I just spent 2 weeks down in the park volunteering with Laskeek Bay Conservation Society doing research with some field biologists about birds. It was super interesting and has inspired me to look into doing a masters about the deer problem they have here. The deer are destroying the forest understory here which impacts the nesting sea birds as well as the other birds who have fewer berries and habitat as a result of all the munching. During our week on the water surveying for black oyster catchers we actually chased a couple of bucks off one small rocky island where it seemed they had been trampling on some oyster catcher and gull eggs.
I am thinking that the ideal long term solution would be to hunt the deer to get the population down to a number that is sustainable. According to what I've heard there are somewhere between 50,000 and 150,000 deer in Haida Gwaii and to get their numbers to a level that would be sustainable for the pre-existing ecosystem would mean taking 10-15,000 out of the system per year. I figure there are so many people looking for "organic" meat, and you can't get much more organic than this. Hunting these deer for meat would lead to fewer and happier deer, which are starving now and seen often eating seaweed on the beach due to the lack of greenery left to eat, and of course lots of happy eaters, not to mention jobs up here which would be helpful given the decline of the fishing industry. The only problem is of course, the law, which does not allow the sale of wild game. So that's what I need to work on :) I am planning on enlisting my brother and his poli-sci degree, but he doesn't know that yet...
