A UBC scientist has watched Salt Spring's wildflowers vanish for 50 years. The deer aren't leaving.

Tara Martin grew up on Salt Spring Island surrounded by Garry Oak meadows and wildflowers. Most of that is gone now, and she has spent 20 years documenting where it went.

Over the last 50 years, native black tail deer have exploded across the southern Gulf Islands, including Gabriola, eating almost every new tree sapling and understory plant in their path. Settlers wiped out the wolves and cougars that once kept the herds in check, and excluded the Indigenous hunters who had managed the deer for centuries. Hunting fell out of fashion by the 1980s. Predators that turn up on the islands are usually removed.

Martin, now an associate professor at UBC, runs the Martin Conservation Decisions Lab on Salt Spring. She says most Indigenous medicinal plants, key for pollinators, have disappeared, and Garry Oak meadows are now dominated by non-native grasses. The kids growing up on the islands don't know what's missing.

Her least-costly answer is hunting, ideally led by Indigenous hunters and local residents, paired with letting cougars and wolves stay when they arrive. On Salt Spring and Gabriola, there's currently no open season on antlerless deer, and the black tail limit is one.