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Feral deer are emerging as one of Australia’s most serious environmental and agricultural threats and Victoria has possibly the largest deer population in Australia, estimated at more than a million animals.
The deer population is expanding rapidly and invading new areas. With a lack of predators, occurrence in vast and remote areas and great habitat flexibility, deer are set to become one of Victoria’s and ultimately Australia’s most damaging pest animal invaders.
Deer were introduced as a game animal in the mid 1880s and numbers remained relatively low for decades until significant population growth and range expansion became noticeable in the 1980s, exacerbated by the release of deer following the collapse of the deer farming industry.
There are now four wild species of deer in Victoria: sambar, red, fallow and hog deer. Of those, sambar is the by far the most populous and widespread, now occurring throughout most of eastern Victoria.
Social: Deer are having serious impacts on peri-urban areas such as outer eastern Melbourne and regional townships where their presence can be intimidating. They destroy fences and gardens and are becoming a serious road safety issue. Irresponsible deer hunting activity can be very distressing for peri-urban residents and recreational users of public land.
Cultural: Aboriginal cultural heritage values are at risk from the impacts of deer. Deer can compact soil and damage native plant species, leading to exposure and erosion of important Aboriginal cultural sites.
Economic: Deer graze and browse in cereal crops, orchards, vineyards, market gardens, pastures and plantations and destroy fences and nets. This is having a serious impact on the economic viability of agriculture and potentially forestry in places. Even more serious is the potential of deer to transfer disease to livestock and potentially humans and other animals.
Environmental: Feral deer are transforming the state’s native ecosystems. The impact of more than 1 million deer on the biodiversity of natural landscapes in Victoria is substantial. As well as competing with native animals, degrading waterways and spreading weeds, serious damage is being caused to very sensitive ecosystems such as alpine bogs, rainforest and coastal areas.
The legal status of deer in Victoria is curious.
Protected wildlife: Chital, fallow, hog, red, rusa, sambar, sika, sika-red hybrids and Wapiti are listed as Protected Wildlife under the Wildlife Act 1975 and it is an offence to hunt, take, or destroy these deer species unless authorised.
Game Species: Chital, fallow, hog, red, rusa and sambar deer are also Game Species under the Wildlife Act 1975 and can be hunted by licensed game hunters under conditions.
Threatening process: Sambar deer are listed as a potentially threatening process under Victoria’s Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988 because they pose a significant threat to the survival and evolutionary development of numerous plant taxa and ecological communities.
Exotic fauna: The National Parks Act 1975 requires the extermination or control of exotic fauna (including deer) in national and state parks, wilderness parks and other reserves.
In 2020 the Victorian Deer Control Strategy was released after several years in development. During that process, there was significant pressure exerted by the community to change the legal status of deer from “protected wildlife” to that of a “pest animal”, to appropriately recognise the population explosion and serious impacts across Victoria.
While the final plan was an improvement to some extent on the hunting-orientated first draft, the Victorian Government chose to retain the protected status of deer. This is an indication of the influence the deer hunting lobby and Game Management Authority have on deer policy in Victoria.
The perplexing legal status of deer in Victoria makes it all the more difficult for the community to appreciate the serious impact of deer and to have in place effective deer eradication and control programs.
The Victorian Deer Control Strategy can be found on the Victorian Government website.
Clearly not. While random recreational hunting and organised volunteer shooter programs remove some deer, it is not strategic, has limited capacity and it is patently evident much more needs to be done.
To effectively reduce deer impacts we need the best research and experience to inform well-funded regional control plans, implemented through large, integrated cross-tenure programs utilising professional shooters and a variety of methods and new technologies.
The massive bushfires in 2020 have put the spotlight on deer. Vast areas of deer habitat in eastern Victoria were burnt and are at risk of serious impact of deer on biodiversity recovery.
As part of Victoria’s Bushfire Biodiversity Response and Recovery Program, Parks Victoria has engaged professional shooters for aerial and ground shooting of deer across the fire-effected area, reportedly shooting more than a thousand animals.
This is a great start to serious deer control but now needs a commitment to ongoing capacity and funding beyond fire recovery.
The recently announced $18 million in the Victorian State budget for deer control over the next four years finally gives some hope for a commitment to mitigating the impact of deer.
The Invasive Species Council is concerned there is not enough being done to curb the impact of deer in Victoria. As a result, we have appointed a Peter Jacobs as our deer project officer to seek to address the growing impacts from feral deer in Victoria.
This will be achieved through building networks and capacity, raising political and community awareness and seeking greater action on the ground. Peter has a solid background for this coming from an extensive career in protected area management on public and private land and Landcare.
