FERAL deer control has long divided the South East community, with some landholders wanting a tougher stance, fearing numbers are growing and spreading across the region.
Others see deer as endemic in the region and eradication not feasible.
According to Natural Resources SE, since 2009, 4604 deer have been culled from a helicopter, including 1206 in the past two years.
Many want to see a federal government-funded aerial survey and shooting program – to which taxpayers contribute about $200,000 a year – funded beyond June 2018.
The issue will be under scrutiny during a special Livestock SA meeting at the Crown Inn Hotel, Kingston, on April 3 from 7pm.
Among landholder concerns are illegal poachers trespassing on their properties, damage to fences and pastures and the potential spread of livestock diseases such as ovine johnes disease, bovine johnes disease and leptospirosis.
But the Australian Deer Association insists the SE deer population is steady, especially since a 2011 order from the Environment Resources & Development Court of SA on Tom and Pat Brinkworth to improve fencing in three deer enclosures.
Keith farmer James Darling says feral deer needs to become a community priority.
Mr Darling’s property Duck Island was the site of the first trial aerial shooting in 2007, with 182 deer culled in six hours, but a decade later he fears numbers are escalating again.
In 2016, 548 were shot from the helicopter across the region, compared to 297 in 2015.
Last year, Mr Darling put three recommendations to a Tatiara District Council meeting, which were all unanimously carried by the Limestone Coast Local Government Association.
Two of these involved LCLGA lobbying to ensure funding for an annual aerial survey and control continues, and advocating to ensure the program is expanded to include ADA and its associated properties.
Mr Darling said aerial control had been the “linchpin” to ground control.
He believes the funding is money well spent, with feral deer a “biosecurity time bomb”.
“Landholders have little or no information concerning the notifiable diseases that deer can carry or what protocols are enforced if disease is detected,” he said.
“It seems the authorities prefer to pretend it is not an issue rather than to address it with accessible information and accountability.”
Mr Darling said deer were “environmental vandals”, wreaking havoc on fences, pasture, young trees, native vegetation and further endangered vulnerable malleefowl by using their mounds as play-pens.
“Feral deer are a community, ethical and public safety issue, as well as a long-term threat to the livestock industry of the region,” Mr Darling said.
He welcomes the review of the SA Feral Deer Policy 2005, which he says has proven “inadequate” in enforcing an acceptable standard of fencing for deer enclosures.
His final recommendation was for other government agencies to support the SE NRM Board to ensure the ERD Court makes a binding and effective order in regard to confining deer within the major SE deer enclosures.
“We need a transparent public process that expresses what effective and efficient landholder compliance means,” Mr Darling said.
Livestock SA southern region chairman Peter Stock hopes the meeting will provide a platform for open discussion about feral deer.
A range of experts have been invited to share their knowledge about deer behaviour and legislation and landholders will be able to highlight their concerns.
“We have some landholders who want every last one culled and others who want to preserve them, so we need to work collaboratively with all groups to get a plan and get the numbers, which have been increasing, under control,” Mr Stock said.
A PIRSA spokesperson said feral deer presented a major threat on many fronts from competition for livestock pasture to adversely affecting biodiversity and a public safety risk.
However the biosecurity risk posed by feral deer from carrying livestock diseases was negligible.
UNFAIR TARGET
Australian Deer Association SA president Patrick Ross says the ADA is being unjustly blamed for allowing feral deer to breed up.
Its more than 500 members are actually contributing to the solution, hunting more than 600 deer a year in the SE alone.
The only property the ADA owns is 690 hectares of heritage scrub near Marcollat, which Mr Ross said was managed to the ‘letter of the law’ for declared pests such as rabbits, foxes and deer.
“We cannot put up a deer-proof fence because the law says we cannot contain deer on heritage land,” he said.
The Lucindale farmer says the large increase seen in the aerial shooting program in 2016 is an “anomaly”, with a fire in the Tilley Swamp Conservation Park in 2015 making it easier for shooters to locate deer the following year.
Jip Jip Conservation Park was also included for the first time in the aerial cull, where 126 deer were shot on 126ha, adding to the numbers.
Mr Ross said mistruths were being spread about deer being vectors for livestock disease when overseas experience showed this was not the case.
“The greatest risk to a livestock property in the SE is not deer, it is their own biosecurity plan and sheep getting out into the neighbours and coming back,” he said.
Mr Ross said deer had been part of the landscape for 150 years and it would be uneconomical to aim for total eradication.
But there is room for a change in landholder mindset, he said.
“Just like with kangaroos, the general public and those in peri-urban areas do not see deer as a threat until they are present in large numbers and that is when our members often get a call,” he said.
“If more landholders – instead of seeing foxes, rabbits and deer as an economic cost – allowed people to access their properties to shoot foxes or kill rabbits or hunt deer, they could actually get an economic return.”