Media monitoring

Wild or feral deer? Game Council and Invasive Species Council discuss

Radio National, Bush Telegraph, 12/06/2009 11.06am

Interview with Tim Lowe and Brian Boyle about differing views on controlling deer. The Invasive Species Council wants other states to follow Queensland and class deer as a ‘feral pest’. Boyle says the Game Council is a statitory authority, while the Invasive Species Council is a self-appointed body.

Michael Mackenzie: But first this morning, as I mentioned with Queensland recently declaring deer a feral pest in that state, the Invasive Species Council has called on other states, such as New South Wales and Victoria, to follow suit. But it’s an argument that doesn’t hold sway in places where the animals are a source of sport for recreational hunters. The Game Council of New South Wales argues that recreational hunters actually serve an important environmental purpose. The organisation uses the words conservation hunting as its catchcry but the Invasive Species Council believes there is no such thing. To nut out this debate, we’re joined by Tim Low, the project officer with the Invasive Species Council. And, Tim, welcome back to the program.
Tim Low: Hi, Michael.
Michael Mackenzie: Good to have you with us and also joining us is Brian Boyle. Brian is the chief executive officer of the Game Council of New South Wales.
Brian Boyle: Good morning, Michael. Good morning, Tim.
Michael Mackenzie: Gentlemen, I might start with you if I may, Tim? Let’s start with what’s happened in Queensland because I understand that you sat on the body that advised the Queensland Government about listing deer as a feral pest. Now that it has been listed as such, what does that mean in terms of how that deer is managed?
Tim Low: Well, it means there’s an obligation on landholders to control some deer and make sure they don’t have some species. It depends to some extent on which species you are dealing with because some are well entrenched in Queensland, others don’t exist at all. What’s very important about it is that it gives recognition to the fact that deer numbers will go up, that deer have pest impacts and that the idea that it’s nice to have a few pretty deer around the place and they won’t do any harm, that’s not a realistic perception and that they should be treated in a similar ways to say goats, pigs other hoofed animals where we know their impact is serious. The difference with deer is that their numbers are just in an early stage of escalating in a lot of parts of Australia as a result of escapes from deer farms and hunters releasing them into forests.
Michael Mackenzie: I want to get into that in just a moment, Tim. But I just want to understand what defining a deer in Queensland as feral means in terms of the kind of resources that then open up for control?
Tim Low: Look, it’s difficult to give you a really quick answer on that because there are actually three categories of declaration in Queensland. So there are a couple of species that are not in Queensland, that you’re just not allowed to have them. So the goal there is to completely keep hog deer and sambar deer out of Queensland altogether. Then with red deer and Chital is to make sure that they’re controlled close to conservation areas and with other species it is about trying to suppress the numbers so that they don’t get out of hand. I mean it’s been a very difficult policy, it’s difficult for all the states dealing with deer in so much as they are very difficult to control and there are differences of perception about the problems they cause. But what they are doing in the overall framework, and you actually had, you know, the Queensland Premier coming out and saying, why have we go deer on the Queensland Coat of Arms, why do we have this exotic animal? So it’s about saying deer are a problem animal, we shouldn’t get too emotional about them.
Michael Mackenzie: Well it’s interesting you should say that because just before coming on the radio with you, of course, I was speaking to our very own book show’s Ramona Koval and when I mentioned this story, her first reaction was, oh killing Bambi. And of course, that still resonates through the community. Brian Boyle, you must get that all the time?
Brian Boyle: Yes we do. People don’t understand the simple facts about deer management, and you know one of the things that Tim and myself do have is the - we have the environment at heart and hunters do, and we do use the word conservation hunters now because you know it’s a new situation in New South Wales through the Game Council. One of the things I’d like to point out is that the Game Council is a statutory authority appointed by government down here to - and its primary objectives are to better manage game and feral animals in the state and the orderly and responsible hunting of those animals. It is important to point out that the Invasive Species Council - Tim’s, you know, written some wonderful books in the past. But the Invasive Species Council is not a government body, it’s a self-appointed authority that started in 2002, I think, when they appointed themselves and then they’ve gone on from there. The fact is that it’s coming through that...
Michael Mackenzie: [Interrupts] Just because a body isn’t government endorsed doesn’t mean they don’t have a role to play in discussion, I wouldn’t have thought, Brian?
Brian Boyle: Yeah, but one of the things I’d like to point out is that the Game Council is a government agency charged with regulating licence, voluntary conservation hunting in this state. It’s about instead of looking to the past, now - I believe that Queensland has actually taken a retrograde step of...
Michael Mackenzie: [Interrupts] Why? Why do you say that?
