Call deer what they are — pests
Deer are being treated as if they are Tasmanian wildlife, says Andrew Cox
THIS week across Tasmania small groups of people will gather in civic and sports centres to talk about a growing problem that could eventually threaten the state’s muchtouted reputation as the home of a clean, green economy.
They won’t be talking about the traditional threats to the environment, they’ll be talking about deer; introduced to Tasmania by the British for food and sport, despite the fact the island’s native animals sustained Tasmanian Aboriginals for tens of thousands of years.
Mainland Australia is grappling with growing numbers of six deer species — fallow, chital, hog, rusa, red and sambar deer. Tasmania is grappling with growing numbers of just one species, fallow deer, but that is more than enough. Like so many hard- hooved species introduced into Australia, deer are destructive beasts. They destroy native vegetation by trampling and grazing plants. They ringbark trees, foul waterholes, cause soil erosion and spread weeds.
Deer also hurt farmers. The Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association told a Senate hearing that the animals cost the state’s agricultural industry at least $ 10m annually, possibly as much as $ 80m a year.
And what about the threats to motorists? Hitting a large deer on the Southern Outlet or West Tamar Highway could easily lead to a fatality.
In 2016 increasing numbers of deer caught the attention of the Legislative Council. An inquiry ensued and the results were clear — deer are spreading into the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area and other sensitive areas, including on Bruny Island.
This year results of an aerial survey across about a third of Tasmania put the population at about 54,000, much larger than expected. The survey did not cover other areas we know suffer from deer invasion, including Bruny Island, North- West and south around Dover. Clearly, there are far more than 54,000 deer and there needs to be a rapid expansion of monitoring.
Apart from Tasmania and Victoria, the rest of Australia recognises deer as a pest species and manages them to mitigate impacts on farmers and the environment. The regime in Tasmania could have been written a century ago. It gives this single species special protections aimed at maintaining herds for hunters, with not nearly enough attention to environmental, agricultural and economic impacts. The government talks about wild deer as if deer are part of Tasmania’s wildlife
pantheon. They are not. Deer are an introduced animal that while providing excellent eating pose real threats to the natural environment and farmers. The first step of a new deer management plan, which will be the focus of meetings this week, should be to call deer what they are, a pest species, so they can be managed as such.
An effective deer management plan would reduce the damaging impacts on farmers and environment. It would draw up containment lines to keep deer out of the Wilderness World Heritage Area and other high value conservation areas and would eradicate them from Bruny Island. Reclassifying deer as a pest animal will let Tasmania reset how it manages their destructive impacts. It will not reduce hunting opportunities. If anything, it will make it easier to hunt deer.
To paraphrase a proverb, the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name. To speak more plainly, it’s time to start calling a spade a spade and a deer a pest.