Two decisions on wildlife made by Colorado Springs City Council
A fine of up to $500 for feeding wildlife and a delay on reducing the city’s deer population are two decisions made this week by the Colorado Springs City Council.
On Tuesday, the council officially passed an ordinance to ban the feeding of all wildlife except birds. Violators will first receive a warning and repeated violations will result in fines of increasing severity.
“We have to have evidence that someone’s doing it,” said Aaron Berscheid, of Colorado Parks and Wildlife. “We have to see it ourselves, or we can rely on a neighbor or someone else taking a photo or recording video of a violation.”
The state fine for feeding wildlife is $50.
The city’s code enforcement office will be responsible for enforcing the ordinance.
“That office is adding more staff to help with enforcement,” said City Council President Richard Skorman. “We’ll only rarely have to enforce it because, in most cases, people will stop feeding wildlife after receiving a warning.”
A primary target of the ordinance is the city’s growing deer population, particularly west of Interstate 25.
CPW said there are too many deer that are too comfortable around people, resulting in more than 300 deer-vehicle collisions annually and numerous instances of property damage.
“People feed them corn, apples, carrots and rich foods they don’t eat in the wild,” Berscheid said. “They can’t get proper nutrients from it. They can get sick. They’re better off eating their natural diet.”
CPW said many people mean well when they feed wildlife but may be unaware that the practice is illegal.
In a related matter, the council announced that it will postpone efforts to reduce the deer population — a subject the council and a task force had discussed for more than a year.
“We wanted a deer management plan but were told you need to have 80 percent of the public to support it,” said Councilman Don Knight. “A lot of people didn’t want us to do anything. Dealing with this issue has been harder than we expected.”
City officials previously ruled out the possibility of allowing an urban archery hunt — even though CPW said it’s the best way to reduce the deer population — because of safety concerns.
The city also said culling, or hiring a professional to thin the herd, is too expensive.
“It would cost us $700 per deer,” Skorman said. “An urban hunt and culling were our two best options.”
Knight said the city will spend the next two years taking a more complete count of deer across the city and then reconsider the idea of a management plan.
“We understand that some people think we’re just kicking the deer problem down the road, that all we do is just talk about it,” Skorman said. “But this is a very sensitive issue, and we have to take that into account.”
