PENTICTON — Deer in Penticton won’t be moving anywhere after all.
Just when Penticton council thought it found a solution to its urban deer problem, it says the provincial government has made the issue unworkable.
Last month, the city revealed plans to capture deer within city limits and transport them out of town to land owned by the Penticton Indian band.
“We explored all the alternatives. This seemed to be a viable alternative. We had the cooperation of the Penticton Indian Band and I thought we had the cooperation of the Ministry of Environment,” says Mayor Garry Litke.
But the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations sent a letter to council last Friday, saying it is concerned with the proposed deer relocation program.
The Ministry listed several concerns, including: The need for public input and an assessment on the number of urban deer that exist within city limits.
It is also worried about the actual location selected for the deer and what the trapping process would look like.
City staff say it would take too much time and money to answer all the ministry’s questions, so council decided to scrap the plan.
“We tried to solve this problem within our jurisdiction. But there seems to be too much impediments and too many obstacles to actually to resolve the problem,” says Litke prior to moving the motion to abandon the proposal.
The mayor says it has now reverted back to leaving individual residents to deal with the deer problem.
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