By Tanya Steele
Feral deer continue to impact the Dandenong Ranges and beyond in Victoria and a local environmental expert and campaigner came together recently to host a conversation around the issue.
Dr Alex Maisey from La Trobe University, a lyrebird expert who grew up in the Dandenong Ranges and Victoria National Parks Association (VNPA) campaigner Jordan Crook hosted a webinar on Thursday 21 November tackling the big issue of feral deer.
Supported by the Biodiversity Council, Parks and Nature campaigner from VNPA Jordan Crook said they had good engagement from the webinar with almost 200 people attending.
“We had lots of questions and people asking for advice about how to deal with with feral deer in their area – a range of people from farmers to people who own property to protect it for nature and lots of different stories about how they’ve been impacted by feral deer,” he said.
Attendees reported a range of issues from having their cars written off and having their veggie patches ransacked to having revegetation projects completely destroyed by feral deer.
Deer are listed as pests in all states and territories except Victoria and Tasmania and Mr Crook said the feral deer issue is growing across Victoria – currently, there are estimated to be 250,000 to one million feral deer across Victoria
“I’m in the Yarra Valley, and I see it almost every day, the impact of feral deer, whether it’s on the road or in the bush,” he said.
“They’re impacting ecosystems in the top of the mountains and the Alpine bogs down to the rain forest valleys and the Dandenong Ranges – there’s a real need to get on and control them as a feral pest, instead of keeping them protected under the Wildlife Act.”
Mr Crook planned and organized the webinar off the back of a joint letter that 100 people and groups sent to the environment and agriculture minister calling for feral deer to be listed as a pest and not protected as wildlife in September this year.
“There’s a real need to remove all the red tape and bureaucracy around reducing the numbers, and the best way to do that is to list them as a pest alongside foxes and rabbits,” he said.
“It would be the first step, it would really simplify things and reduce that red tape for land managers.”
Dr Maisey said the listing is quite old now that that act and that listing and attitudes have changed and are changing – VNPA is trying to look at removing either real or perceived impediments to deer control and management as a pest species.
Biodiversity Council Co-Chief Councillor Dr Jack Pascoe at The University of Melbourne said deer are an established, but increasing presence across the state with wide-ranging impacts.
“We must find effective and adaptive mechanisms to control deer species at scale,” he said.
“The Victorian Government should take the advice of the Victorian public and experts and list deer as pest species under the CALP Act, and remove their protected status as part of an urgent and overdue reform of the outdated Victorian Wildlife Act.”
The way the species are currently listed affects how they are managed and Mr Crook said it’s standing in the way of things like biological control, as well as trapping.
“Trapping would be really useful in high density urban areas where deer are coming, where shooting is a bit more unsafe and harder, because it’s really confined,” he said.
“They’re listed as a game species under the Wildlife Act – so you’re not allowed to eradicate them, and it puts numbers on the amount of animals you’re allowed to remove.”
Dr Maisey spoke at the webinar about how areas around the Dandenong Ranges have changed quite significantly over the years with the impact of deer in the area and said there have been noticeable rises in the species number, especially after periods of vegetation growth after bushfires.
“After the 2009 bushfires, that’s when the deer seemed to be really noticeable – people everywhere were reporting feral deer,” he said.
Mr Maisey said afterwards areas nearby where he lived, including the Monbulk Creek and the threatened rainforest community of the Sassafras, then started to degrade at an incredible pace.
“Wallows were being made by the deer along the creek, and that crystal clear little brook that I used to drink from as a child is now full of these deer wallows,” he said.
“It actually was running turbid – with all the suspended clay.”
Mr Maisey said the impact of the deer extends to a whole host of endemic fauna that live in the water.
“Things like the Dandenongs freshwater amphipod, which is a little crustacean that lives nowhere else in the world — they’re super sensitive to that sedimentation,” he said.
The issue is not going away and Mr Cook said it seems like every year it gets worse and worse – with the general public coming more and more in contact with with feral deer.
“There’s definitely a need for the State government to step up and list them as a pest and get on with bringing their numbers down,” he said.
Dr Maisey said that there have been some wins in the past, including changes which allow private landowners to control deer without permits and the peri urban regional deer plan for the Dandenong Ranges area which he said has been quite successful.
“They’ve started a monitoring program and the key is in assessing the success of it and what’s really important is how much damage is not being done as a result of it.”
“These are 300-kilogram animals that eat a huge amount of vegetation and do a huge amount of damage.”
Some parts of hunting lobby groups want the animals to stay on the wildlife act and Dr Maisey said if you had deer as a value and a lot of people do see deer as an asset or a value in the forest, then maybe having them on that Wildlife Act would would allow for some level of conservation and sustainable management of that species.
“From a conservation perspective, we’d be pushing for control,” he said.
Dr Maisey said that looking forward the important thing is that it continues down the track beyond the current government funding cycle.
“How does the State government build this sort of effort into sustainable, ongoing management – and that’s the challenge,” he said.
So far over 1,000 have signed the VNPA and the association will continue its work to get listing feral deer as a pest animal.
“We need to keep the momentum to make sure that improvement is is held on to ongoing for future,” said Dr Maisey.
