A population of non-native deer that has been altering the ecosystem on Mayne Island for decades has grown into the thousands, according to experts, now numbering more than five times an estimate from 10 years ago.
Jeanine Dodds has lived on Mayne Island since 1960, currently serving her seventh term as local trustee for the Islands Trust. When she spoke to the Driftwood in 2015, she described the fallow deer population — estimated at about 1,000 then — as a “ticking time bomb.” At a webinar on Wednesday, March 4, she told attendees she agreed with locals who blame provincial regulators far more than anyone who originally brought fallow deer to the Gulf Islands.
“I grew up here as a child on SḴŦAḴ, Mayne Island, Helen Point,” said Dodds, “and I know what that landscape looks like today and it’s heartbreaking.”
The fallow deer landed on Mayne in the 1980s, when a development plan was approved for a game farm located near Horton Bay, on the island’s southeast corner. At the time, game farms were being promoted by the province itself, as a means of diversifying B.C.’s agricultural revenue streams — and through the Game Farm Act, a permit to farm fallow deer was issued in 1990.
By 1992, according to Dodds, there were already concerns expressed locally about overstocking, and by 1994 visitors were writing letters to the editor about the dwindling vegetation on the island.
“At that time, the housing I was living in overlooked the historic Robson Farm,” she said, in a large valley to the west of the game farm. “I looked out my window and saw the strangest three deer.”
What followed those first “wild” sightings outside the original farm were literal decades of passionate community discussion and earnest meetings with various ministries, staff and elected officials as they struggled to grasp the size of the problem — and how to solve it.
Fallow deer today share Mayne Island — if unevenly — with a native species of Columbia black-tailed deer; anywhere large predators have been pushed out, the deer population increases. But while black-tailed deer are found throughout the Gulf Islands, the severity of impact caused by fallow deer is consistently higher.
“Fallow deer have a larger gut system that processes a wider variety of forage,” said Mike Janssen, a forest ecosystem restoration specialist for Parks Canada. “So they eat a wider variety of plants and can do more damage than black-tailed deer.”
Fallow deer also tend to travel in larger groups, eating the new leaves off their preferred plants year after year — and as the old leaves fall off, eventually there are none left. Biologist Rob Underhill, who works with the Mayne Island Conservancy, explained that where the deer have been active, the native plants have been replaced — mostly with non-native deer-resistant species.
The impacts go well beyond just the plants the deer are eating; plants are the building blocks of the ecosystem, Underhill said — taking energy from the sun and making it available to organisms down the food chain, as well as offering the “structural habitat” they need to shelter and reproduce.
“Deer overpopulation also reduces food for pollinators,” he said. “Birds that directly forage on flowers or eat the insects that rely on plants are affected. It has a cascading effect.”
Fenced restoration sites tell the story of how well plants can recover, but they require significant investment and management once the deer are kept out. Underhill said some 2.5 kilometres of fence has been installed on Mayne across different restoration projects, and groups have been gathering data on what grows.
“Fencing isn’t an ideal option. It’s expensive to install and requires maintenance when trees fall on them, or materials reach end-of-life,” said Underhill.
“Studies suggest the populations will have to decrease very significantly, at least below eight deer per square kilometre, if we want to see a return of herbaceous plant communities to these sites.”
Island farmer Peter Robinson has direct experience with how costly fencing can be. Robinson has run Mayne Island’s 144-acre Hedgerow Farm since 2016. Hedgerow has been operational since the 1870s, he said, and when his family took over, the primary production came from hay fields — alongside fruit from heritage apple and pear trees.
“In our first year, we were surprised to see [fallow deer] herds in the fields, numbering 50-plus,” said Robinson. “In the orchards, there was browsing on branches up to about nine feet when they stood on their legs.”
Robinson’s fencing mitigation on the orchard alone has cost some $9,000 so far, he said, and with another $5,000 or more expected this year to finish enclosing that area — and he’s already spent more than $27,000 fencing the hay fields, with another $50,000 needed to protect them fully.
With hay production bringing in less than $12,000 last year, he expects “payback” in restored production will take at least a decade to materialize. Meanwhile, comparing his per-acre hay production today with his first few years at Hedgerow, his yield has dropped — from 65 to 70 bales per acre to about 25 as the deer population has increased.
