Dye Will Spray Deer, Men

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30568, 10 October 1964, Page 1

Dye Will Spray Deer, Men

A project to tame deer and chamois so that their movements can be watched is being carried out successfully by Mr M. J. W. Douglas, of the Forest Research Institute, Rangiora, in a back country area of Canterbury.

The exact location of the valley is not being disclosed, for fear of its being invaded by persons out for an “easy shoot.” One such vandal could completely wreck Mr Douglas’s hard work of the last two years. Mr Douglas has, in fact, already lost one stag to an invading party. “It must have just stood and looked at them while they fired, as it had almost lost its fear of men,” he said. “They made a real welter of it, and left only a few bones.”

Fortunately for Mr Douglas, the area is not very accessible and is guarded by zealous station-owners whose property has to be crossed to get to it. Moreover, he and the students and trainees who assist him are in residence for a good deal of the time. Identification

Intruders may not be hard to identify in future, however, since as part of the programme an extremely fast and highly-coloured dye will be sprayed automatically on any creature, animal or man, which uses certain welltrodden paths. The dye is of a type which proved satisfactory in marking seals caught on the west coast of Scotland sufficiently well for them to be recognised a few months later when they returned from a trip to Iceland.

The area is a compact one of about 36,000 acres between two rivers, the country rising from the river valleys to

a medium-height mountain range. It' was declared a research area and shut off from shooting in September, 1962, after being intensively shot over by Forest Service shooters for about five years. Its earlier history was as part of a sheep run, and at that time was occasionally burnt over; partly as a result of this, there is still a good deal of erosion and in the. lower areas there are very few trees. Catching, Tagging By making a point of not avoiding the animals, and walking right past them as necessary, Mr Douglas and his assistants have built up the confidence of many to a level where it will be possible this year to catch and tag numbers of them. They will be caught by snares and various other methods and then injected with a tranquilliser. Before being released, they will be weighed and measured, their reproductive con-

dition noted, and their age estimated, and a plastic tag will be inserted in an ear. To add to the ease with which the animals may be observed, hides have been constructed in various parts of the area and antler rubbing posts erected near the hides. The deer prefer for this purpose timbers such as larch and celery pine to the mountain beech, and larch poles near the hides have been well patronised. As a further aid to identification, dye will be sprayed automatically on animals using certain trails. The effects of the deer on the vegetation are being noted as the population increases. An attempt will be made to assess the population density at which the animals reach their optimum concentration in respect to the food supply.

Observations on the movements of the animals have led Mr Douglas to suspect there may be two separate animal populations in the area—one group which lives in the upper valley all the year and another which lives in the lower part of the area during the summer but migrates further downstream beyond the research area during the winter. Animals which leave the area run a strong risk of being shot, as neighbouring areas are intensively hunted to minimise the possibility of further stocks entering the research area. Hares Too Mr Douglas has, as well as th? deer and chamois, a research programme on hares in the area, and is ear-tagging them in much the same way as the larger animals. He believes seasonal movement of the hares may be rather similar to that of the others.