Brian Boyle: Because it’s been tried in other countries - especially in other places. In New Zealand they went through 70 years of going through the noxious animals and all of those things and declaring them in that way, and instead of - they’ve gone full circle now to establishing a Big Game Hunting Advisory Council. The Game Council is about harnessing volunteer conservation harnessed to provide broad scale benefits in the states and...
Michael Mackenzie: [Interrupts] Well, Brian, can I just take you up on that point about the New Zealand case study? Because it’s always good to look at other countries for models that we can either reject or adopt. And it’s interesting because Tim Low, in the Invasive Species Council report on deer hunting in this country, you cite New Zealand as a success story. Tim Low, can I just ask you on that?
Tim Low: Look I - yeah, I didn’t write the report you’re referring to. It was written by someone else.
Michael Mackenzie: Well, it comes from your organisation, I would have hoped you’ve read it by now but, I mean, it makes the point...
Tim Low: [Laughs] We’re drowning in paperwork here.
Michael Mackenzie: Okay, well put the paperwork aside for a moment and let’s just talk about what happened in that country, because in New Zealand, according to your report from your council, it says that when they introduced professional culling of deer in New Zealand, numbers dropped dramatically and therefore habitation, vegetation came back in a way, or habitat and vegetation came back in a way they hadn’t seen for years. Correct?
Tim Low: Yeah and I’d quote the example in South Australia where the attempt to use recreational hunters at Gum Lagoon Conservation Park but it was unsuccessful. So the Government had a trial in 2002, 65 recreational hunters in four days killed just 44 deer. Then they tried a four-hour helicopter cull and one shooter was able to take out 182 deer. I mean, it’s just not true what Brian is saying about best practice pest control. And in fact the operation of the Game Council...
Michael Mackenzie: [Interrupts] With respect on this, Tim Low, can I just on that theme of numbers, does it really matter if the hunters - the recreational hunters that Brian Boyle represents only take out a small fraction of what professionals can do if they can take out some? Isn’t it better than nothing?
Tim Low: Well, no, no it isn’t. In fact, I mean if you look at the way animal populations exist, you know, you have births, deaths, like - you know that sort of whole lifestyle thing. If you look at say, say fox shooting it’s often the young immature foxes that are shot. These are not foxes that have got established territories. If you just the - those young foxes just as they are reaching maturity before they’ve achieved any territory, you don’t actually achieve any population reduction at all because a lot of those young foxes would have died. They wouldn’t have been able to find their own territory. So you have to get above a certain culling rate before there’s any benefit whatsoever. And the idea that you have ad hoc hunters going off into state forests on weekends shooting when they feel like it, this is totally the opposite of all best practice of feral pest management that’s been developed in Australia. Australians...
Michael Mackenzie: [Interrupts] Okay, I might get Brian to respond to that, Brian Boyle?
Brian Boyle: This can be challenged because there’s been reports from New Zealand in the Kaimanawa Forest Park that shows that recreational or private hunters have contributed to significant deer reduction in those areas. And also Tim, conveniently, you know, avoids the - or doesn’t mention Operation Bounce Back which was a very successful operation in South Australia involving private hunters or voluntary conservation hunters in controlling goats. And, you know, it’s been an outstanding success and helped in the recovery or, contributing to the recovery of rock wallabies in that area. What we are looking at - this is the establishment of the Game Council, looking at broad scale, you know, hunting and also now we’re moving - you know, moving to the next phase where we can target certain, you know, species in certain areas, involving conservation hunters. You know, we’ve only been established since 2002, implemented a licensing system, a world’s best practice hunter education system. We’re not looking to the past, we’re looking to the future about getting hunters involved.
Michael Mackenzie: And yet you call your method of recreational shooting, conservation hunting, and if that’s the case, Brian Boyle, wouldn’t you therefore be interested in a common goal with the Invasive Species Council? If you’re involved in conservation hunting, isn’t the goal therefore to conserve landscape, conserve habitat, conserve native species and therefore eradicate deer?
Brian Boyle: The aim is for the Game Council to help implement policies and procedures that will help hunters to contribute to it. There is no silver bullet for it and you know, there hasn’t even been one pest species in Australia that’s been, you know, completely controlled. What we’re doing is saying that yes we want to sit alongside the Invasive Species Council and other groups and help manage these animals or control them. Now there is no simple way of getting rid of them. Deer are a challenging animal to hunt and there have been studies done, also in Victoria and Lake Elder National Park for example that shows a clear correlation or a clear relationship between hunting pressure and the number of animals. Where hunters - hunting is excluded from certain blocks of Lake Elder National park Sambar numbers are higher and then it has impacts on vegetation. Where the hunters are involved, or allowed to access certain blocks of that national park - I used to work in it four years - the numbers are clearly lower. We’re seeing that in forests that we’ve been working in, in New South Wales. Pennsylvania and Hampton forests for example, before the area was declared for hunting, you used to see sign of deer everywhere. You used to see rubs along the side of the road. In the last three or four years, just as this thing just gets going we’re already, we don’t see the mobs of goats running across the road. We don’t see the deer rubs all along the side of the road. What we’re saying is, we are not the total silver bullet for this but we are a contributor to other programs that will help on these lands. And you know, if you have other programs like for wild dogs, if they need to do poisoning, we modify the hunting in those areas to allow that those control operations are - get undertaken. We’re just an add-on to it.
