No one knows exactly where a population of wild turkeys originally came from, but most everyone in Edgewater, B.C. say the birds need to go.
Area resident Brian Stawychny says the turkeys first started showing up a number of years ago and have gotten pretty comfortable in the community.
“Some compassionate people started throwing out food everywhere. They really don’t have any farms to go to. There’s no farms left in this country so they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.”
While the idea of a different sort of animal in the community may be fun for some, Stawychny says the turkeys come with their fair share of problems, particularly with the damage they can do to trees when they roost.
The turkeys can get pretty heavy, so when they climb into the trees to lay their eggs, their weight can break branches and strip the needles off of the native fir trees.
Michael Hutchinson, who also lives in Edgewater, says that the birds are big problem in the community.
“They’re not indigenous to our area. There’s a few areas where they were kept while the flocks grew and then they were let loose.”
He doesn’t like having the turkeys around that much, especially because of the mess they leave behind, but others in the community don’t think the same way.
“There are people who are very vexed by it but there are people who don’t really care one way or the other I guess.”
The handouts have tapered off since they first appeared, but Stawychny says that isn’t stopping the birds from sticking around.
“They’ll find compost heaps or something. They need to be coaxed out of town somehow.”
However, he says no one seems to care enough about the issue to really get proactive about a solution that doesn’t involve culling the animals.
“I don’t think that’s going to go over well with some people.”
So far, the turkeys have gotten off with a pretty light sentence because the only thing that officials in Edgewater have done is issue a ban on feeding them. A bit further down the road, authorities in the village of Radium Hot Springs are somewhat less forgiving.
“There is a vocal group of residents that would really like to see us get rid of them and essentially to get rid of them is culling,” says mayor Clara Reinhardt. “There’s two ways to do that; you can take them down right in town or you can box them up and take them somewhere else.”
She says that they don’t like either option and just trucking them out of the community and leaving them somewhere doesn’t solve anything because it just moves the problem.
Another idea that’s been floated has been to extend the hunting season on wild turkey. Under current licences, hunters can only kill two wild turkeys a year and they have to be bagged outside of Radium.
To make matters even more difficult, the hunting season is only a few weeks long during the fall.
The animal population in the area also includes bighorn sheep, deer, coyotes and cougars.
(With files from Chris Epp)
