Often governments and non-government organisations will dump reports that they wish to remain out of the news cycle late on a Friday afternoon, in the hope that most of the public has ‘checked out’ by then and come Monday the news cycle will have moved to other issues, therefore burying their bad news for them.
So it was of interest that the Invasive Species Council (ISC) did exactly this late on Friday before the long weekend in Victoria when it released a report titled: Counting the Doe: an analysis of the economic, social & environmental cost of feral deer in Victoria. A “new independent report by Frontier Economics” that was prepared for the Invasive species council, “pro bono”.
Upon reading the report it became obvious why.
You may recall the name Frontier Economics from previous independent reports they have also provided pro bono to the Invasive Species Council on horses in the Kosciuszko National Park.
Frontier Economics was also subject to a review that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission requested that concluded that its report was unlikely to produce reliable results, in part based on some of the assumptions used.
Perhaps as a sign of things to come, the report's first error was in the title, incorrectly labelling Deer in Victoria as feral. An error repeated a further 433 times.
Some others for the highlight reel:
$308m to $474m in social costs from reduced recreation and use values
The report boldly assumes that the use of National and State Parks for recreation will be dampened by 1% due to the impact of deer, this is despite deer hunting being the largest below the snow line use of the Alpine National Park for nine months of the year, notwithstanding the obvious point that more people are using the Parks because of deer.
Andrew Cox from the ISC has also previously suggested that horses “are scaring away tourists” from the Kosciuszko National Park.
$576m to $825m in economic costs from deer-related vehicle accidents
In 2016 there were 87 car accidents attributed to deer, falling nearly three times short of dogs with 217 and wombats with 228. However, Skippy reigns supreme, you are a whopping 51 times more likely to run into skippy who accounted for 4,443 incidents of his own. For every 10 accidents, old Skippy was implicated in 8 of them. The average cost for these claims was $5,000 or at least $622,020,000 up until 2050. To put this into perspective, the report factors in vehicle repairs for deer at $11,000 a pop, whilst also suggesting it could be up to $30,000. Time to be a panel beater?
Increased risk of disease
An alarmist report would let itself down if it were to not stoke the flames of the risk of disease card. As you would have read previously on Austdeer, that wild deer are not currently host reservoirs for Plasmodium, Trypanosoma, Babesia, Theileria or Sarcocystis.
What is missed out
Despite being a 52-page long economics report, there was not a single reference to three of the most robust economic studies conducted.
Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions:
Federal Department of Health:
Perhaps it may be because the above reports, which rely on data, not generous assumptions, value Deer hunting in Victoria at $201m a year. Which equates to over 6 billion dollars over the next 30 years.
The independent, pro bono report has done nothing other than to prove that deer are a valuable sustainable wild food resource. When was the last time you spent $1 and got given back $4?
Sometimes, you get what you pay for.
There is more to deer than hunting.
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