Michael Mackenzie: You’re just an add-on, okay that’s your perspective on this. By the way, if you’ve just joined us here on Bush Telegraph, my guests today are Brian Boyle, the chief executive officer of the Game Council of New South Wales and Tim Low the project officer with the Invasive Species Council and we’re discussing the impact, in some ways debating, the best way to control native deer. I shouldn’t say native - feral deer. What am I saying? Feral deer populations in this country. Tim Low, what estimations do we have of how widespread the problem is, because I’m sure there’s still people listening going, it’s only deer for goodness sake, what are we getting our knickers in a knot over?
Tim Low: Yeah. Well the - it’s very hard to keep track of all the new deer populations because they are popping up in new places. It was the New South Wales Pest Animals’ survey - they did their last survey in 2004 to 2006 and deer - of all the feral pests that they surveyed deer were the ones that were going up dramatically. So there really are concerns that we are going from the state where there were just a few deer scattered around, fairly low level localised impacts. Although some places like royal national parks the impacts are just terrible, to the situation where they are going to be incredibly widespread, incredibly damaging.
Michael Mackenzie: So we have this localised knowledge in some pockets of the countryside as to how many deer might be there but in terms of overall population, impossible to tell because again...
Tim Low: [Interrupts] Oh, well around your invasive species, well around...
Michael Mackenzie: I’ve seen the information.
Tim Low: …200,000.
Michael Mackenzie: Over 200, because in the - in the Invasive Species Council Report that you say you haven’t read, Tim, it does say that the estimations of population vary between 43,000 and a million, which to me says we have no idea.
Tim Low: Well it’s the same with - the same with rabbits, the same with pigs, it’s very difficult to estimate how many feral animals there are in a whole continent.
Michael Mackenzie: Right, okay. Brian, let’s come back to one of the points you made earlier. Why is it that the Game Council of New South Wales doesn’t support this Queensland push for legislation to put the deer on the feral invasive species list?
Brian Boyle: It’s - put them on a pest list.
Michael Mackenzie: A pest list.
Brian Boyle: It’s been tried elsewhere and it hasn’t worked. What...
Michael Mackenzie: Well - I don’t understand what you mean by that. What’s the logic by saying, we can help control deer but no one else can?
Brian Boyle: Because it’s - you know Tim and - you know, look, while he means well, he puts - they are always about putting the obligation on other people. And what is happening in New South Wales is by setting up a game council and setting up an organisation to manage hunters as well the gaming of feral animals, instead of putting the obligation on other people and always saying we should get the professionals in or spend taxpayers’ money, it’s about engaging the community and getting as many people involved in the hunting and management of those animals as possible and looking to the future.
At the moment we - you know we are about to go up to 10,000 licensed hunters in this state. There’s a possible pool of 134,000 hunters at present. As we engage more of them we work with the properties and the landowners. We’ve got - you know in the Sydney basin we’ve got 28 programs going at the moment and you know these programs didn’t exist without the organisation of the Game Council with hunters, conservation hunters working with the landholders in those areas.
Michael Mackenzie: You make it sound like every recreational hunter has a green heart. Mate, isn’t the whole point of them going out there is the sport? That’s what they enjoy and isn’t the sub text of what the council is on about really, is that, yes you want it to look like you’re helping control feral deer but the whole point of what you do is to keep deer in sustainable numbers so you have a sport.
Brian Boyle: That’s not correct at all.
Michael Mackenzie: Okay.
Brian Boyle: The Game Council and hunters - look if you go back to some, you know some of the original conservationists, you know people quote Aldo Leopold all the time and it’s quoted by some of the people involved with the Invasive Species Council but they conveniently ignore that Aldo Leopold was a hunter and he was a forester in America.
Tim Low: And he gave it up.
Brian Boyle: And he was the father of conservation. And some of the greatest conservation programs around the world, you know, outside Australia, involving native animals is involved with hunters, you know.
Michael Mackenzie: Can you put your hand on your heart, Brian, and tell me that no members of your council or some of the people you represent aren’t, at some stage, in some instances, deliberately releasing deer into the wild?
