On Feb. 14, Elkford council narrowly decided against a deer cull, earning praise from the Animal Alliance of Canada but a survey shows the town is deeply divided on the issue.
Elkford Mayor Dean McKerracher said the motion to cull the community’s urban deer population was defeated four votes to three.
“It was a tough decision but at the end of the day, for peace in the community, I think it was a good decision,” he said. “I think it’s a relief for everybody.”
Elkford was offered $10,000 from the B.C. Government in December 2016 from the Provincial Urban Deer Cost-Share Program to cull up to 50 mule deer.
McKerracher said a factor in the decision not to pursue a cull was the town's Urban Wildlife Management Advisory Committee’s recommendation to wait until the results of a translocation project are released this year.
“If the committee would have gone the other way, we most likely would have gone forward with the cull,” he said.
The translocation project saw 60 deer relocated from Cranbrook, Kimberley, Invermere and Elkford in February and March of 2015. Twenty-nine of the deer were fitted with radio collars to allow monitoring of their movements and survival rates.
Council's decision not to cull was widely applauded by conservation groups across the country.
“We’re receiving emails from as far as Ontario thanking us for not doing it,” said McKerracher. “It’s crazy.”
The Animal Alliance of Canada contributed $10,000 to the mule deer relocation project and has requested that the radio collars purchased with the funds be used only for Elkford and Kimberley because the two communities had not culled deer that year and Elkford has only ever conducted one cull.
“We wrote to council prior to the vote stating our interest in working together to try non-lethal resolutions," said Liz White, Director, Animal Alliance of Canada, in a statement. “We hope council will accept our offer.”
Council's decision not to cull supports the municipality's website statement that “Elkford remains a place where nature prevails and humanity borrows a bit of space…'Wilderness' remains core to what the community is and wants to be,” she continued.
Elkford’s 2017 Deer Survey shows the community is deeply divided on the issue. Of the 481 respondents, 56 per cent indicated some level of concern with the deer population, 46 per cent were looking for a decrease in the population and 60 per cent said they were concerned about deer aggression.
District CAO Curtis Helgesen said council discussed pursuing alternative means to manage the deer population such as hazing, a process where the animal is harassed – usually with trained dogs - to such an extent that it decides to leave town and move on.
The practice is illegal in B.C. but the District is hoping to move forward with a pilot project if it gets permission.
“Council and the [Urban Wildlife Management Advisory Committee] will want to see if that’s going to be a legal option that the province will allow,” he said.