“We saw about 50 deer per day on the fields, and they can eat about two per cent of their body weight each day,” said Robinson. “Those fallow deer can consume the equivalent of about 900 bales per year.”
In 2018 the Ministry of Wildlife decided to unilaterally change regulations, designating Mayne Island as an open hunting area for fallow deer year round — and with no bag limit.
“This caused huge consternation within the community,” said Dodds. “It’s all very fine that we have that, but we have very few properties that can — or should — be hunted.”
Robinson allows a select group of professional hunters on their property — hunters removed about 100 in the last 14 months, he said — but his observations had been that the deer could reproduce faster than they were being taken.
A Parks Canada fallow deer management program on Sidney Island to the south collaborated with trained First Nation hunters, with a number of animals being harvested there. Tsartlip Elder Carl Olsen was among knowledge keepers who spent time training young hunters for the task, and said while youth were willing to learn — and that he still goes out with some of them on weekends when he can — it takes a long time to teach the safety and cultural aspects of hunting.
“You also need to teach them how to clean the deer properly, to skin it, how to be safe about collecting meat,” Olsen said, agreeing they “barely made a dent” in the population.
“I think that was a really good project, but you don’t learn how to hunt in one or two years,” Olsen chuckled. “I still learn new tricks about hunting.”
In early 2025, Mayne Islanders successfully lobbied the Capital Regional District board to urge the B.C. government to provide sustained funding for fallow deer control. Robinson said staff from the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship had told the Mayne Island Deer Management Society they needed to take on the task of counting the deer themselves.
“They told us how to estimate the size of the population, so using their instructions we undertook an island-wide survey,” he said. “We had 102 people take part, all at the same time in the evening last year, walking the same distance and recording all the deer they saw.”
The count came to a total of 723 that day: 68 native black-tailed deer, and 655 fallow, mostly located in the most densely inhabited areas of the island where the latter have become comfortable around people.
Presenting those numbers to wildlife staff and the ministry, Robinson said they calculated a likely real population of a “staggering” 5,200 fallow deer on the island — and with a biodiversity-ideal target of 200, he said, “now the government knows we have a significant problem.”
“The impacts of the deer are readily obvious,” said Robinson. “If you go from Mayne to Galiano, you will immediately see the difference in the understory.”
But whether it’s reinstating the use of rifles, allowing trapping and baiting, permitting the sale of fallow deer meat — currently required to be destroyed after a hunt — tracking with drones, administering birth control or subduing with tasers, the province reiterated whatever solutions Mayne Island chooses will come without senior government funding, at least for the moment. Robinson said there had been some openness to regulatory changes, if they didn’t cost much to implement.
That puts the onus, as it has been, on Mayne Islanders.
Offering advice after eight years managing the Sidney Island forest project for Parks Canada, Janssen said it would be important to recognize what kind of effort managing deer in populated areas really is. While the work on Sidney was indeed an “ecosystem” project, he said, it turned out they hadn’t anticipated how much of a “people project” it needed to be.
“Successful deer management in the Gulf Islands requires identifying the course of action that the most people can agree to,” said Janssen. “The goal isn’t just to find the most effective deer management method; the goal is to determine which methods are likely to be effective, and also have the most support among the people involved.”
That means getting more voices to the table early, he said, long before picking deer management techniques — addressing concerns well before you start, even when there are serious disagreements. If there are shared objectives, the process of hashing out how to get there can be transformative in a positive way for a community, Janssen said, noting he’d seen people surprised by how much respect and camaraderie could result from those conflicts.
“Not everyone has to agree,” he said. “Even though some people might prefer a different approach, at least they understand the chosen approach — and they can live with it, rather than feel a need to actively oppose it.”
And, Janssen pointed out, even if fallow deer are eventually completely eradicated, there will still be native black-tailed deer.
“Unless there are wolves and cougars on that island, those deer are always going to need to be managed,” he said. “So the question for Mayne Island is, will deer management be a source of conflict, or will it bring people together? I would say that choice belongs to the community.”
For more information on the society’s efforts, visit maynedeer.ca.