Short Hills Park In Niagara, Ontario Is An ‘Oasis Of Nature’ That Should Not Be Invaded By Hunters

• Ministry of Natural Resources Claim That Deer Must Be Hunted Due To Over Population Has No Merit

A Special to Niagara At Large by Barry Kent MacKay, a senior program associate in Canada for the animal advocacy group Born Free U.S.A.

November 2015 – In 1986 I was told that deer were poised to starve at the Peterborough Crown Game Preserve, because of “overpopulation”, if hunters were not allowed in to kill them.

Robin Zavitz, whose family home borders Short Hills Provincial Park in Niagara, Ontario, kneels by a deer that fell dead on her property after being shot by a hunter’s arrow in the park during an Ontario government sanctioned deer hunt in the park two years ago. The hunt is on again this November 2015. File photo courtesy of Zavitz family.

Local residents had asked me to help them, and we were successful in stopping the hunt, but I worried – what if the hunters were right?   We are still waiting, many deer generations later, for that predicted starvation to happen.

My own research showed, then as now, that an increased number of deer will starve when winter conditions are particularly severe over an extended period of time, but will do so whether the population has been hunted or not.

Whatever the reasons the hunters at Short Hills Provincial Park have for killing deer, including fawns and lactating females with dependent young, they should not claim to be doing so in to prevent “overpopulation”.  When deer are abundant one sees distinct “browse lines”, created by the deer eating most of the vegetation up to the level they can eat.  I toured the entire park some weeks ago, and saw no such browse lines.  Nor is there any indication that the deer are underweight, another indication of the number of deer being greater than the food available can sustain. It was stated in (an article by supporters of the hunt and posted on Niagara At Large this November 14^th) that “disease in the herd can abound when deer are in such close proximity to each other” but in fact, as every expert will tell you, in winter deer “yard” together, in close proximity, while reducing metabolic demands.  This is normal behaviour, and has evolved through millennia.

The article states that this unnamed “disease” has “potential for harmful contact with nearby human communities”.  Really?   There has been no trace of anyone suffering from any “harmful contact” from the deer.

Even Lyme disease, often blamed on deer, is most likely to be spread by mice of the genus, Peromyscus, which are ubiquitous, while the deer can act as a “sink” from which it spreads very poorly to humans or companion animals, all of which is academic given the absence of the ticks, tumours and disease from the deer killed during the hunt who were examined by NMRF biologists.

I have looked at the list of rare, threatened or endangered species of fauna and flora in Short Hills, and can find none that have not co-evolved with deer, or that are at any risk from the presence of the deer.  Deer are often blamed for enhancing the advancement of “invasive species” such as garlic mustard, including the deer in Short Hills.

One of the signs protest groups erected outside Short Hills Park during a previous hunt.

Garlic mustard and other such common non-native species are so ubiquitous in our environments that it defies common sense to suggest that deer are to blame.   The idea that Short Hills Provincial Park could reflect a pristine Carolinian ecosystem when surrounded by farms, vineyards, housing developments, industry and so on is laughable.  Healthy ecosystems include deer and have so for 6000 years.  Deer populations change with the dynamics of the environment – a natural and healthy ecological process.

The hunt is subsidized by local tax payers, as is the park itself, but they are denied entry.  Yes, the hunters have treaty rights, but residents have rights too, including the right to protest.

The deer have no rights, but at the very least what is said about them should be truthful, and based on science, not specious rationale.   Population size is a result of the carrying capacity of the environment inhabited, and it will vary through time, but by no scientifically demonstrable method can the deer of Short Hills Provincial Park be called “overpopulated”.

If not for the hunters, for others, the deer and the park itself present an oasis of nature in a world otherwise usurped by human activity, a place of peace, where natural activities can unfold before our eyes in the form, perhaps, of leaf-filtered sunlight gleaming on the flanks of a doe and her fawn in a wooded glade, briefly sharing our world, and us sharing theirs.

They can and are killed, in the thousands, legally and illegally, across the land, and this is one small, once peaceful place where one would have hoped they could find sanction from the relentlessly destructive force of human activity, one place for the deer, the other wildlife, and those of us who want to peacefully walk among them.

Barry Kent MacKay lives in the Greater Toronto Area and is a naturalist, artist and long-time nature writer who also serves as a senior program associate in Canada for the animal advocacy group Born Free U.S.A. (formerly the Animal Protection Institute.

He is also a founding director of Zoocheck-Canada; a founding director of the Animal Alliance of Canada; a founding member of Species Survival Network, a member and former executive officer of the Toronto Ornithological Club; a member and former director of the Federation of Ontario Naturalists; a former director of the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies; and a former director of the Toronto Humane Society.

For more information on Barry Kent MacKay, visit his website at – http://barrykentmackay.ca/ .

For more information on Born Free U.S.A, visit – http://www.bornfreeusa.org/

To read the article, referred to by Mr. MacKay in his piece and  submitted to Niagara At Large November 14^th ,and featured under the heading –  ‘Native Peoples Ask For Peace, Understanding And Respect For Treaty Rights During Short Hills Deer Hunt’ – click on – https://niagaraatlarge.com/2015/11/14/native-peoples-ask-for-peace-understanding-and-respect-for-treaty-rights-during-short-hills-deer-hunt/ .

Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary for and from the greater bi-national Niagara region.

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