CULLING OF DEER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22778, 14 January 1936, Page 11

CULLING OF DEER

NEW ZEALAND’S POLICY CRITICISED VIEWS OF. LORD LATYMER Criticism of the policy of the New Zealand Government in the culling of deer in the mountain country of the Dominion is contained in “ Stalking in Scotland and New Zealand,” Lord Latymer’si latest book, which has just been published. Lord Latymer, who is an authority on deer-staiking, visited New Zealand in 1930 and again in 1933 for the sport. Writing about his expedition in 1933, Lord Latymer says that the Government deer slaughterers were at work not only up the Landsborough Valley but in all the more accessible parts of Westland “An agitation had been on foot for some years in the matter of the deer, and finally the Government was induced tu take what, to the unprejudiced observer, can only appear to be a very expensive and foolish course,” proceeds the writer. “ I had made friends with several people in 1930 who had an altogether exaggerated idea as to the damage the deer were doing to the impenetrable Westland forests. To listen to them you would have thought the ‘ bush ’ was eaten out completely and rather resembled a Kentish hopfield. “ They said that the rainfall would be affected, and the country would suffer from denudation. Furthermore, someone had started a theory that Westland would form a sort of deer reservoir, the overflow from which would drift back into the Otago farms. “ With regard to these varied arguments, I can only say that in the Landsborough Valley the.‘bush’ was thick enough, almost everywhere, to stop an elephant. Here and there one met welldefined deer tracks; &nd I think certain shrubs, such as the castor oil plant, which the deer are fondi of, may have suffered in some places. But the general mass of beech forest was quite unaffected.” “KILL EVERYTHING AT SIGHT.” “As to rainfall, South Westland is a very wet district —on the coast I believe the annual fall is about 200 inches—and it might be drier with great advantage to its very few human inhabitants,” continues Lord Latymer. “Anyhow, we found no particular drought in 1933, and there is no evidence that the country is becoming drier. As to denudation, that is a process which is always going on, and heavy rain is one of its chief agents. I suppose that if the’ forests dried, the bare hillsides would be scoured by wind and water, but the deerhaters really cannot have it both ways; if all the forests died, and as a result there was less rain, there would obviously be less denudation. The beech timber has little or no commercial value in any case.

“As to the ‘reservoir* theory, I have only this to say: The west wind blows for about 360 days out of the 365, and it is this west wind which has brought the deer from Otago to South Westland, and will finally take them to the Tasman Sea. A few may be there already. If they can, deer always feed, and walk, up-wind.

“ The policy of indiscriminate slaughter is a foolish one, and is the result of a mass of very ill-informed agitation by people who will not take the trouble to make themselves acquainted with the facts. In past years the rangers of the Westland Acclimatisation Society did a lot of useful work in killing bad hinds and stags with poor heads—proper ‘ culling.’ They were men of experience who knew what should bo killed and what should be spared. Perhaps there were not enough of them, but more could have been trained. Now these experts have been turned off, and in their place is a very different sort of man, with a limitless amount of ammunition and instructions to kill everything at sight. “As far as stalking goes, most° of Westland is spoiled, at any rate, for some years to come. Yet stalkers from overseas must have brought quite a lot of money into New Zealand, from first to last, and one would think the sensible thing to do would be to encourage the devotees of this magnificent sport.”