by Barry Kent MacKay, Director
Late in February Liz White and I
travelled to Kimberley, British Columbia, population 7600 (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberley,_British_Columbia). Liz and I were there to monitor a mule deer
relocation project, thanks to support
from Born Free USA, Zoocheck and Animal Alliance of Canada. Animal Alliance
had contributed $10,000 to a project that involved moving mule deer out of
town to carefully chosen distant habitats.
Those locations were chosen to maximize the chances the deer would have
to survive. The money Animal Alliance
donated to the project bought collars equipped with radio-telemetry devices
that report the location of the deer via a transmission to a satellite every 13
hours. They are designed to eventually
fall off but would provide enough information to allow the scientists to
determine how successful the process was in terms of survival of the deer.
Lest you think it odd that animal
protection organizations such as ours would have even minimal involvement in
such a thing let me assure you it was to provide part of an alternative to the
current deer culling where deer are captured in “clover traps” and killed by a
bolt gun. Earlier this year someone
captured this process during a secretly conducted cull in the nearby town of Cranbrook. The BC Deer Protection society, (http://www.bcdeer.org/), of which both Liz
and I are directors, posted the footage online.
Mule deer inhabit various towns and
small cities that are built in close proximity to vast forests and the animals
make use of both urban and wilderness habitats.
So they are more likely to come into direct contact with residents and
given that mule deer are not as inclined to flee humans as are many other
larger wildlife species, conflicts arise.
Often these conflicts involve dogs, many of whom are off-leash. In the spring does will defend their fawns,
occasionally escalating the conflict.
Other complaints include impacts on flower gardens, deer feces on the
ground and the threat of deer being hit by cars or other vehicles.
A handsome animal, yes, but one that
“does not belong” in town, as we have so often heard.
We heard that town life for deer is
fraught with difficulty. They have to
navigate fences and traffic and avoid people who don’t like them. Of course those who advocate this point of
view fail to acknowledge, or understate that, in the wild deer are hunted in
the fall. They have to avoid
predators. They are in constant search
for food, particularly through difficult winters and droughts. But we also heard such people, apparently
unaware of their own contradictions, that the in-town deer were fat and healthy
and bore more young than their wilderness counterparts. All the deer that we saw in Kimberley certainly looked healthy, fat and
sleek and since they are nowhere far from wooded forests they obviously chose
to be there.
In fact, residents who closely observed
them assured us that the deer move freely from what we’d think of as classic
deer habitat, the mountain forests and fields that border and penetrate the
town borders, and the residential areas.
Furthermore many folks love to have them around. Certainly the tourists enjoy seeing such
magnificent wildlife up close.
And so a team was assembled and with
consummate skill managed to catch some twenty deer in Kimberley and nearby Marysville, mostly at
the edge of residential areas, with a shooter firing darts into them, and then
following the animal until, minutes later, they became drowsy, and then fell
into a deep sleep. Once unconscious the
deer were examined for health, ticks, age, and sex (does were preferentially
selected, and if they were with last year’s young an effort was made to get
both, although the odd buck without antlers was also captured) and placed in a
trailer, awakened with an antidote and given a calming tranquilizer. Eventually the deer were driven to a carefully
chosen release site far away from town sites.
Only one out of this original twenty died during this process, probably
asphyxiating from recently ingested food.
The risk of that happening is why doctors, and veterinarians, order
fasting for patients planning to have a general anaesthetic. At least she was unconscious when she died
and did not suffer. If it had been the
usual lethal cull all 20 animals would have died a brutally applied death.
After we left the team moved north to
another town, and as I write this, another deer was found killed by a
cougar. Remember, though, that most
animals were not radio-collared so results are very preliminary.
But we saw what we were hoping to
achieve, at least for now. Both lethal
culling and translocation (and I’d add fertility control) are unlikely to do
much, if anything, to ultimately resolve concerns of people not wanting the
deer in town, but they serve a political function by showing complainers (the
only ones politicians heed) that “something is being done”. When the relocation project for Kimberley was completed,
Liz and I, later joined by a local friend who knew the area well, drove to the
various sites where deer had been taken and there seemed to be as many as
always. More deer move in to take the
places of those removed. Reduced
competition for resources means enhanced survivability and fecundity for those
who remain, in town and in adjoining woodlands, something called the “rebound
effect” or “compensatory mortality”.
But it is a step taken away from simply
killing the animals.
The issue is complex. Kimberley
is showing an extremely progressive attitude by implementing the kinds of
actions that reduce the attractiveness of the town to deer. These include volunteers picking up apples
fallen from trees; leash laws enforced for dogs in conjunction with public
education; no edible garbage made available overnight; encouraging deer fencing
and planting of flowers, trees and shrubs less or not attractive to deer as
food and a stop to feeding deer. The
decidedly lower number of deer in town is a testimony to the effectiveness of
these methods, although detractors claim it was a major cull of about 100 deer
some years ago that did the trick. I beg
to differ simply because other communities that implemented lethal culls but
did not take the steps Kimberley
has taken to keep deer numbers down actually saw more, not fewer, deer after
the killing.
And we were pleased to encounter many
local people who assured us that whatever their views on deer in town, they
were happier that they were not being killed.
One of the biggest downsides to the lethal culling, in my opinion, was
how divisive it is within the community.
Kimberley’s city council is, to its
credit, open and transparent (in contrast to neighboring Cranbrook) and is actively seeking an
intelligent and compassionate solution to human/deer interactions.
