Wild deer cause massive damage across the Alps and many other forested parts of south eastern Australia. The Victorian Government has accepted most of the recommendations of a parliamentary inquiry into the Control of Invasive Animals on Crown Land. Significantly, the government has acknowledged that recreational hunting is generally an ineffective means of invasive animal control and announced that feral cats will be declared pest animals on public land, allowing more effective control programs.
A statement from the responsible Minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, is available here. The minister says that Government will also engage with traditional owners and Aboriginal groups to increase Aboriginal participation in biodiversity and land management. The following media statement comes from the Victorian National Parks Association.
In its response the government has committed to reducing the impact of deer on biodiversity in Victoria across all land tenures, using a range of management tools.
The government will also seek federal funding for research into effective deer control methods.
“Current estimates for Victoria’s feral deer population is around one million and they are having a considerable impact on many of our finest national parks, including rainforests, wetlands and alpine regions,” the Victorian National Parks Association’s Phil Ingamells said.
“This is a very welcome response from the government.”
Importantly the Victorian Government has acknowledged that recreational hunting is generally an ineffective means of invasive animal control.
While it supports Parks Victoria’s strategic control programs using skilled amateur shooters, the government says such programs should be in addition to funded programs using professional pest animal controllers.
In other key recommendations supported by the government:
- There will be complementary control programs between parks and private land.
- Amateur hunters will have access to meat processing facilities for personal consumption of deer.
- Feral cats will be declared pest animals on public land, allowing more effective control programs.
However, the Victorian Government has not supported a recommendation to allow amateur hunters access to more powerful firearms and noise suppressors (silencers) for public safety reasons.
“These recommendations recognise the important role our land managers must play to halt the fast-growing threat of feral animals in our natural areas,” Mr Ingamells said.
“We can no longer pretend recreational hunting is the solution.”
Mountain Journal 
December 16, 2017 at 6:34 pm
A million tasty carcasses which we should be eating
December 17, 2017 at 8:54 pm
The concept of declaring a species that is widespread, a prolific breeder and coloniser across the landscape, to one land class in Victoria is curious. Would you declare, as a pest the European Red Fox for private land only? Indeed now, consider the case of the wild dog which is a declared pest on all lands, and the ‘Dingo’ is protected in Crown Land (Parks).
The Feral Cat (Felis silvestris catus) in Victoria is to be declared a pest on Crown land (Parks), only and that will be some time from mid 2018 to late 2019.
Am I confused or is there is a good death and a bad death.
Is it more satisfying for our native Spotted-tailed Quoll to die in a dingos jaws in the Alpine National Park or by the razor sharp teeth of the private land living feral cat visiting Parks, on a Sunday?
Has the cat (Felis silvestris catus) got your tongue Greens; Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party; and yours Liberal National Party ?
Perhaps your all not game enough to manage pests, like the soon to be declared Feral Cat, with the authority needed in Victoria. The chance, now, is for the Greens, SFFP, and LNP to advocate for an amendment for the Feral Cat legislation. Thus the soon to be declared Feral Cat can be declared for the whole of Victoria and the ‘house cat’ is then listed through a regulation as an undeclared version, as such mirroring the Queensland legislation on these versions of Felix.
But more curious, still, is the public servants who appear to consider the feral cat can understand the difference between land boundaries, and so keeping its native animal killing and disease spreading inside the ‘Park’ boundaries. Perhaps DWELP will be running interpretation of legislation classes for cats at our beleaguered TAFEs? Maybe more signs at Park gates?
Is this Victorian declaration of the Feral Cat on, only Crown Land an opportunity or a folly?
Is there a calculated strategy (hidden from the ‘dumb’ public) to walk the community into the idea of there being the bad cat (feral) and the good cat, an owned cat. And then by regulation extending the land classes to private lands when the current approach has been shown to have failed to stop the impacts of Feral Cat.
Have all of our native species and the landholders stock dying from predation and disease, got the time for the slowly, slowly approach, to declaring the feral cat on all land classes?
Or is it more likely the feral cats will only ever be a declared a pest on Crown, public, let’s call it Parks managed lands, and so the dollars wasted on Feral Cat control efforts in only Parks will grow, forever, like freeways?
Perhaps the next generation of humans, will learn to put the environment first with the urgency this requires and put petty political scoring and wedge politics last. Curious, is it not, we do have the time and skill to legislate for a good and a bad death for our native animals. Still if a cat can’t tell difference in land boundaries, then a dead Quoll is still a dead Quoll, whoever kills it.