We will continue to advocate for feral deer being re-classified as pest animals, but in the meantime we will focus on effective cross tenure control and where possible eradication, within the current framework.
The Victorian Deer Control Community Network is aimed at reducing the growing impacts of feral deer on Victoria’s farming communities and natural environment.
Victoria’s feral deer problem stands as a stark warning – a plague of already over a million has taken over most of the state’s national parks including fragile alpine regions. NSW, Tasmania and South Australia aren’t far behind.
Plagues of feral deer are pushing our precious places and wildlife to the edge. Please act today, before it is too late.
The Invasive Species Council acknowledges the Traditional Custodians throughout Australia and their connections to land and sea. We pay our respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. The Invasive Species Council supports voting ‘YES’ for a Voice to Parliament.
Dear Project Team,
[YOUR PERSONALISED MESSAGE WILL APPEAR HERE.]
I support the amendment to the Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan to allow our incredible National Parks staff to use aerial shooting as one method to rapidly reduce feral horse numbers. I want to see feral horse numbers urgently reduced in order to save the national park and our native wildlife that live there.
The current approach is not solving the problem. Feral horse numbers have rapidly increased in Kosciuszko National Park to around 18,000, a 30% jump in just the past 2 years. With the population so high, thousands of feral horses need to be removed annually to reduce numbers and stop our National Park becoming a horse paddock. Aerial shooting, undertaken humanely and safely by professionals using standard protocols, is the only way this can happen.
The government’s own management plan for feral horses states that ‘if undertaken in accordance with best practice, aerial shooting can have the lowest negative animal welfare impacts of all lethal control methods’.
This humane and effective practice is already used across Australia to manage hundreds of thousands of feral animals like horses, deer, pigs, and goats.
Trapping and rehoming of feral horses has been used in Kosciuszko National Park for well over a decade but has consistently failed to reduce the population, has delayed meaningful action and is expensive. There are too many feral horses in the Alps and not enough demand for rehoming for it to be relied upon for the reduction of the population.
Fertility control as a management tool is only effective for a small, geographically isolated, and accessible population of feral horses where the management outcome sought is to maintain the population at its current size. It is not a viable option to reduce the large and growing feral horse population in the vast and rugged terrain of Kosciuszko National Park.
Feral horses are trashing and trampling our sensitive alpine ecosystems and streams, causing the decline and extinction of native animals. The federal government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee has stated that feral horses ‘may be the crucial factor that causes final extinction’ for 12 alpine species.
I recognise the sad reality that urgent and humane measures are necessary to urgently remove the horses or they will destroy the Snowies and the native wildlife that call the mountains home. I support a healthy national park where native species like the Corroboree Frog and Mountain Pygmy Possum can thrive.
Dear Project Team,
[YOUR PERSONALISED MESSAGE WILL APPEAR HERE.]
I support the amendment to the Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan to allow our incredible National Parks staff to use aerial shooting as one method to rapidly reduce feral horse numbers. I want to see feral horse numbers urgently reduced in order to save the national park and our native wildlife that live there.
The current approach is not solving the problem. Feral horse numbers have rapidly increased in Kosciuszko National Park to around 18,000, a 30% jump in just the past 2 years. With the population so high, thousands of feral horses need to be removed annually to reduce numbers and stop our National Park becoming a horse paddock. Aerial shooting, undertaken humanely and safely by professionals using standard protocols, is the only way this can happen.
The government’s own management plan for feral horses states that ‘if undertaken in accordance with best practice, aerial shooting can have the lowest negative animal welfare impacts of all lethal control methods’.
This humane and effective practice is already used across Australia to manage hundreds of thousands of feral animals like horses, deer, pigs, and goats.
Trapping and rehoming of feral horses has been used in Kosciuszko National Park for well over a decade but has consistently failed to reduce the population, has delayed meaningful action and is expensive. There are too many feral horses in the Alps and not enough demand for rehoming for it to be relied upon for the reduction of the population.
Fertility control as a management tool is only effective for a small, geographically isolated, and accessible population of feral horses where the management outcome sought is to maintain the population at its current size. It is not a viable option to reduce the large and growing feral horse population in the vast and rugged terrain of Kosciuszko National Park.
Feral horses are trashing and trampling our sensitive alpine ecosystems and streams, causing the decline and extinction of native animals. The federal government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee has stated that feral horses ‘may be the crucial factor that causes final extinction’ for 12 alpine species.
I recognise the sad reality that urgent and humane measures are necessary to urgently remove the horses or they will destroy the Snowies and the native wildlife that call the mountains home. I support a healthy national park where native species like the Corroboree Frog and Mountain Pygmy Possum can thrive.
