The National “Feral Deer Action Plan Working Group” has released a draft of a “National Feral Deer Action Plan 2022-27”. The title of the draft plan betrays the ideology that is driving it. The adjective “feral” is unnecessary and semantically incorrect in the context of most of the wild deer populations in Australia. To highlight the point, the draft plan uses the word “feral” a staggering 427 times, uses the critical word “management” just 100 times, “research” only cracks 21 mentions (three of them in references) and “evidence” appears just once. The stated purpose of this draft plan is to suppress deer numbers, yet it mentions the dominant control tool, shooting, just 20. If you are a deer under this plan, you are 21 times more likely to be called names than to be shot.
The foreword to the draft plan lays bare the underlying ideology.
“Feral deer can be so damaging that many land managers believe they are emerging as ‘Australia’s next rabbit plague’”
A breeding pair of rabbits, and their offspring, can potentially produce 3.75 million rabbits over four years. A breeding pair of wild deer, and their offspring, can potentially have 16 deer over four years. The difference is so significant that the comparison is completely absurd. It is difficult to take the evidence base for this draft plan seriously when it kicks off with such blatant alarmism and misinformation.
What is most notable about the draft plan is the lengths it appears to go to avoid acknowledging and harnessing the most significant, active and beneficial stakeholders in wild deer management – recreational hunters. The draft plan considers a dozen different “control tools”, some of them as “out there” as drones and sterilisation. Recreational hunting does not feature. This is despite the fact that, in Victoria alone, recreational hunters kill as many as two hundred thousand wild deer a year and contribute $201 million and over 1,700 jobs to the state’s economy. It would seem that the control methods that don’t work and cost money are preferred over those that do work and make money.
Wild deer impacts must be properly and strategically addressed. That will not happen under a plan that ignores the contributions and motivations of the largest single interest group in deer and seeks to stoke fear and irrational commentary rather than lead a sober, evidence-based discussion about wild deer and their impacts.
SSAA Victoria is encouraging hunters to make submissions to this draft plan and point out the sheer folly of side-lining recreational hunting from these discussions.
The Plan – National Feral Deer Action Plan (feraldeerplan.org.au)
