At $10K per deer, critics question cost of Sidney Island eradication plan

A controversial program to eradicate invasive deer from an island on the B.C. coast is facing new criticism, this time over cost.

Parks Canada concluded the first phase in its plan to eliminate the European fallow deer population on Sidney Island this month.

Three marksmen from the U.S. and New Zealand used a helicopter to kill 84 deer between Dec. 1 and Dec. 11.

The work so far has cost more than $800,000, and officials have confirmed that about 20 per cent of the animals killed were native black-tailed deer.

2:13 Deer cull happening on Sidney Island

Parks Canada says the work is necessary to protect the island’s ecosystem, which has been devastated by the invasive population.

Conservationist and co-founder of Pacific Wild Ian McAllister has been monitoring the B.C. government’s ongoing wolf cull program, aimed at protecting threatened caribou populations, and said he sees parallels between the approaches.

“Removing a species to save an entire ecosystem, it just doesn’t work. History tells us it doesn’t work, science tells us it doesn’t work, but government sees it as a solution,” he said. “It’s really a technology driven, quick-fix, knee-jerk reaction to a much more complex ecosystem problem.”

Get breaking National news

For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen.

Sign up for breaking National newsletter Sign Up

By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.

In addition to concerns about the broader technology-driven approach to ecosystem management, McAllister questioned whether taxpayers are getting their money’s worth.

“Is this really going to achieve the desired results on Sidney Island, when we just spent almost a million dollars, over 10,000 per deer … is that sustainable?” he asked. “It’s mind-boggling to think that we have to first hire out a New Zealand based company come to Canada to shoot deer on a tiny little gulf island.”

2:10 Sidney Island deer cull plan draws concern from some residents

McAllister argued the problem could be better managed by locals, who know what they are doing, who could manage the deer population at a fraction of the cost.

That argument echoes what some islanders have previously told Global News. Residents of the largely privately-owned island voted narrowly to support Parks Canada’s eradication program in February, but a vocal group has consistently raised concerns. Opponents say islanders organized more than a decade ago to remove hundreds of deer, and that since then private hunters have managed to effectively keep the population down.

Since 2014, islanders say ground-based hunters have removed more than 1,800 deer on the island, at no cost to taxpayers.

“We’ve had the numbers down at their lowest, judged basically by the hunting activities on the island and by the regrowth of our forests, where we are now having aspen groves growing back again, cedars growing up, arbutus trees actually growing again,” part-time island resident Paul Lalonde told Global News in a November interview.

2:17 Sidney Island deer eradication dividing community

Parks Canada, however, told Global News that the fallow deer have proven capable of breeding quickly and rebounding after previous population declines, and that eradication is the only way to protect the island’s ecosystem.

Gulf Islands National Park Reserve Supt. Kate Humble told Global News that vegetation on the island has not actually shown positive signs of recovery, with few tree seedlings surviving the deer.

“Every time the fallow deer population has been brought down in number, it has rebounded a few years later,” she told Global News in November. “The real objective of this project is the long-term recovery of the forest ecosystem on Sidney Island which has been significantly damaged and degraded due to over-browsing.”

The plan has also secured the backing of the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council, the Tsawout and Pauquachin First Nations.

Parks Canada said Tuesday that the marksmen, Parks Canada and First Nations recovered about 800 kilograms of meat along with hides and other usable materials that were distributed among W̱SÁNEĆ communities.

Officials said they will spend the year working with island residents on a second phase of the project, which will see the island divided by temporary fences, and the remaining deer on the island removed by on-the-ground hunters next fall.