GOATS AND DEER

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 103, 4 May 1933, Page 18

GOATS AND DEER

IN HUTT HINTERLAND

DAMAGE IN RENATA REGION

Through the Wellington Acclimatisation Society has come to the "Evening Post" a series of wild life notes by an opossum-trapper, who expresses himself as willing to make his identity known to any inquirer, and willing to go with parties into the bush to test any fact which he adduces. His defence of the opossum may be summed up as: (1) The greatest source of revenue in wildlife; (2) not a damager of forest or birds (or at any rate not,a damager to any appreciable extent); (3) more in danger of being exterminated than of becoming an exterminator of other things. Groundnesting birds have vermin enemies that will leave the opossum nothing to do on the ground; as to tree-nesting birds, vermin (stoats, weasels, rats) can climb too. A test of opossum damage is, the writer says, to be found in the Blue Mountains bush back of Silverstream, with which he claims to have had close association. This block of bush is "isolated from the main bush"; it is absolutely free from deer, goats, and pigs'!; it is therefore a te3t of the oxjossum. The opossum does exist there, as do hares, rats, hedgehogs, stoats, and weasels. "Admittedly the opossum eats berries, shoots, barks of certain trees, and ground plants," but "I will defy any person to show me where an opossum has been the cause of even a bush sapling dying in that particular- bush. They certainly kill vines and creepers growing on a tree where they 'camp' with the continual climbing and biting, such as rata vines, of which thero- are plenty." ■ His evidence is mostly against goats and deer. In the 1930-31 season he says ho trapped in the area embracing the headwaters of the Hutt and Otaki Kivers, including the Waiotauru branch of the Otaki, the Western Hutt, and the adjacent country from Mt. Hcnata to Mt. Kapakapanui. "Between the Hutt River Forks (junction of the Western and the Eastern Hutts) and Mt. Eenata is. a breeding ground and camping ground of deer, pigs, and goats." Between the Hutt-Pakura-tahi junction and Eenata is Mt. Maymorn. His comment on the Maymorn country incidentally shows how limited is the Value ofL eye-evidence of

casual passers as to the number of animals in a bush: "Parts of the Maymorn are literally ploughed up with pigs and deer, and I saw several mobs of deer in this vicinity, and yet on welldefined tracks cut by members of the tramping clubs I never encountered one deer during the six weeks' trapping. I caught scores of blackbirds in the traps and also a few weasels. The portion of Maymorn that I mentioned above is a series of flats covered with stunted scrub and tussocks (not heavy bush) where the animals feed . . . In certain gullies along the Eastern Hutt River goats are in large numbers and deer are few and far between." He feels safe in saying that hunters proceeding in any direction from the Hutt-Pakuratahi junction : will not see a deer in a half-day's i march; pigs and goats are a different ■ matter. He also indicts wild cattle. : "In the Tauhereuikau Valljy, where ■ I trapped for three seasons, deer, pigs, ■ and goats are plentiful in places. The • damage to the bush is practically nil, • except .in and about camping grounds ; of these animals.. The pig gets most of 1 its living from under the ground— ; grubs, ..worms, fern root—and eats fallen berries. Goats live chiefly on ■ bark and leaves, and can ringbark a tree 1 as well as any bushman and nearly •as fast —which means sure death to 1 the tree. The deer take what pigs and : goats cannot get at, and although they 1 kill a lot of undergrowth when feed- , ing, the place where havoc is played is ; where they camp."