Managers vs Scientists

The important distinction between management and science.

Being involved in the debate over B.C. deer culling isn't new to me. I mounted my first campaign to protect animals in the late 1950s, when people in Quebec were killing protected songbird species with the government looking the other way. I was just a kid, but my letters had the result of stopping the practice and I was hooked on animal protection advocacy. And along the way I've learned a few things. Here is one, and it is very, very important: Wildlife biologists, or scientists, and wildlife managers are two different things. The latter strive to be confused with the former. Many people, including media, politicians and the public, often do so.

Science is a discipline that leads the scientist where the facts lead her. It is the scientist's job to begin without bias, to test theories and to challenge her assumptions and have her work reviewed by colleagues in her field, a process called "peer review". A wildlife manager goes where her boss tells her to, and that boss is often a politician, driven by a concern for ringing phones. Really. Complaints that come to a politician's attention via phone calls or correspondence are never welcome and the politician's primary concern is to make them go away.

In the case of deer (or crows, geese, raccoons, coyotes, cormorants, starlings or just about any living thing that dares to become common in urban environments) that often means killing. It's not because it works, but because it keeps the complainers happy. People who don't mind the inevitable presence of the wildlife in their midst tend to not contact politicians and tell them so. People who do mind, complain. And I've come to realize that a large number of the complainers appear to have a subconscious need to physically remove, even punish, individual animals, unconnected to understanding of animal behaviour. They often fear animals.

There is little, if any, science or logic to the Cranbrook deer cull, and supporters of the cull have displayed significant ignorance of deer, and of more effective and less expensive options to reducing conflicts between deer and people. But rather than providing an open and transparent, all-inclusive investigation, Cranbrook council has resorted to secrecy within which a small cadre of like-minded people give the people make the phone calls what they want.

Barry K. MacKay
barry@bcdeerprotection.org

Barry welcomes respectful, intelligent commentary and is willing to post and reply to such items below.