Wapiti to be taken from park

Press, 19 December 1981, Page 10

Wapiti to be taken from park

Parliamentary reporter

The Government will proceed with a joint venture to capture wapiti from the Fiordland National Park.

The proposal is for a consortium of interests to take the deer from the 180,000 ha wapiti area within the National Park. Once caught they will be cared for and bred from until they can be located in a suitable habitat outside the National Park. Several hundred animals will be taken over a threefive year period and the herd will be improved by selective breeding and the possible introduction of new bloodlines, according to the Minister of Lands and For-

ests (Mr Elworthy). Capture work would begin soon. The joint venture would involve the Crown and the Fiordland Wapiti Capture Consortium. The Minister said the joint venture and eventual relocation of the wapiti was the only course to guarantee the continued existence of the wapiti as a recreational hunting herd. Over the years the pure wapiti strain had become rarer, with interbreeding with the more aggressive red deer, he said. If this continued then wapiti, as a distinct deer breed, would disappear altogether in the wild. Relocation to a suitable habitat would preserve wapiti for recreational hunting and would also remove a conflict with other values in the Fiordland National Park. It was clear that Fiordland National Park was no place to try to manage a recreational hunting herd of wapiti, Mr Elworthy said. While the capture work was under way, a team of Forest Service and Lands and Survey Department officials would inspect several areas of State forest and Crown land to chose a site for relocating the herd.

Sites to be studied were the central North Island hinterland of the Waitotara and Wanganui Rivers; the Richmond Range in the Mount Richmond State Forest Park south-east of Nelson; and the Karamea catchment of the North-West Nelson State Forest Park, he said. Areas on Molesworth station and Crown land round the Lake Wakatipu areas had been ruled out as less suitable.