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Letter: Time for a rethink on Oak Bay’s deer issue

Why is a cougar in Oak Bay (or wherever) more ‘terrifying’ than a deer? After all, they are both ‘natural,’ are they not?

Why is a cougar in Oak Bay (or wherever) more ‘terrifying’ than a deer? After all, they are both ‘natural,’ are they not?

And they were both ‘here’ first?

It has amazed me, over the years, that our chief concern with the deer has been that of damaging our cars -– whereas at least they might be making us drive more carefully.

Ah, but a cougar might mistakenly scoop up a young child, walking home from school: so, tranquilize the cougar and ship it back to the woods.

Will it really take a child’s life to wake us up? The entire community was on red alert for four or five days, and even now we can only ‘assume’ that the one caught was actually the only one.

Perhaps with less (or no?) deer the cougar might be less tempted to come hunting them.

But why kill the deer? Why not tranquilize them all, and ship them all safely back to the woods?

After all, if we can pretend to afford more than a billion dollars for a sewage plant the need for which is hotly contested, why not a few million to ‘save the deer’ (and, perhaps, a child or two)?

Time for a serious rethink.

Alec Allison

 

Oak Bay