LOOKING BACK Ken Slee
Since its formation, the ADA’s East Gippsland Branch has worked hard to increase hunting opportunities for their area’s iconic hog deer – first through a campaign to maintain access to Boole Poole Peninsula (from 1980), then via the Blond Bay Project (ongoing from 1984), through mapping suitable deer habitat (1985) and more recently by revegetation works at Clydebank Morass State Game Reserve (2005 to 2015).
This area of marginal farmland and coastal public land on the southern shore of the Gippsland Lakes had for many years held a small population of hog deer. After property developers bought up the farmland to subdivide it for housing the Victorian Government stepped in and said “no, the land is low-lying, fragile and impossible to service”. Meanwhile, the farmland had started reverting to a wilderness of bracken, scrub and trees with areas of rough pasture – it was becoming ideal hog deer habitat and deer numbers were booming.
By the late 1970s and early 1980s Boole Poole Peninsula was one of the most productive hog deer hunting areas in Gippsland, with approximately 25 per cent of the annual take coming from the 2,000ha peninsula, this despite it being mostly privately owned but with access to the developers’ land not being policed.
With the Victorian Government likely to acquire 1,500ha of the developers’ land on Boole Poole for inclusion in the existing Gippsland Lakes Coastal Park, the ADA’s East Gippsland Branch decided to put a case for continued access by hunters during the duck and hog deer seasons.
Field and Game and SSAA were brought on board and a printed 10-page submission was developed with assistance from Arthur Roberts (a Parks Victoria employee and former Fisheries and Wildlife Officer) for presentation to the local councils and members of the Victorian parliament. ADA’s recommendations were:
Much of the 1,500ha of developers’ land was subsequently acquired by government and added to the Gippsland Lakes Coastal Park with no provision for game hunting. However, ADA’s efforts later bore fruit when it was able to argue that the management plan for the area had never considered whether hunting was an appropriate activity there. In response, a section of Boole Poole Peninsula was added to the Blond Bay balloted hunt. Although this area has now largely returned to scrub and has only a small population of undernourished deer, for a few years after hunting returned it was the prime location to take a ballot-hunt trophy hog deer stag and still produces the occasional animal during ballot hunts.
This ongoing project was described in detail in the November 2023 edition of Australian Deer and although it had its roots in the East Gippsland Branch, like the other hog deer initiatives described here, this one ended up receiving support across ADA.
In the 1980s ADA employed wildlife biologist Max Downes to advise on issues relevant to deer and deer management. In 1984/5 funding was obtained from the Australian Government’s Sports Development Program with the objectives:
Under Max’s supervision ADA Brisbane Branch member Myron Cause had organised the mapping of red deer habitat in South-East Queensland. Because of this experience he was chosen to oversee the mapping of hog deer in Gippsland with local coordination.
ADA members who were experienced hog deer hunters were invited to meetings at Bairnsdale and Foster where topographic maps were scrutinised and square kilometre areas were discussed to reach consensus on their ability to harbour hog deer. Areas were classified based on their habitat quality – ‘excellent’, ‘mediocre’ and ‘poor’.
The investigation identified hog deer habitat stretching from Wonthaggi in the west to Bemm River in the east. While most populations were coastal, some inland populations living along rivers were also identified. The total area of suitable habitat on both public and private land was around 1,400km 2 (140,000ha) made up of 360km 2 of excellent habitat, 315km 2 of mediocre habitat and 750km 2 of poor habitat. Across this area the harvest of hog deer was very low, indicating that much could be done to increase deer numbers, improve hunter access to a scarce resource and to boost their success rate.
Forty years on, the relative merits of some areas of habitat have clearly changed, exemplified by the likes of Boole Poole Peninsula and Blond Bay State Game Reserve, both judged as ‘excellent’ back then but now undoubtedly ‘poor’ being a wilderness of unproductive scrub that is also home to unwanted sambar populations. Other areas have probably gone in the opposite direction, exemplified by the management of private property by quite a few hunters and by ADA’s revegetation efforts at Clydebank Morass.
A recent report by the Arthur Rylah Institute indicates that the area occupied by hog deer has not significantly expanded or contracted since the ADA’s mapping exercise of 1985, highlighting the fact that that native vegetation laws have stopped land clearing in coastal Gippsland and that hog deer are also unlikely to colonise areas outside their existing range.
Like all of East Gippsland’s large State Game Reserves that harbour hog deer, Clydebank Morass State Game Reserve had been farmed before it was incorporated into the reserve system. While reed beds, scattered red gums and patches of paperbarks had persisted in some areas, there was little cover on the higher ground apart from tall, introduced grasses. These grassland areas had minimal conservation value and were less than ideal habitat for hog deer, making them ripe for intervention. Revegetation using native species would be a win for conservation and a potential win for hog deer and hog deer hunters!
In the years prior to 2005, two techniques had been developed for broadscale revegetation with native species - planting nursery-grown seedlings using volunteer labour and directly drilling seed into ploughed furrows. Knowing that broad-scale revegetation was doable, Parks Victoria and Greening Australia were approached by the ADA’s East Gippsland Branch with a proposal to restore native vegetation on the hundreds of hectares of grassland in Clydebank Morass State Game Reserve.
Following a positive response from both, in May 2005 the East Gippsland Branch, with enthusiastic support from other ADA branches, rolled up to plant the first 5,000 seedlings on the natural levy along the Avon River. This volunteer work was then followed up with the direct seeding of an additional nearby area by Greening Australia.
Between this first planting and 2015, additional widely scattered areas were planted and seeded so that at the conclusion of the program the majority of the higher ground on the 1,200ha game reserve had been totally transformed with well-established and thriving native species.
Volunteer labour was essential to the success of the project with ADA members from the Gippsland and East Gippsland Branches most prominent but significant numbers coming from other Victorian branches as well as from interstate to participate. Planting weekends also provided attendees with the opportunity to get an introduction to a very different deer species and to investigate some of their coastal habitat.
Funding and other support for the revegetation work came from a number of sources including Parks Victoria through their volunteer projects, Greening Australia, the Commonwealth Government’s Envirofund and of course from ADA at branch, state and national level.
Twenty-odd years down the track many of the trees are approaching 15 metres tall with thousands of self-sown seedlings establishing around them following a few high-rainfall years. In addition, swamp paperbarks are suckering widely on wetland margins and forming dense thickets that are ideal as deer harbour. While it will be decades before the vegetation approaches what was present before it was cleared and farmed, natural attrition due to the passing of time, assisted by floods, droughts and wildfire, will undoubtedly see the return of a self-sustaining and rich environment.
One constraint on hog deer and native wildlife that has not been addressed as yet at Clydebank, is the need to provide a more reliable source of fresh water, which is particularly relevant in drought years. Hopefully, this can be remedied in future years.
And what of the deer? While there was always a small population of hog deer present in Clydebank Morass, numbers now are certainly better than they were and hunting opportunities have also improved. However, the deer, as always, still present a challenge during the April season, particularly since the reserve is also popular with duck hunters.
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