Local Landscaper Tackles the Hamptons Bird Flu Problem

“Clearly there needs to be better preparation,” said Dr. Webby. He added that he believes the pathogen is likely to mutate, becoming more infectious to humans; and that he has no idea which agency — local, state or federal (if any) — bears responsibility for managing potential outbreaks.

In a likely outbreak near Cincinnati, chronicled in The Times last December, different agencies haggled over who was responsible for removing 72 dead vultures from a Catholic school’s athletic fields. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife did not agree to help dispose of the carcasses until after township officials complained to a local news station.

The town trustees of Southampton elected to deal with the problem there by hiring Suffolk County Deer Management to cart away the birds. In East Hampton, cleanup landed in the lap of Jim Grimes, a local landscaper who also serves as a trustee for the town. According to Mr. Grimes, the town’s trustees first heard from East Hampton Marine Patrol sometime around Feb. 27.

Almost no one seemed to want to lend a hand to dispose of the bird carcasses, he said.

Certainly not the town board, which has a spotty relationship with the town trustees dating back to colonial times, when East Hampton’s most notable residents were local fishermen and the government was divided, more or less, between the people who managed the beaches and waterways and those who managed other stuff, like the police and taxes.

Of course, that was a time before agencies like the Centers for Disease Control, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior and the National Institutes of Health had been established. It was also a time when infectious disease specialists did not worry about avian flu jumping to various members of the animal kingdom, whether they are Fortune 500 CEOs or their $4,500 goldendoodles.

“The kneejerk reaction of the town board was, ‘We don’t want to touch this,’” Mr. Grimes said.

When The Times spoke by phone on Friday with Patrick Derenze, the public information officer for the town, he assigned the responsibility to the town trustees.