This Tasmanian deer plan is bullshit, all smoke and mirrors. The claimed "explosion" in the deer population is fanciful. Deer have existed in Tasmania since 1830 and culling permits have been available to landowners for in excess of 30 years. Those cull permits have removed 000's of deer but have never achieved the take quota - why, if indeed there are so many deer. And, why after all the culling has there been the 'claimed' population explosion. The claims of farmers and NRE simply do not stack up. If indeed the cry of farmers was valid then they need to allow access to more responsible recreational hunters and not by charging unreasonable access fees. Recreational hunters are pitentially providing these farmers a 'free' on farm service by controlling browsing animals. It's time to offer recreational hunters a Fair Go, particularly those seeking property access. It's not unreasonable to suggest that many of these farmers, those claiming to have a deer problem, perpetuate their own on farm issues.
However, what has occurred in Tasmania is an expansion of the deer range - why? - because the government failed in it's responsibility to manage deer farms. They approved deer farms outside the 'traditional' deer range - eg: NW, NE, E COAST, the Peninsular, Huonville, Southport, Berriedale & many other locations. Most of those farms were hobby farms with little to no commercial value. Farm fences and tagging of farm deer were inadequately managed, government checks & balances and their own compliance regime and management oversight was allowed to fail. The government has never been honest in acknowledging their level of responsibility for these failures. They call themselves environmental managers, game managers and wildlife biologists but they have failed in every respect when it comes to managing the deer - No responsibility, No accountability -typical beaurocrats. The deer issues were resolved in 1993-1997 when the TDAC employed a bonafide U.S game biologist Brian Murphy. Science based solutions applied then were achieved in just 4 years. Fundamental elements underpinning that success included true understanding and experience managing deer, qualifications & experience working with deer, education, honesty, communication and open transparency. NRE have rarely demonstrated competence in these areas. And then, in the years following the TDAC project success government failed again = negligence, gross incompetence and a lack of transparency and truth.
It's well time that these incompete bureaucrats were moved into retirement and/or sacked and we again engage some competent , qualified wildlife (game) managers.
And, stop referring to our Fallow deer as feral. They are wild game animals, an 'introduced' species. They are not by the 'traditional' and true definition of 'feral' domestic animals gone wild, such as horses, goats, pigs, dogs, cats, buffalo.