he writer of the letter ‘Unfair to blame mayor’ in the April 8 Oak Bay News makes an interesting point about blaming the mayor for the cull.
It has been proven that culls do not work and there are many non-lethal options including but not limited to speed reduction and enforcement. Given these options, not from a rag-tag bunch of activists but from scientific evidence and the experience of wildlife professionals, the mayor chose to kill. The mayor showed a complete lack of transparency, gave out skewed statistics and made claims to incite fear about deer attacks.
He refused to listen to anyone yet the writer thinks it unfair to blame him. Culling by car is an oft used term in this argument but rather than put traps where the deer vehicle accidents take place, he chose people’s yards.
This cull was not to enhance safety, not to decrease Lyme, which incidentally has been blown out of proportion, but to prove that he could do it. Eleven dead deer have basically become guinea pigs to prove his point. Speed reduction in the high-accident area is something that has been asked repeatedly over the years but ignored. This answers the question “why blame the mayor?”
W.C. Jesse
Oak Bay