Duane Hicks
FORT FRANCES—As part of a plan to prevent deer from wandering onto the runway at the Fort Frances Airport, the town will be installing motion detection noise equipment at the main deer trails nearby.
The equipment, supplied by the Ministry of Natural Resources, has sensors that, when they detect motion, emit sounds such as gunfire, a cougar, or a wolf, airport superintendent Bill Caul explained Friday morning.
These sounds alternate each time it goes off, he noted, with the idea being the deer don’t catch on to it too soon.
“We’ll see how it works,” Caul said. “It will probably work for a while, but the deer, they’ll get used to it.
“They’re not stupid.”
The equipment will be installed by sometime next week at the latest.
The town also has a culling permit in place if deer activity increases to a point where they end up being a major problem on the airport runway.
But Caul stressed he doesn’t want to implement that “unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
As previously reported, the town will use members of the Fort Frances Sportsmen’s Club, who volunteered to bow hunt the deer for the cull.
Caul said deer activity at the airport hasn’t been too problematic so far this summer.
“They haven’t been as bad this year as last year, but there’s some roaming around,” he noted.
Caul added Kim Cornell, who hays the airport fields, currently is in the process of removing the high grass, which makes the deer much easier to spot.
But the deer become much more of a concern in the fall when the sun sets sooner, Caul explained.
“I am not really too concerned with them until it starts getting dark for that last Bearskin flight,” he remarked.
“During daylight, at least we can see them and handle them.
“It’s when it’s dark outside and you can’t spot them.
“That’s when, if it gets bad enough, we’ll have to look at doing some culling,” Caul admitted.
The town, meanwhile, is hoping to get funding under Transport Canada’s Capital Assistance Program for perimeter fencing to keep deer away from the airport.
“We have everything in place there, but the last I heard, there was no funding from the minister allocated yet,” said Caul.
“So that’s kind of on hold for the time being anyway.”
If they get it, the funding will be used for a 5,800-metre long, eight-foot high, specially-designed fixed-knot fence, which would cost about $300,000.
At a public meeting held back in March, Caul had indicated this would be the preferable long-term solution to deer activity at the airport.
(Fort Frances Daily Bulletin)
