by stepbystep » Tue 28 Aug, 2018 1:28 pm
From behind the Mockery's wall...
MANAGED eradication rather than recreational shooting of the deer now invading the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is the key to confronting a problem which, if not checked, will cost taxpayers and the Tasmanian economy millions of dollars in the decades to come.
Eradication of deer requires professional shooters and is a managerial, not recreational, task. Dedication to the goal and professional management are priorities over recreation (which the Macquarie Dictionary defines as “refreshment by means of some pastime, agreeable exercise or the like”): eradicating deer is a nasty and brutish requirement without enjoyment in many people’s thinking.
Eradicating deer to protect our world-famous wild environment is no more recreational than fire-fighting, weed control or acting to prevent the spread of root rot.
An essential requirement of recreational shooting is to restrict the kill so the deer population is maintained rather than eliminated. That is contrary to the needs of national parks.
I knew when I advocated culling of deer to check their invasion of the TWWHA that this would create a prime shooting gallery for feeble-minded politicians who want to make environmentalists rather than the environment their target. So be it.
However, the prospect of deer infesting the whole island of Tasmania is real and requires an above-politics resolve.
Deer create chaos and destruction for natural ecosystems. They are big feral herbivores which replicate quickly, can range over long distances and eat large volumes of plants with no discrimination for the rare, the beautiful, or the essential feedstock of native wildlife. They cause great damage to crops and eat no less in hidden wild places.
Good government policy would aim to stop the spread of deer into protected areas and eliminate infestations. Premier Hodgman’s stated aims will do neither. Nowhere in the Liberals’ election policies (which flagged shooting in national parks) or in last week’s announcement does the Government spell out protecting Tasmania’s greatest economic asset, the TWWHA, from deer as a priority or even a goal. Recreational (having fun) shooting is front-of-stage but keeping the TWWHA deer-free gets no call at all.
However Premier Hodgman, who has appointed himself minister for national parks and the TWWHA, can claim consistency of policy in handing Tasmania’s natural realms to a growing line-up of profiteers and exploiters. He mounted an international tour-de-force with prime minister Tony Abbott, rebuffed by the World Heritage Committee, to open Tasmania’s World Heritage Area to logging. He has opened wilderness heartlands to be degraded by favoured commercial tourist operators. Now he backs recreational rather than managerial shooting to control rather than eliminate deer.
For this premier and government, Tasmania’s wild and scenic country is like the goose that laid the golden egg — available for instant gutting rather than prudent long-term protection.
At the heart of this ideology is the disintegration of Tasmania’s once world-leading National Parks and Wildlife Service. Starting with an embittered premier Robin Gray after he lost the battle to dam the Franklin River, the service has been serially defunded (except for rare Greens-won windfalls) and repressed even though it is responsible for managing more than one third of Tasmania. The Greens rescued NPWS from early oblivion by insisting it remain a distinct department in premier Michael Field’s Green-Labor Accord years (1989-92) but Liberal and Labor governments have since emasculated the service and turned it into a servant for private tourism, logging and, now, shooting.
Last week’s press release from Will Hodgman, about opening national parks for recreational deer shooters, was a confused melange calling the Greens hypocrites but labelling me, the darkest Green, as having common sense.
Let me clear this Liberal fog.
Here’s a set of guidelines to protect the TWWHA from the deer invasion which has already spread the full length of the Great Western Tiers and into the Central Plateau lakes district.
PARKS and Wildlife Service (PWS) to have full control of the TWWHA and national park deer management.
URGENT funding, including monitoring deer spread.
A PLAN to eliminate deer.
PWS authorised and supervised eradication.
KEEP ban on recreational shooting in national parks.
CLEAR and defensible containment line, for example the Lake Highway (though some deer have already crossed west of the highway).
CLOSE areas to the public when culling is under way.
KEEP areas near national parks free of further deer farms.
To labour a point for Premier Hodgman, there is a difference between shooting for recreation and using recreational shooters for management. Recreational shooters may well have the professional skills, under PWS supervision, to help remove deer. Otherwise, they have no place in protected areas.
As it stands, the Hodgman Government’s policy fosters the idea of introducing shooting to the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area with no goal of ending it — ever. This is a colossal loss for everyone who thought the Tasmanian wilds were protected to safeguard nature and to provide the ultimate place for true recreation and refreshment for the human soul.
Dr Bob Brown is president of the Bob Brown Foundation and a former Greens senator.
The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders ~ Edward Abbey
