Penticton council voted unanimously to set aside the controlled public hunt option to make way for a cull within city limits. As they move forward though, we sincerely hope that the city follows best practices and conducts with a deer count within the municipal boundaries.
That they haven’t already done so is puzzling. More than six months since former councillor Mike Pearce brought up his notice of motion, Penticton has not attempted to quantify how badly the city is overrun with deer. We have nothing more than anecdotes — some full of hyperbole — upon which to base decisions.
Staff indicate that 42 people have lodged complaints with the City Hall hotline created to record incidences of problem deer. Phoning complainants back to request numbers does not pass muster in gauging the local problem, as residents may well have been describing the same deer.
All the municipalities that have embarked upon deer culls have put in the time and effort to quantify ungulate over-population. Some have as much five years of data on file.
Forests ministry staff outlined the basics of what a deer count should look like: the city is sectioned off, and a grid. On one day, people meet in the early morning and drive along each street in methodical fashion and record any sightings. Those one-day snapshots are collected one day in spring and fall, and the spring numbers always trend higher than later in the year.
A team of volunteers could easily be amassed for a Penticton count, so it is not as though it would be prohibitively expensive.
Action on deer over-population had been sought. But now at the point of taking those actions, Penticton must come up with a number of how many deer call the city home.
Accurate information — and nothing but — should be dictating the actions the city must take today, as well as in years to come.
