The province is providing up to $100,000 in funding to help local governments and Indigenous communities control the urban deer population.
Funding criteria include addressing human-deer conflict where traditional actions aren’t available, fitting in with a community-based planning process, having support from the governing First Nation or local municipality, providing matching funds, and being scientifically rigorous, among others.
Communities across the province, especially the Interior and on Vancouver Island, have struggled to control the deer population without resorting to culls, which have raised the ire of environmental and animal rights organizations.
In Cranbrook, clover traps used by contractors to trap the deer before they are euthanized have been damaged or destroyed during culls.
Officials in the Kootenays have bemoaned urban deer as the B.C. government’s responsibility.
Three years ago, Cranbrook and three other communities were involved in a translocation study that tracked 47 urban deer captured in the East Kootenay, fitted with GPS collars and released in winter ranges.
The study concluded that some of the animals migrated back to communities, while roughly 50 per cent died after the first year – nearly half of them falling to predators.