Deer a ‘health and safety threat’
Deer are often characterized as skittish, cute and shy.
A Fergusons Cove woman says there is nothing shy about a deer’s propensity to devour plants and leafy garden vegetables and to transport diseasebearing ticks.
“There has to be some political will here,” said Sheila Stevenson. “I would love to see my new councillor and my MLA say, ‘OK, we’re understanding that for a couple of our constituents that this is a real problem and it’s not just deer nibbling a few hosta,’ which is what you will hear people say.”
Stevenson and her husband, Stephen Archibald, say in the past two to three years there has been a sharp increase in deer sightings and deer devastation at their property on the west side of Halifax Harbour between Purcells Cove and Herring Cove.
“Deer meet the definition very clearly of being an invasive species, an introduced species, they are a public health and safety threat,” Stevenson said. “They are more than a nuisance.”
Contracting Lyme disease moved the infestation of deer well beyond the nuisance stage for Stevenson.
“What really ticked me off was coming down with Lyme disease this summer,” she said of an August diagnosis.
TICK HOST
“That would be a black-legged tick and it was a bite that went undetected and it would have been a tick that I got here in my own garden because we weren’t really leaving the property,” Stevenson said.
“The deer is the favourite host of the adult black-legged tick and the female lays thousands of eggs which then get deposited on grass and other things. They are not the only creatures to carry the ticks. Smaller mammals like squirrels and chipmunks also carry the ticks.”
With symptoms of extreme fatigue, serious headaches, nausea and diarrhea but not the common Lyme symptom of a bull’s-eye rash, Stevenson was told by a clinic duty doctor that she probably had Lyme disease, after tests had eliminated COVID.
The proactive physician put Stevenson on the Lyme-disease medication Doxycycline even before her confirmatory blood test results had been returned from Winnipeg. Stevenson felt much better within days.
Stevenson said she and her husband bought their property in 1994 “expressly to garden, to be ornamental gardeners and gardeners because we are plant people.”
Ornamental shrubs, trees and perennials abound on the property and they fenced in an area to grow vegetables.
Nice to look at, tasty to eat and a natural fast-food stop for deer.
“I think the odds are pretty good,” Stevenson said of the likelihood that she contracted Lyme disease from a deercarried tick.
“We have a fabulous deer habitat and a fabulous tick habitat, so many ornamental grasses. The recommendation is don’t plant anything that is going to be good for ticks or deer. You are going to end up not planting anything.
“We are in the woods out here, there are patches of woods all around. That’s the nature of the neighbourhood. We weren’t leaving the property and deer were going through every day. You’d see them every day or see their footprints every day. They were trampling through.”
HERD RECOVERY
Stevenson said they would see a herd of seven deer every day in the spring, raising a question of the whitetail deer population increasing in the province.
A spokesman for the provincial Lands and Forestry Department said the actual population levels are not monitored but the density, the number of deer per square kilometre, is measured.
“On average, over the past 10 years, deer density has been stable, but there are fluctuations from year to another, and differences between regions,” Steven Stewart said in an emailed response.
“After a decline around 201516, easier winters and abundant food have indicated a recovery in the deer herd provincially.”
One of the politicians Stevenson referenced is Brendan Maguire, the Liberal MLA for the Halifax Atlantic riding who lives in Herring Cove, less than a 20-minute walk through the woods from Fergusons Cove.
“There are deer everywhere,” Maguire said, adding he has an apple tree in his backyard that can attract up to six deer every night.
“It’s definitely an issue.”
And it’s a provincial issue, so Maguire tells constituents to contact him or Lands and Forestry.
“They’ll (Lands and Forestry) come down and they’ll take a look,” Maguire said. “If it’s an animal that poses a threat to pets or people, they’ll remove the animal from the area. If it’s a tick issue and a Lyme disease issue, they’ll bring people down and they’ll trap and test the deer.
“Unfortunately, especially in these communities here, we all have the woods in our backyard and with more and more development happening in and around this community, there is less and less natural space and natural area for the wildlife so it is pushing into our neighbourhoods.”
TRURO’S ANSWER
The Town of Truro, having grappled with a burgeoning deer population for several years, ran a plebiscite in the October election in which voters supported a bow hunt to cull the herd by a 2,311-1,728 count. The hunt is yet to be set up.
Stevenson said there is no hunting in the residential Fergusons Cove area.
“We’re fairly close together,” she said. “We’re not cheek by jowl but it’s a residential neighbourhood.”
The provincial Wildlife Act prohibits hunting with a firearm within 402 metres of a dwelling, playground, business or public building.
Stevenson says she is not the only area resident to contract Lyme disease recently and a provincial risk map for the disease shows Cape Breton Regional Municipality and all of mainland Nova Scotia, except Guysborough County, as highrisk areas.
Stevenson agonizes over what can be done to curb or deter the deer and tick population, aside from spending, as she did, $6,000 to erect a 170metre long, 2.5-metre high fence to separate deer from garden.
“I am so saddened to hear people say I had to quit gardening, I had to give up, people who were gardening for food, and especially this year when people were growing food for the first time,” Stevenson said.
“From a mental health perspective, it’s very distressing to see your labour and investments chowed down on.”
Stevenson said the deer in the Fergusons Cove area are not skittish wild deer that run away when they encounter people.
She said deer are a real threat and the public has to be educated to take that threat seriously.
“There needs to be a strategy, various strategies perhaps, in communities across the province where this is a real issue,” Stevenson said.