Presentation sheds some light on the cost of aerial culling

27 May 2021

A presentation to the 18^th Australasian Vertebrate Pest Conference which is taking place online this week has provided an important piece to the puzzle of understanding the costs of aerial deer culling operations as well as the animal welfare implications.

Government’s throughout Australia are notoriously secretive about just about everything to do with aerial culling – we tend to get media releases touting “success” using spurious measures but very little of substance is ever forthcoming about the animal welfare implications, the pre and post cull monitoring of impacts and the cost to the public purse.

David Forsyth from the NSW Department of Primary Industries presented data on aerial shooting on agricultural properties in NSW, the ACT and Queensland – from a control point of view, the proverbial “low hanging fruit”.

Amongst the tables presented was the “Maximum and minimum hourly costs” of culling operations using the two most common helicopter types. The costs vary somewhat dependent on how many deer per hour are killed.

If we overlay those costs to the most recent report from Victoria’s aerial culling program in the Alps, there was 210 hours of flight time for a take of 1,473 deer, or just over 7 deer per hour – using the lowest minimum cost estimate this comes out at $399,000.00 in flight time alone (not taking into account administration costs, accommodation etc.) or a whopping $270.88 per deer…all with no clear reportable environmental benefit and no credible understanding of the impact of that harvest on population numbers or density.

By contrast the most recent data on Victoria’s recreational hunting harvest estimates the annual take to be as high as 213,500 deer…all with no clear reportable environmental benefit and no credible understanding of the impact of that harvest on population numbers or density.

Is the recreational harvest in fact worth over $57 million to Victoria alone?