Deer Problem Found In Britain

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30390, 14 March 1964, Page 15

Deer Problem Found In Britain

Scotland and England also have their deer problems, according to Mr G. R. Williams, lecturer in ecology and zoology, who has returned to Lincoln College after spending four months and a half overseas. In Scotland, he said, increasing efficiency of farming meant that there was less marginal land for deer and they were being pushed on to farmland and into forests. As there were quite a number of deer forests there were rival claims from agriculturists. foresters and those who had the deer grounds. As the land available to deer became less and less the problem became increasingly worse. Mr WiUiams spent a short time with the Scottish Nature Conservancy, which places considerable emphasis on the deer problem. The island of Rum has been given over entirely to the conservancy and it has taken off the stock and is running deer on the island to study, among other things, the economics of this procedure. Just as New Zealand was able to export venison the conservancy had found that they could readily sell venison to Germany, he said. These

studies of the exploitation of deer had a bearing on the exploitation of deer in other parts of Scotland. Mr Williams was invited to go to Scotland by Professor V. C. Wynne-Edwards, of the University of Aberdeen. The professor, who is author of a I controversial book which con- ! tends that animals control [their numbers by social behaviour and normally do not destroy their environment, felt that work Mr Williams was doing with bird populations had so much in common with what he and his organisation were doing at Aberdeen that he should go .to Aberdeen for a short period for an exchange of I ideas. Lincoln College granted Mr Williams leave | and the British Council made available a grant to allow [him to make the trip. Mr Williams spent three months with research groups of the University of Aberdeen studying the ecology of moorlands, with particular reference to birds and deer, and the ecology of estuaries with particular relation to water fowl, wading birds, and some birds that were [agricultural pests. Only Way

From wnai he saw, Mr Williams said he was certain that the only way to deal with problem animals was to study the way that populations behaved, how they increased and why they decreased and how they kept within certain levels. Mr Williams said that he had been much impressed by the way that, in the moorland ecology unit, there were six persons working on the one species whereas in New Zealand one person might have to study more than one species.

In tne St. Kilda group in the Outer Hebrides, Mr Williams said, the Scottish Nature Conservancy was studying the behaviour of the most primitive domestic breed of sheep in Europe, the Soay sheep. It was a small brown sheep with close wool, clipping about one pound a year. The rams and half of the ewes had horns. During his visit to England, Mr Williams visited Mr Peter Scott at the Wildfowl Trust at ‘ Slimbridge. There, he said, he had seen a number of New Zealand species safely established in captivity. This only emphasised the point that the only hope for a number of New Zealand species threatened with extinction was in ideal conditions in captivity. While visiting universities in Britain, the United States and Canada, and also in Sydney and Hong Kong, Mr Williams took the opportunity of studying trends in the teaching of zoology and looking into ecological research. Because of increasing populations and the emphasis that was being put on exploitation of natural resources, it was generally realised in universities that ecology was becoming a subject of increasing importance, he said.