Certainly feeding wild creatures is unfair to them, as they need to live as what they are – foraging for food that suits their physiology. (A park ranger in Alaska expressed to me that he is against deer being in urban areas because the diet of garden plants is not natural for them, it is too rich and easy.)
I suppose Oak Bay could make a law requiring the best food to be fenced off – starting with vegetable gardens and proceeding to shrubs and trees.
Though the appearance-oriented NIMBYs might object, deer are in Oak Bay because the food is good and there are few predators that they instinctively recognize. They don’t know about cars, but will of course attack those wolf descendants, locally known as dogs, they see as threatening.
They will act to protect their young, thus may hurt humans who come too close. And people will have to be careful where they walk – in one fiefdom a newspaper delivery person was injured when he ducked through a hedge and surprised a deer.
Deer have powerful, hard hooves and are very agile, turning quickly.
The whole thing continues to be ridiculous. With all the troubled and poor people who need help, why are taxpayers in Oak Bay wasting time on deer?
Just go back a few centuries to when they were what is in vogue again – local food.
Keith Sketchley
Saanich
