MENACE OF DEER

Southland Times, Issue 22378, 18 July 1934, Page 8

MENACE OF DEER

DAMAGE TO FORESTS WHOLESALE DESTRUCTION A GROWING PROBLEM (From Our Parliamentary Reporter.) Wellington, July 17. “What is the use of bringing sportsmen here to spend a few pounds on deerstalking if we have to destroy thousands of acres of bush to provide the deer,” the Minister of Internal Affairs, the Hon. J. A. Young, said this morning when asked why there was no reference to deerstalking in the picture “Romantic New Zealand” now being shown in Wellington and which will be used for publicity purposes abroad later. Deer had done incalculable damage, the Minister said, and his department was now doing all that could be done to destroy the deer so that large forest areas could be restored to their natural state. Deer had eaten the undergrowth and killed the moss, with the result that heavy rains went straight into the shingly subsoil and caused landslides. The Minister illustrated his argument in favour of systematic and continuous destruction of deer by producing a number of photographs he had taken in the deer country. These showed the wholesale destruction of forest areas. Settlers had objected to the destruction of deer in some cases, he said, but the same settlers were now writing to the department expressing appreciation of the work of Captain Yerex and his assistants. The Waimakariri River Trust had been put to so much trouble through floods caused by the destruction of the natural reservoir of the mountains, that it had subsidized the destruction work. “That is an indication of what is thought of the destruction of deer,” the Minister said. “Where we have destroyed all deer in certain localities, the moss and undergrowth is returning, but there is still a great deal of work to do. We will have to keep at it continuously. It is no use encouraging men here to shoot deer. We would have been better without the deer altogether.” The Minister said that the position was much worse in the South Island than in the North, so the work of destruction in the North was mainly confined to the work of settlers who were given pern • to shoot deer causing trouble to farms.