The complex conundrum of wild deer in Australia 🦌 | Meet the Ferals Ep 3 | ABC Australia

[Music] deer are native to all continents except australia and antarctica but they sure have made themselves at home here wallowing in waterways pushing through farm fences and being a menace on the roads deer are by far our most charismatic introduced animal deer are an emerging species they're in all states and territories in australia and they're increasing their distribution of abundance there are six species ranging from the most common fellow deer to the large red and samba most were introduced in the 1800s for hunting but some are descendant of animals that have escaped from venison farms five generations of the western family have farmed in the snowy mountains in the past few years mal weston says deer have driven him close to breaking point shooting animals all the time is just yeah playing my depressing i've been to grazing and looking after animals and yeah and breeding them not just killing them he runs beef cattle but has spent the nights hunting deer so this is an area here that is badly infested with deer yes yes as you said look oh there you go oh there's a whole bunch there's a heap there these images were taken on the property of jinderbarn farmer ted rowley when it's -14 in the snowy mountains proof and i go shooting deer on a motorbike um i sometimes think i'd much rather be on the sheepskin rug in front of the fire with a glass of good cheres grazing pressure from deer has meant some farmers have halved their cattle stocking rate cutting into income i like animals i've got much better things to do than shoot animals every day and i have to do that because when the population was low the parliament of new south wales decided to protect them to build the population we and our neighbours deal with that consequence every day central to the issue of deer management is whether they're treated as a pest or a resource for game hunting and each state takes a different approach in new south wales the strength of the hunting lobby has protected deer so they're available for game hunters that changed in 2019 now farmers with a firearms licence can control them as they would other ferals like pigs or goats queensland western australia south australia the northern territory and the act have long taken the hard-line approach of treating them as a pest to be controlled while victoria and tasmania still have some protections in place listing deer as game or wildlife and this is what farmers in the island state have been dealing with for generations as many as a hundred thousand fellow deer across much of tasmania they're a feral animal they're not ours they're not the farmers animals we're restricted in how we can manage them and uh we'd like access to to more ability to to shoot them deer management here has always been a problem back in my father's day and in my day it takes up a huge amount of time tasmanian game hunters have been limited to a three-month season and they have only been able to kill two animals at a time but the state government has been opening up reserves and some national parks for shooting if they get into the wild forest for example in the tarkine or around cradle mountain they won't be eradicable it'll be then a job of control and we have a historical moment now to decide the welfare of the future as far as deer is concerned while game hunters are often seen as the solution there is a conflict between these so-called hunters and those who support mass culls when we ask our hunters who hunt on this farm to shoot every animal they see this look a bit funny because they say i've got a good set of antlers or i've filled the fridge with venison so you're lighter that isn't pest animal control so there's a really big difference between hunting for fun on saturdays and pest animal control a lot of hunters have problems with shooting animals to waste it's been a prerequisite we put on helping out whenever we can is that we want to be able to use the venison just because it's really hard to get a hunter interested in shooting something just for the sake of shooting it professional sharpshooters are a different breed though they will cull pest animals in victoria's high country the alpine deer control program employs a combination of recreational shooters and paid professionals like kirk stone on a horse it masks your scent and go out in some moonlight and just move up on the deer in those feed areas so it's basically night hunting and such just down the next three lines [Applause] okay loose off you go off yeah off you go off you go let's go where is it good good girl good girl so that's a nice little uh samba spiker probably two 18 months he's in velvet which um means his um antlers are still soft and full of blood and on thermal that shows up like a christmas tree measurements are taken and blood in part to be screened for viruses and parasites deer can transfer a range of diseases to livestock including the dreaded foot and mouth we know that they are susceptible to a number of diseases they are potentially problematic for lifestyle species and the reason why that is the case is because they are very closely related to the livestock species and we do know that they use the pastures and livestock resources quite regularly so there is lots of opportunities for interaction and cross infection these hard-hooved animals are tough on fragile environments too this is a deer wallow in the alpine national park and a sensor camera here reveals shots of a large stag having a merry old time so they'll thrash around with their antlers and displace the vegetation and cause these sort of this muddy disturbance creating bare grounds and this muddy depression that they'll roll around in and they'll urinate in here and splash it around and they use that as part of their social system the males but unfortunately as you can see it does a lot of damage to these really sensitive environments greening australia says deer are changing the architecture of the country they remove the understory and they affect the regenerating trees the result is that you get a a grass grassland with a woody overstory rather than a complex woodlands that the animals and birds need deer have been identified as such an emerging problem that governments and industry bodies have put together a nine million dollar monitoring and control program coordinated through the centre for invasive species solutions this is really the first national uh approach if you like to managing deer uh prior to this there's been a little bit of work in the various states and and territories with deer but nothing at a large scale population data has been collected mostly by aerial surveys next we'll be working out how to manage all the different species each of those species has different habitat preferences slightly different ecology and biology different response to being hunted or to having a fence erected so we're not dealing with one species like we would be if we were talking about foxes or feral goats we're actually talking about five or six different different species and each one is different wow it's really complex isn't it like a big jigsaw puzzle it is many say these animals should not be killed and wasted venison makes for good eating and is valued by chefs well we've got this great product which is um roaming around here it's introduced it's actually getting to plague proportions now and the flavor of the meat is phenomenal but the logistics of wild harvest are difficult the distance from markets the need for refrigeration and food safety requirements all make the meat expensive and those who actually farm deer for a living are concerned the market will be flooded the problem is that the market is already under stress if you look at the tasmania it's a wash with venison in terms of people's households many families have got a member or friends who are hunters and so there's a lot of venison that's in people's freezers and so our market really is through the restaurant food services trade so many options for controlling or capitalizing on this most charismatic of ferals

Channel: ABC Australia

Views: 425,335

Rating: 4.7590361 out of 5

Keywords: ABC, Australia, Landline, Landline ABC, feral deer australia, wild deer australia, wild deer hunting and cooking, deer hunting, deer hunting victoria, deer hunting australia, deer hunting nsw, deer hunting tasmania, deer hunting south australia, pest deer, feral animals and pests in australia, feral animals, Meet the Ferals Landline, Prue Adams

Id: Aa7Ehl9UcHY

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 23 2020

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Introduced to Australia as a game animal, feral deer are rampant across the country, devouring pasture and causing environmental damage. Control solutions are not simple.

Meet the Ferals looks at the devastating impact feral animals have on Australia's environment and agriculture and how farmers control introduced pests like cats, goats, pigs, rabbits and wild dogs.

Produced and presented by reporter Prue Adams, this series will focus on a different feral animal each episode. The content has been gathered from the three decades Landline has been on air, with background information and support provided through our Centre.