Fawns on lawns: Oak Bay still seeks long-term deer management plan
Oak Bay’s immune prevention program has reduced deer numbers in and around the community by 40 percent since it began in 2019.
The Urban Wildlife Stewardship Society (UWSS) continues to analyze data from the third year of the program, aiming for a sustainable future for deer and residents alike. This year’s highlights include the use of deer habitat before and after contraception, the abundance of fawn and adult deer after three years of sterilization, and plans for science-based, long-term, and non-fatal urban deer management.
Alina Fisher, an assistant on the UWSS research team, said contraception, GPS collars and camera traps were used to reduce the population from about 100 adult deer to about 60 between 2019 and 2021.
“I hope to see a sustained reduction in fawns every year,” she said, adding that population numbers for 2021-22 are still being finalized. After the first year, the number dropped to 58 percent of the original population.
“In that time, we’ve seen a tremendous change in the number of fawns being born.” Given their low survival rate, she said, “it’s not like you see a fawn and it equals a deer the next year.”
Today, Fisher sees the program receiving a more positive reception and more insightful questions from the community than when it started. A temporary pause in the program was originally planned to allow researchers to rule out environmental factors that might be contributing to deer population growth, but Fisher said Oak Bay Council decided to keep it going to keep numbers lower and will continue to do so help decide what happens next.
No longer wears the bulkier GPS collars in Oak Bay. “They were big and had battery packs and fell off after three years of use.” Deer collars and tags now come in “every color of the rainbow,” she said, to keep them uniquely identifiable.
Are pink tags mostly non-sterile “control deer” who intentionally did not receive contraception to help UWSS track their movement compared to sterilized females.
Relative to other options, culling is proving largely ineffective, and relocation merely shifts the problem from one community to another, Fisher said. A sudden absence of deer anywhere may cause cows in other areas to fill that space, benefiting from reduced competition for food and even grouping together.
“There is no miracle weapon here, otherwise we would have found it.”
The BCSPCA supports such non-lethal measures as landscape modifications, fences that deer can’t see past, motion-activated lights and sprinklers, and the planting of fragrant, prickly, and poisonous plants like daffodils, lavender, and rhododendrons. It also supports the UWSS program, a spokesman confirmed.
The Department of Forestry stated in 2016 that alternatives to fertility control, such as culling, must be used to achieve faster results, and that sterilization requires capturing, treating and monitoring 70 to 90 percent of females for long-term population changes. The Provincial Urban Deer Operational Cost-Share Program provides up to $100,000 annually to communities developing socially acceptable deer management solutions and will soon allow communities to apply for 2022-23.
In a recent statement to Black Press Media, the department said it continues to work with Oak Bay on the prevention program “on a trial basis before next steps are determined.”
While a long-term deer management plan for Oak Bay is still in the works, Fisher warned the community that resident fawns are getting older and, as a result, more mobile.
“Like most middle school students, they’re not going to make good decisions,” she joked, speaking from her experience as a mom. “Watch out for those silly fawns.”
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