RESPONSE TO DRAFT DEER MANAGEMENT PLAN

Below is a letter written by local Rosalie Counsell in response to the Draft Deer Management Plan. It is split in two sections; A) preamble, and B) specific response to the plan.

A) Preamble

We live on a 24 hectare property in Harkaway, in the peri urban foothills to the Dandenong Ranges. It has several heavily vegetated gullies that run down to the belt of bushland that follows the Cardinia Creek.
Over the past decade, Sambar and Fallow deer have become an increasing problem. They use these wildlife corridors as cover for their own movements, and are continually breaking down fences, damaging young trees (including ones we’ve planted) and encroaching on our pasture. As a result of their growing numbers (we’ve seen herds of twenty and thirty), we now struggle to run a dozen steers on the place.
We have a couple of hunters who come when they can, but the occasional kill they achieve is a drop in the ocean, and serves only to make the herds more canny. While ignoring us as we shout and wave our arms at them, when they spy a hunter, they vacate to the only one of our three adjoining properties where they seem to know they are safe.
We, and our neighbours, are starting to despair. The deer numbers – Fallow and Sambar – are mushrooming. As well as destroying our treasured bush environment, they are invading our gardens, gradually moving further and further from the creek area and presenting an increasing hazard on our roads. It is only a matter of time before a vehicle will hit one, and a collision with a Sambar could easily kill someone.
We believe that management of the deer populations in the peri urban areas is critical. Urbanisation is going to make normal control measures increasingly difficult to implement, yet it is here that their adverse impacts will be most visible. Once someone is killed as a result of a collision with a deer, or their numbers cause even more significant issues for the catchment areas, and/or they start encroaching on semi-urban gardens, the problem could escalate to nightmare proportions.
We believe that the main problem with this draft strategy is that it starts and ends with the wrong emphasis – namely that deer are recognised as a valuable hunting resource.
The fact that deer may have become a valuable resource to the hunting fraternity should not blind us to the fact that they are a large, destructive introduced species that are posing a major, expanding threat to a wide range of community assets and values across the state. No invasive exotic species released deliberately or accidentally into the wild should be protected by law.
CONCLUSION
The control of feral deer is too overwhelming a problem for ad hoc, individual measures. Sporadic guerrilla-type skirmishes on the periphery will achieve nothing and serve only to discourage all concerned.
What we are facing here is an invasion. It needs to be handled with the same principles of military planning, co-ordination and determination as would apply to fighting a war. And as with any invasion, the sooner and more decisively we respond the better. The enemy is already at our gates.

29 October 2018

B) Specific responses to the draft strategy
Our position can be summed up as follows:

• There are no net economic benefits or positives to be gained from the presence of deer outside farms, and this strategy underplays the serious and growing threat they pose to our natural, rural and peri-urban environment. It also underplays the probable extent of the costs associated with a) the damage already being perpetrated on both public and private land, including commercial enterprises such as orchards and vineyards, and b) any realistic program to tackle the problem.
• The last sentence of the first paragraph on Page 4 Summary reads: “It (the draft strategy) also recognises that deer are a valuable hunting resource”. This should be replaced by: “It also recognises that feral deer are valued as a game species by hunters whose hobby contributes directly and indirectly to the economy”.
• Rather than write misleading and meaningless jargon about “maximising the positives that can be gained from their presence” (Ref Page 5 The challenge), it would be more accurate and appropriate to talk about investigating ways of off-setting the expense of the necessary culling programme, such as expanding the commercial deer harvesting industry.
• On Page 6 Current Actions, the draft lists the locations of Parks Victoria’s joint invasive animal programmes. This includes the Dandenong Ranges, but feral deer are now securely entrenched in the Southern Ranges foothills where they have large tracts of bushland in which to breed and take refuge.
• The funding allocations listed on Page 6 Current actions illustrate the extent to which the emphasis of the draft strategy is misplaced, with over 50% going to the Firearms Safety Foundation to develop information, only 36% going to Parks Victoria to help control deer in parks, and nothing towards controlling them in rural and peri-urban areas.
• We support the action listed on Page 7 Figure 1: “Improve management of farmed deer”.
• On Page 10 Deer in Victoria, the draft states: “It is unknown how climate change will affect the distribution and abundance of deer …” What is known is that the increased frequency and severity of droughts predicted by climate change scientists and currently being experienced in vast swathes of south eastern Australia causes wildlife, both native and feral, to spread beyond their normal habitat range, not only onto farm and semi-rural land but right into urban areas.
• Ref Page 12 Control of problem deer in Victoria:
  • Given that feral deer are moving in and out of private properties from the protection of public land, it would be unreasonable and unrealistic to expect individual property owners to bear the cost of the expensive control measures that are almost certainly going to be required, especially in more closely settled and intensive farming areas.
  • These landowners are already suffering the consequences of a problem that is not of their making that they are ill equipped to tackle.
  • Unlike rabbits, the deer are not based on their land but dispersed across the whole region.
  • Unlike weeds, you can’t control them with simple tools like a hoe or a spray pack.
  • It is a wider community issue that requires a taxpayer-funded response.
• In an ideal world, there would be no deer (nor any other invasive exotic animal species) outside strictly controlled – and controllable – environments such as properly set up, well managed farms. Therefore, sustainable hunting of deer should not be a Government principle, as it implies that if deer numbers drop below a certain point, strategies should be put in place to allow them to build up again.
• Deer have become a problem as the result of negligence (escape from farms) or delinquency (deliberate release). Such behaviour should not be rewarded by official sanction of their existence in the wild on the grounds that it provides enjoyment for hunters and the claim of a paltry unsubstantiated contribution to the Government purse.
• Ref Page 14 The status of deer: All species of deer should be classified as pest animals and the relevant Acts amended or fine-tuned to overcome the perceived difficulties that this would currently create. For instance:

• Regarding the obligation under the Wildlife Act 1975 for landowners to “take all reasonable steps to control deer on their properties”, this could be defined simply as not standing in the way of government authorities in implementing the appropriate strategies.
• The clause precluding hunting in areas managed under the National Parks Act 1975 could be amended to except feral deer (and pigs, if appropriate).
• The prohibited pest animal classification should not in any instance preclude laws ensuring that destruction is humane and safe. If that is the current situation, it should be rectified forthwith.

• Ref Page 15 The opportunity for change:

• All peri-urban areas should be classified as eradication zones.
• Government funded control measures should not be at the landowners’ discretion, though a consultative approach with some flexibility would be needed.

• Ref Page 18 Goal 1: Action 1.4.1 refers to “archery only” areas. It is hard to imagine that archery would ever be a reliable means of killing deer humanely. Dating as it does from mediaeval times before the advent of firearms, we suspect that the general public would deem it to be not only unpalatable but positively barbaric.
• Ref Page 20 Goal 3: Disseminating deer management information packs to landowners in affected areas would only be useful if they included a realistic plan of action supported by a Government or community based task force.