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Panel puts focus on restoring heritage homes Page A17
SPORTS: Oak Bay senior girls finish third in B.C. /A2 NEWS: Residents group seeks planning input /A3 ARTS: Sketch club brings show to Glenlyon school /A5
OAK BAYNEWS Friday, March 13, 2015
www.oakbaynews.com
Blazing a trail Oak Bay firefighters take part in the 2015 British Columbia Professional Fire Fighters Fallen Fire Fighter Memorial march and ceremony on Belleville Street in front of the provincial legislature building Monday. Don Denton/Black Press
Controversy doesn’t end with deer cull Oak Bay mayor calls pilot project a success Christine van Reeuwyk News Staff
Oak Bay and the Capital Regional District announced Tuesday that the population reduction component of the Deer Management Strategy pilot project was complete. Mayor Nils Jensen called the 16-day cull a success, with 11 deer removed as part of the CRD deer management strategy. “This is a pilot project. It was more about learning whether this could be done in an urban environment and in a mild temperate climate and how it could be
done under those circumstances,” said Jensen. “It wasn’t about fixing a problem with a one-time cull.” The Ministry of Forest Lands and Natural Resource Operations issued Oak Bay a permit to cull up to 25 black-tailed deer. The contractor, Kootenay resident Ron Kerr, whose previous experience includes several population reduction programs in Cranbrook and Kimberley, was trained by provincial wildlife staff in capture and euthanization procedure. Modified clover traps were active on private properties – seven bucks and four does were captured and killed. The B.C. SPCA, which started voicing concern in 2013 over the cull and continued to share concerns publicly, said the results don’t meet the definition of success.
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“To say it’s a success is really misleading. You’re not addressing solutions that you claim to have with urban deer conflicts,” said Sara Dubois, chief scientific officer for B.C. SPCA. “If they were concerned about overpopulation you worry about females. If you are concerned about vehicle areas, you trap around roads. … They have no measures beyond political points here.” B.C. SPCA along with organizations such as DeerSafe Victoria opposed the cull, citing other portions of the deer management plan that they felt hadn’t been addressed. Those include speed reduction, public education and a proper deer count. “We don’t know what the population is,” Dubois said. “From a scientific perspective, no answers have been achieved from these actions.”
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The purpose of the pilot project in Oak Bay was to reduce incidents of deer/ human conflict and as the first in an urban neighbourhood, information was gleaned, Jensen said. “We were, of course, concerned about vandalism and criminal activity which was seen in Kimberley and Cranbrook areas, we were able to show it can be conducted without that,” Jensen said. While the permit allowed Oak Bay to continue the cull up to 25 deer until March 15, Kerr was unavailable. “We could have found someone perhaps locally but it wouldn’t been a training issue and an experience issue,” Jensen said. PLEASE SEE: District says lessons were learned from pilot project, Page A2