Last weekend, at a pot-luck meeting near Hamilton, Ontario, the subject of white-tailed deer arose. Our hostess thought there were too many and was comfortable with the idea that they would be culled, because “some are starving.”
For years now, my colleagues and I have been pondering the reports of deer killed each year at Short Hills Provincial Park, including the results of examinations of carcases brought by hunters to be looked at by biologists. We find no reports of starving or emaciated deer; they are healthy. Among the does, at time of death, some were lactating, meaning they may still have had dependent young. But, they weren’t starving, and I told my hostess if she had evidence to the contrary, I’d like to see it. She didn’t.
I have devoted so much of my time to combatting wildlife culling precisely because it shows so little respect, not only for the animals killed, but for facts; for the actual truth. The terms “overpopulation” and its derivatives are causally bandied about, with little thought as to what is meant by them, let alone how terribly ironic it is for our own species, which is still experiencing unchecked growth and which, to varying degrees in different areas, is showing all the indicators of overpopulation – disease, starvation, mass movement among them – to say there are “too many” of a species that is in good shape, or possibly even in decline.
In decline certainly describes another species of deer – the mule deer – out in British Columbia. There, a number of communities in a mountainous region called the Kootenays, regularly cull mule deer. It is interesting that of the five communities that originally culled mule deer, the City of Kimberley has pushed for relocation over culling. Although relocation is not an ideal solution either, it at least recognizes the results of the B.C. government survey that showed a significant decline in mule deer. The 2011 count showed a mule deer population of between 25,000 and 51,000, but by 2014, it had declined precipitously to between 10,000 and 20,000 – essentially the same number as was estimated again in 2017. Even with such low numbers, two other communities in the Kootenays, Cranbrook and Invermere, still want to kill deer in town.
We have, albeit with some reluctance, supported such translocation in preference to trapping and killing the animals, but our preference is to leave the deer alone while teaching people how to make the urban areas less attractive to them, and how to more safely interact with deer. It seemed to bode ill when a councillor who had essentially opposed the idea of any deer in Kimberley was appointed chair of the deer advisory committee, and Liz White and I said so in a letter to Council. This year’s deer count found only 77 animals in Kimberley.
We were listened to; the advisory committee was disbanded, and Kimberley will neither cull nor translocate any deer this year. As of the time of writing, permits have not been issued to Cranbrook or Invermere, although we’re told they will be. In Kimberley, at least, a rare bit of sanity prevails.
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Barry