Brian Boyle: You see Game - the Game Council it’s - this is about educating hunters not to do this. Just by declaring them a feral species is not going to stop the criminals who release these animals and you know, and saying I won’t stop - you know, they’ll stop illegally doing something.
Michael Mackenzie: They may be criminals, Brian, but are they also, perhaps, members of you fraternity? I am asking, are there individuals that you know of that would be conducting that kind of activity?
Brian Boyle: I do not know of any individuals myself who are conducting that activity.
Michael Mackenzie: But anecdotally, are you willing to acknowledge that it is probably going on?
Brian Boyle: The research that has been done to with, you know, with that - is conveniently quoted by people, it was Andrew Moriarty’s paper. Now at that stage of his research, and it was that - there was no default - or if the didn’t know where the animals came from they blamed it on hunters. Now the highest correlation with the presence of deer in this state has been to do with failed deer farming activities or with deer farms. And also the spread of deer - from deer that were released in the 1850s through to the early 1900s, is nothing to do with the licensed responsible conservation hunters of today.
Michael Mackenzie: Yeah, okay.
Brian Boyle: The Game Council came in in 2002 and it in no way condones the release of deer and in fact, you know, there was a new population of deer that was starting to spread near Cowra and the Game Council worked with the council in eliminating that herd that was in that town and having an impact. We’re not about new populations of deer. If they turn up and anybody wants to work with us, we will help get rid of them.
Michael Mackenzie: Tim Low, what do you want to see happen in states like New South Wales and Victoria?
Tim Low: Look the - I’d like to see the dismantling of the Game council. They’re receiving over $2 million a year in taxpayer money. So you hear Brian Boyle saying that they are saving taxpayers’ money. We’ve calculated from the numbers of feral animals they’re killing, I mean they post the numbers on their website, that New South Wales taxpayers are paying $287 for every single feral animal they kill. That is not a free service. So we’d like to see the money taken away - I mean this is a kind of privatisation of pest control, governments handing over responsibility to this - to hunters, giving them money, a lot of money at the same time. That money can be better spent.
Michael Mackenzie: Well, I understand in New South Wales there’s consideration of legislation allowing private landholders to organise and access hunters onto their land for the culling of deer, correct?
Tim Low: There are some aspects of what they want to do that’s fine, and that’s the trouble. I mean there’s a beautiful marketing exercise, this conservation hunting thing that’s come straight out of America. They’re bringing in consultants from America to advise them on how to popularise hunting. It’s a big grab for access to more lands including national parks in this new Shooters Party bill that’s come up. If you look at the operation of these hunting groups in New South Wales and Victoria, it’s this huge publicity campaign to increase the popularity of hunting, the range of animals they can hunt, the number of areas in which they can hunt. They realise that this is not popular with the community so they’re dressing it all up as conservation hunting and they have these few examples of where they are going in and doing good work which they can pull up on - put on display to say, look, we are conservationists. But you can tell yourself from when you ask Brian Boyle questions, he was fumbling. You know, this question of why they shouldn’t be declared a pest, he doesn’t really have any answer to that.
Michael Mackenzie: Brian Boyle, your final chance to make an answer if you’d like?
Brian Boyle: I’d just want to thank Tim for pointing out the cost per animal, because you know, he would know that you know the National Parks spend more than $360 an animal to remove deer from royal national parks, so, you know, we are very cost effective when you directly relate it to that. Also, you know, Tim doesn’t point out the economic importance of hunting. It provides $40 million in direct services and benefits to, you know small country towns and regional areas in New South Wales. It also - he ignores the fact that the Game Council is, you know, a new paradigm in hunting. It is developing hunter education programs and raising the standards of hunting in this state. And also the fact that you know, we are up to about 25,000 animals taken on public lands and also you know, our licensed hunters alone are taking another 196,000 animals off private land. That is a significant benefit.
Michael Mackenzie: All right, Brian. All right, look, gentlemen, in fact we’ve come to the end of what is a tip of an extraordinarily large iceberg and I think we will have to probably reconvene at some later stage to discuss some of the other aspects we haven’t even had time to cover today. I’m sure the people listening will have some thoughts as well, but I do thank you both very much, it’s been a most interesting conversation. Tim Low, Brian Boyle, thank you.
Brian Boyle: Thank you.
Tim Low: Thank you, Michael.
Michael Mackenzie: Tim Low, project officer with the Invasive Species Council and Brian Boyle, chief executive officer of the Game Council of New South Wales. We didn’t touch on welfare. I know that’s an issue that probably concerns many people listening. Perhaps we can tackle it again in the future.

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