30 October 2020
The Victorian Government has today released a “Victorian Deer Control Strategy”. The document contains some useful elements and direction, but it also largely ignores the role of the largest and most active stakeholder group in wild deer management, deer hunters.
The Sustainable Hunting Action Plan committed to “developing a deer management strategy that sets a strategic plan to maintain sustainable hunting opportunities while reducing the impact of deer on biodiversity on all land tenures in the state”, this plan does some of that, but we are disappointed by both the re-brand and the re-focus of what was a hunter driven action.
The public consultation process was hijacked by the Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA) in a cynical attempt to put their ideology ahead of action and to prosecute their broader agenda to lock recreational hunters out of public land.
Throughout the development process the VNPA stood out amongst a diverse range of stakeholders for their belligerence and narrow mindedness and for the shallowness of their understanding and insight on management issues.
We are heartened that the VNPA failed in their core goal of reclassifying deer as pests, but we do note that their campaign was successful in pressuring the Government to re-align what was a very well-considered and developed draft which would have delivered for all relevant stakeholders.
Much of this strategy is in line with the management objectives that the Australian Deer Association has been prosecuting for many years now. None of us want wild deer to cause negative impacts on our precious environmental, agricultural or cultural heritage assets. This strategy also clearly recognises that managing wild deer as a game species and protecting hog deer on private land is consistent with those important aims.
The strategy does repeat fanciful and unsubstantiated claims about the role of deer as vectors for disease, tempered (as this claim invariably is) by the word “potential”…which roughly translates to “we have no evidence whatsoever but this will scare people and get us more funding” and, about the incidence of vehicular accidents involving deer (the reality is that less than 2% of animal collisions in Australia involve deer).
The strategy also significantly underplays the role of recreational hunters who are, by far, the largest interest group with 40,000 participants. Hunters are also the largest force in deer management with an annual harvest approaching 180,000 deer in Victoria.
As is our practice, we will provide clear, regular reporting of the Government’s performance against this strategy and we will continue to prosecute sound, evidence based wild deer management and the important role that recreational hunters play.