Deer Farming

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31385, 2 June 1967, Page 8

Deer Farming

The plan of the New Zealand Game Exporters’ Association to farm deer in the South Island has much to commend it, though many of the disinterested supporters of the plan will support it for reasons other than those given by the association. According to the president of the association (Mr J. R. Maddren), the income from deer by-products and venison in New Zealand this year would approach £2 million. The greater part of this sum will be export earnings; in the eight months ended February, exports of meat other than beef, veal, lamb, mutton, pork, and edible offals totalled £854,000, compared with £620,000 in the same period of 1965-66. The number of deer skins exported totalled 37,000, compared with 33,000 in 1965-66. The value of venison and deer by-products exported is still small in relation to New Zealand’s traditional exports of pastoral products: £6l million worth of meat, £63 million of dairy products, and £59 million of wool in the first eight months of 1966-67. New Zealand’s exports of venison up till now have been achieved mainly through the efforts of hunters combing the lower slopes of mountains in the North and South Islands. The direct competition for grazing between deer and domesticated stock is probably negligible; but the threat to the country’s traditional pastoral products, though indirect, cannot be ignored.

The indirect threat to pastoral production comes from erosion. The Lands and Agriculture Committee of the House of Representatives, in its 1965 report on noxious animals control, quoted with approval the submissions of numerous authorities and experts on this point. The Forest and Bird Protection Society, the Catchment Authorities* Association, the Federated Mountain Clubs, Federated Farmers, the Forest Service, and Professor J. T. Salmon all attested to the damage to high-country vegetation caused by deer, and to the accelerated erosion resulting from faster run-off. They all urged the need for control of deer in the catchments.

The committee, however, approved the request of the Game Exporters’ Association for permission to farm deer. Its approval was subject to stringent conditions: land vulnerable to erosion should not be used and the deer should be held in captivity on farm land within deer-proof fences. If Mr Maddren’s venture is run on these lines it need arouse no misgivings among landholders, in contrast to the present rapid, and virtually uncontrolled, growth of commercial deer hunting.