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This is another in a series of articles looking at Lyme disease and Block Island.

With the regularity of the waves on Crescent Beach that surge and retreat, rearranging the sands but affecting little change, so the discussion of deer, ticks and Lyme disease advances and recedes, advances and recedes, leaving only the smallest rearrangement of practices and attitudes.

For two decades the discussion has continued, now intense, now subdued. Today there are signs that after a period of quiet, the subject may be coming back into community focus.

The state Department of Environmental Management’s (DEM) surprising proposal to allow bow-and-arrow hunting of deer on state properties on Block Island was a break in traditional thinking, even though it failed — it needed town agreement and the proposal once again sparked a debate about safety.

An ad hoc citizen group is said to be exploring ways to revive public discussion of deer control methods.

The arc of the deer control argument is simple. It has been settled town policy for 15 years that Lyme disease, thus ticks, thus deer, are a hazard to health on Block Island, and to reduce the hazard the number of deer must be reduced — or eliminated.

The DEM’s Division of Fish and Wildlife insists that active hunting would achieve the desired goal, but the island would have to allow more hunters (from the mainland, presumably) to hunt over more land on more days.

Many islanders recoil at the prospect of a flock of mainland hunters tromping over the island’s tight little landscape, heedless of the people and homes about them. They are particularly adamant about no hunting on days when people are out and about — weekends and holidays — which, of course, is when mainland hunters could visit.

Instead of traditional hunting, islanders have several times proposed non-traditional shooting methods to thin the herd, well outside the customary state hunting rules. But the DEM will countenance little alteration of traditional practices.

So the safety argument goes two ways: safety from gunshot accidents, safety from tick bites and Lyme disease. It’s an argument that the community has had with itself for two decades, and the end seems no nearer today.

‘Political pressure’

The story of how deer came to Block Island has often been told, with minor variations as to number and perpetrators. The state version, found in a Division of Fish and Wildlife 2002 document, is that the New Shoreham Town Council asked in 1966 for several pairs of deer in order to provide island hunting and “… it is our belief” that the request was at first denied but then granted in 1967 “due to political pressure.”

“In hindsight, it is evident that a complete assessment of habitat and a feasibility study to assure a mechanism for control was not adequately conducted,” the division’s statement said.

Soon enough, the deer multiplied, as did houses and people. The council, bowing to resident concerns about safety, changed its mind and didn’t want hunting. Conflict followed; by 1985, deer had become such a nuisance to homeowners and their gardens that deer damage permits for hunting became available. A considerable number of deer were killed under the damage permit system: 217 in 1989, 234 in 1990.

But shrubbery damage was just a nuisance; Lyme disease, first identified in 1975, became a serious island concern.

BIRA takes the lead

First to raise concerns about the growing deer herd, and foremost in the discussion ever since, was the Block Island Residents Association (BIRA). In 1989, a committee consisting of Barbara Burak, Frankie Smith and Barbara Powell sent out a survey and received 448 returns, 223 of which reported Lyme disease in the family. As for property damage, 66 percent of the year-round residents and 47 percent of season residents had complaints.

Eighty-five percent of the respondents urged that the deer herd be reduced or eliminated.

“Since the Town Council was instrumental in reintroducing deer to Block Island two decades ago, we strongly feel that the council should now become instrumental in moving them,” the committee wrote.

Council’s response, in due course, was to name a Citizens Advisory Committee on Deer consisting of Dr. Peter Brassard as chair, Frankie Smith, Arthur Rose, Jay Kamm, Derek van Lent, Bill Wilson and the late George Davis.

It reported in May 1993, to a large audience in what was then the school gym, that Lyme disease was a threat to island health and deer “eradication” was the answer. But that bold goal didn’t last past the first paragraph of the report. The committee rejected several methods of herd control as ineffective and concluded, with what now seems an excess of optimism, that “the only method of control” would be open hunting.

But open hunting is the third rail of Block Island public meetings. That night, as on many occasions since, an impassioned discussion about safety erupted.

Referendum: deer lose

Still, the town and state crept toward a broader hunting plan. By 1996, the hunting season lasted 80 days. In the November election of that year, a non-binding referendum was held on a question formulated by BIRA: “Shall the Town Council seek state authorization to drastically reduce the deer on Block Island by the use of safe and controlled hunting or other herd reduction methods?”

The vote was 610 yes, 294 no.

In 1997, the Town Council voted unanimously to reduce the herd to 100 deer and named a second Citizens Advisory Committee on Deer led by George Mellor, who has long been the BIRA’s point person on deer, to lead toward that goal.

In 1999, the council voted 4-1 to eradicate all deer. But if there was a will, there was no way. The deer committee focused on improving the annual kill: more deer tags; tags of successful hunters subsidized first by BIRA, later by the town; scraps of town land opened for hunting. But the effect on the annual kill was modest.

The White Buffalo bid

In 1999, BIRA went on the initiative again. It financed a winter helicopter survey that found only 125 deer, which many thought was surprisingly low.

More significantly, it consulted with Dr. Anthony J. DeNicola of the Connecticut wildlife management firm of White Buffalo, which has successfully managed many campaigns to reduce or eliminate wildlife populations.

DeNicola visited the island, toured the deer habitat, and spoke to a BIRA meeting. Subsequently, he submitted a four-year plan that featured special rifles, night spotlights, baits and lures and shooting from a vehicle — all of which would require special permission or legislation from Providence.

The bottom line: $1,437,925. (Today, DeNicola said this week, that number would be more like $2 million.)

Those who heard DeNicola speak may remember one quote: “It costs a lot of money to get rid of the last two deer.”

Taken aback by the cost, BIRA and the deer committee sought other methods. In 2000, Mellor brought to Town Council two plans: a “bounty” plan that would reward hunters for killing deer, and a plan patterned after an operation in Skidway, Ga., in which hired sharpshooters patrol a gated community at night and shoot from a pickup truck.

Neither method conformed to normal state rules, of course, and the DEM quickly shot them down. Again, it told the town it must open more land and more days for hunting — which the community clearly was not going to do, either.

Legislation shot down

Unable to nudge any change in state hunting law, the council’s next move was to see if it could wrest control of Block Island deer away from the state — specifically, the Division of Fish and Wildlife. Legislation to that effect was introduced in the legislature in 2002, but it didn’t fly far; the National Rifle Association and the DEM squashed it in committee.

The Division of Fish and Wildlife, apparently feeling pressure to do something about Block Island deer, then developed an elaborate plan to reduce the deer population to a target of 10 per square mile. It would mount a “controlled hunt” of antlerless deer for two weeks in November, using their own and federal people, islanders and “proficient” mainland hunters. Of course, islanders would have to open much more land for hunting.

But the plan carried no promise of adequate enforcement by state game wardens — a constant irritant in the state/town relationship. Councilors also noted that the island deer population, which had been estimated at close to 700 back in the 1980s, had by DEM estimates fallen below 230. In effect, they declared victory in deer control and told DEM “thanks but no thanks.”

If council members were satisfied with the deer population level, many islanders were not. In 2005, BIRA reported the results of an island-wide “quality of life” survey; one issue, of course, was deer. Eighty percent of 549 respondents were in favor of reducing or eliminating the herd.

With this support, Mellor, this time speaking just for BIRA (the town advisory committee had faded away), made another pitch to council in 2006: ask legislators to allow “state-of-the-art technology” to reduce the island deer herd. He cited several successful deer reduction or elimination projects in other states.

Councilors, remembering the fate of their previous foray to the legislature on this subject, demurred. “This discussion is going nowhere,” Mellor fumed.

True, but that doesn’t mean the discussion has ended.