Oh deer, what a mistake.
Mayor Bill de Blasio accidentally touted an 89 percent drop in deer-related car crashes around Staten Island so far this year at an unrelated press conference Monday — when in fact there had only been a 31 percent drop, a spokeswoman for City Hall said.
There have been 11 crashes involving deer — a statistic that also includes drivers crashing after swerving to avoid deer — compared to 16 from the same point last year, city officials clarified Wednesday.
De Blasio mistakenly said on Monday that the total number of deer-related crashes last year during the same time period was 63.
He noted the drop coincided with the city's-deer neutering strategy.
"Maybe the deer are not happy about our particular strategic approach," de Blasio previously said. "But that's an example where some of these policies are really working for Staten Island."
Last year, the city started a $2 million effort to neuter male white-tailed deer around Staten Island to potentially reduce their population by 10 to 30 percent.
The city has performed vasectomies on 78 fawns and 642 adults around the borough since it started and will resume the sterilizations in August, a spokesman for the Parks Department said.
The plan also includes other non-lethal methods to deal with deer, including public education campaigns aimed at reducing car crashes and tick-borne illnesses.
An aerial survey of parkland in 2014 found 762 deer on Staten Island — up from just 24 in 2008. The most recent survey in 2016 for the entire borough found only 527 of the animals, the Staten Island Advance reported.
