to achieve that target
varied among the alternative approaches considered. Alternative B
recommended the use of a fertility
control agent, while Alternatives C
and D used direct reduction methods, such as sharpshooting, capture
and euthanasia, as well as public
deer hunting.
Ultimately, NPS chose a modified version of Alternative D,
which " reduces deer density quickly, providing immediate relief from
the adverse impacts of deer brows-

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