Credibility counts in management debate

The recent release of an Australian Senate report into the management of deer, goats and pigs in Australia has, once again, laid bare the extent to which people and bodies which purport to be serious and informed participants in conversations about wild deer management will engage in unfounded and incredible alarmism.

An example of this is in the fawning response to the report from the Invasive Species Council (ISC).

Despite the official sounding name, the ISC is a non-government, non-for-profit with opaque funding sources and an established track record of favouring sensationalism over substance.

Public statements such as this:

“Most of the Senate report recommendations centre on feral deer, where six species presently occupy less than 10% of Australia, but are projected to spread to almost the entire continent.”[i]

Starkly highlight the degree to which the ISC will chase misleading headlines at the expense of rational, evidence-based discussion.

The assertion that wild deer “are projected to spread to almost the entire continent” isn’t a complete lie – it is however what seems to be a deliberate and completely misleading misrepresentation of the truth.

This particular piece of apocryphal information seems to have its origins in some modelling undertaken by the Invasive Animals CRC (now the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions) back in 2011 using the Climatch Algorithm.

Climatch allows researchers to predict a species’ distribution, using only climatic variables.

Put simply it’s a crude and coarse desktop tool which doesn’t take into account other factors such as habitat, food and water sources, predation, disease or means of immigration.

The same model would likely tell us that all of Antarctica has the potential for the distribution of Polar Bears.

The particular mapping from Climatch that the ISC base this statement on shows most deer species as having “high potential” where they aren’t and as having “low potential” in the areas where they have successfully established.

What this really tells you is that the Climatch model, used in isolation, is essentially meaningless when it comes to deer management in Australia.

Now, the ISC either know this, and don’t care because the alarmism suits their agenda, or they don’t know this and they sincerely believe their fanciful predictions. Either way they are not credible participants in meaningful conversations about wild deer management in Australia

There are a wild range of different, complex and overlapping views, values, priorities and opinions at play in discussions about wild deer management. A broad spectrum that ranges a desire to prosecute eradication by any means fair or foul at one extreme to chasing total protection on animal rights grounds at the other.

Despite the polarisation, there is, or at least there ought to be, a fair bit of common ground for most or all of the people who are interested in the management of wild deer in Australia.

History and logic tell us that we get the best outcomes when find ways to work together; hyperbole aside there is a relatively small percentage of the community who actually have a real interest in wild deer and their management.

From the ADA’s perspective we can only collaborate when we have trust in the process and when the people who we are collaborating with are credible.

The question for the government agencies and non-government players who stand shoulder to shoulder with the ISC is “how does that reflect on their own credibility and motivations?”