DESTRUCTIVE OR NOT?

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 169, 5 April 1923, Page 7

DESTRUCTIVE OR NOT?

CASE FOR THE DEER HERDS BY ACCLIMATISATION SECRETARY WHAT OF WILD CATTLE AND PIGS?

i Mr. C. I. Dasent, secretary of the Wellington Acclimatisation society, is of opinion that jmuch of tho damage said to have beeij caused by deer has been caused by wild cattle and pigs. in the appended interview, he gives one or two instances of exaggeration' in accounts of tho destructiveness of deer.

The fact that the deer-stalking season opened on Thursday last, and that a conference of acclimatisation societies (owning deer herds) with the Forest Service is to take place at Parliamentary Buildings on April 11 oil the subject of the alteged damage done by deer to the forests and crops, brings up once more the question whether the damage is really as great as reported. The conference has been called by the Minister of Internal Affairs, chiefly owing to the many applications received by his Department from farmers for permission to shoot deer in order to prevent any further depredations.

That doer are being blajmed too much and too generally for damage done to forests and crops is the con•firmed opinion of Mr. Cyril I. Dasent, secretary of the Wellington Acclimatisation Society for a score of years or. more. Mr. Dasent speaks with a certain authority, as week in and week out he is in touch with the society’s rangers. “The Forest Service, now under Captain Mclntosh Ellis,” said Mr. Dasent, “is a new Department, which is doing good work in the protection of our forests and' the bush generally, but in obtaining evidence as to damage done by deer the members of that service may not have taken everything into proper consideration. ‘As far as our district is concerned, I am quite sure that the deer are not to blame for half the damage they are being credited with.

A Farmer’s story. “I’ll tell you a harrowing story to show you how false impressions may bo, and arc, created. A farmer living within some fifty miles of Wellington had sown a large area in rape. He wrote asking for a permit to destroy deer in order to protect his crop of rape. This man/actually asked us to pay him for the removal of carcasses, . but said that if hg were allowed to market the meat and hides lie would not require to bo paid. “On the of this letter I communicated with the society’s ranger, told him to visit the place, shoot any deer he found there, and see that the place was safe. At the same time 1 wrote to the farmer informing him that the society did not propose to pay him anything for any such service as he suggested, aud that no one had any authority to shoot deer there except the ranger. Our ranger paid no fewer than < leven visits to the place within tho next five or six. weeks. During that time the farmer forwarded further letters of complaint to the Department of Internal Affairs, with more' stories about the damage being done by tho deer. One of these letters was precise—it said that while tho farmer was writing there was a herd of 36 deer on the rape, and that they would soon play up with the whole crop. “When that letter was shown to me, I at once got into touch with tli© ranger, and told him to get a reliable man, and go over to the place at once with the object cf reporting. He told me that he had just come in from the place in question, but he would go back if necessary. I told him it was. Ho got hold of a steady, reliable chap (who was to report to me), and wen]; back to the farm. They inspected the place thoroughly, and the independent man reported that not a leaf cf tl;e rape had been disturbed, and not only had they not seen a sign of any deer in the' cron or round it, hut they could see no "Tioof-marks in the grass lands about the rane field. This confirmed the reports of the ranger,, who said Tie had not seen a deer within a mile and n half of the place. And yet nt this timft representations were being made to the Internal Affairs Do■nartmont bv the farmer that b« would have to abandon the farm unless tho deer were destroyed.

Tfhs Prompton “All this was very strange, but it became quite clear a little later when we .learned how and by whom the letters were prompted. The prompter was a man 'notorious with the gun, who wished to have carte blanche, to destroy deer in tho district, possibly with a view to shooting down the hinds in calf, and obtaining the valuable skins of the unborn calves. I don’t think the farmer was to blame—indeed I don’t think Im ever saw the rape field, but was simply tjrgod to write as ho did. As a matter of fact, we gave the farmer, a non-transferablo licensed to shoot deer. He has since written (we insist on reports iiom those with permits), and up to the end of March he had. shot-two doer, the hide and meat of which ho had used. . • Yet to read those letters, in winch there was not a word of truth, one would have imagined that huge herds of deer were ravaging the country and ruining the settlers!” Gattie and Pigs. “Why, far more damafeo is done to our forests by tho cattlo which are allowed to run there. Grazing permits are given to farmers by the Government to allow their cattle to graze in tho Tara run. Forest Reserve, and. J believe for every deer in that reserve there arc two head of cattle. In addition to that there are mobs of wild cattle in the Tararuas—cattle which have .been born and bred in the mountains and never yarded. Do you know there are cattle tracks 50 miles in length in that reserve, and those he,aw creatures do ten times t]ie damage that the deer do. to say nothing of the wild pigs. ' , - , , “I admit that in the South Island tho door have done damage to the crops on occasions, but in this. dis- ( trict the damage done is mostly imaginary. Indeed, where the deer are most plentiful in the "Wellington Acclimatisation District, there are no forest reserves, except that in tlm Wairarapa. The only one there io to th* Haurangi Forest Reserve in the Featherston County. In tho Haurangi Reserve we know there were too many deer, and in January our rangers fjiot

240 odd. Tho rest of the good deer country, consists of privately-owned stations.' The Sutherland Bros, (who obtained a permit) and four other men destroyed 386 deer in February on their W'hakatoniotomo station. A considerabl* amount of culling has been done on the "White Rock station, and at Lagoon Hill, To Awaiti, and Toro they have shot heavily. Since November last I estimate tome 3000 doer have been shot in the district. “Then, if tho deer do so much damage, what are tho Forestry rangers thinking about? They exist .to protect tho forest. I have never heard of tho Forestry Department applying for a permit for any of its rangers to shoot down these animals which aro supposed to be doing so much damage to the trees. ' I have never heard of them even shooting down any of the destructive wild cattle or ‘Captain Cookers.’ "Why should we hare to go to the expense of doing the work tho Forestry rangers sboidd perform, as an ordinary protective measure? ' "Threatening.” “There are lots of other instances I could give in which deer have been needlesslv maligned. A farmer wanted a permit to slay deer because his plantation was ‘.threatened’ with destruction. It- happened that a. stream ran between his plantation and the bush, and looking across it lie had seen ' deer from time to time. As they had threatened in this way for twenty veers without doing any recorded damage, tho permit was. withheld. Of course, every farmer in the country would like to have a- permit to shoot doer for nothing whenever he felt disposed, and many of the ‘yarns’ were concocted to gain that end.”