Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you for the invitation to join you this evening.
Once upon a time a Conservation Minister would have approached a meeting of the Deerstalkers Association with trepidation, such were the conflicts between hunting and conservation. Certainly, some of my predecessors have told me as much.
I’m delighted to say that I feel none of that trepidation. In my five years as Conservation Minister I have thoroughly enjoyed my interaction with the Deerstalkers Association. The generosity of many of you was underscored to me again yesterday when the Taupo branch sent me a very attractive book as a thank you for agreeing to come this evening.
I think we have had a friendly and constructive relationship, which has yielded some real progress on issues important to both hunters and the Department of Conservation.
I have found that most hunters share many of the values I hold. If there are differences between many of us then they are differences of emphasis only.
As Minister, I have no interest in wiping out deer, and I do not believe hunters are willing to stand by while our native species go extinct either.
In fact, there is plenty of practical evidence from around the country demonstrating the complete opposite.
DOC has kept me abreast of recent developments at the Dart/Caples Operation Ark site over the past year, where a beech mast has caused a rat plague in a key site for both Mohua, and fallow deer.
Despite the fact that the fallow deer are a resource many of you hold in high regard, and the fact that the Operation Ark site is in the Greenstone/Caples Recreational Hunting Area, the local hunting clubs have accepted the use of aerial 1080 in the area after DOC demonstrated that ground baiting wasn’t controlling the rats.
As a result, 81 per cent of the Mohua monitored in the area have survived through to this winter, compared with 13 per cent of monitored birds outside the 1080 drop zone. Only five deer carcasses have been found with signs of 1080 poisoning.
The trust and co-operation that has been shown by local hunters in this case is impressive. So too, is DOC’s management of the issue and the use of good records and science to illustrate their case.
This is not an isolated situation. In Fiordland, Wapiti hunters are running trap lines to help blue duck. In Mason Bay on Stewart Island, hunters have been volunteering to lay traps to control rats and feral cats. Hunters are helping maintain huts, tracks and campsites all over the North Island, and there has been a very positive response from hunters to kiwi aversion training for pig dogs in places like Northland.
It has always troubled me that, publicly at least, the differences between hunters and DOC often overshadow the extent of co-operation, even though co-operation may be a far larger part of the relationship. Too often we allow our images of each other to be formed by the extremists on both sides.
As a government, my colleagues and I have consistently sought to make decisions which promote outdoor recreation, including hunting, because we believe in it. We believe it is a key part of the kiwi lifestyle, and the product we offer to overseas visitors.
Conservation and recreation are intimately entwined. People develop a love of nature and an appreciation for its complexity and fragility by experiencing it. The more time someone spends walking in native bush, fishing in a picturesque river, or deerstalking in Fiordland, the more likely they are to advocate for the preservation of those places.
So the trends that are occurring in outdoor recreation are critically important to the future of conservation. The choices that will have to be made and the public expenditure necessary to preserve much of our biodiversity in future will only be achieved by maintaining links between urban populations and the outdoors through recreation.
With this in mind, the Labour-led government has opened up huge and entirely new outdoor recreation opportunities, including hunting. Much of this work has occurred in the South Island high country by purchasing land, or pursuing the public interest through tenure review.
We have worked through the very difficult and politically demanding land access process, with the same goal in mind.
We have invested $349 million over 10 years to improve and reorganise New Zealand’s outdoor recreation infrastructure, upon which so many of you rely in the bush.
We have organised, and through DOC, co-sponsored an Outdoor Recreation Summit to explore new ways of promoting outdoor recreation to young people. Hunters were key participants in this summit, and SPARC has subsequently announced the development of an outdoor recreation strategy.
In addition to these initiatives, I have approved the use of deer repellent on 1080 in the nation’s recreational hunting areas.
I have resisted and argued against the introduction of a paid permit system for hunting, an idea my political opponent Nick Smith appears to be keen on. In fact, I have urged DOC to try and make the existing hunting permits less cumbersome in certain areas, and DOC has responded well, particularly in places like Canterbury where a hunting permit has been introduced for the whole conservancy instead of the old area-based system.
Just recently, I have also appointed a new expert panel to sort through the conflicts involved in the management of deer, tahr, chamois and pigs. This was not my idea, but that of my colleagues in United Future, and it is a good idea.
As I said when I announced the panel, deer, chamois, tahr and pigs are a recreational hunting resource for many New Zealanders. No-one disputes that, least of all me.
Unfortunately, these animals also have a significant impact on many of New Zealand's fragile native habitats. Debate about how to manage those impacts while preserving recreational hunting opportunities has raged for fifty years.
The aim of the panel is to lay to rest some of that controversy, and provide an opportunity for interested parties to reach agreement around the future management of the species.
It is worth having a real discussion to resolve some of these friction points.
For starters, conservation as an ethos is now embedded in the psyche of New Zealanders in a way that it hasn’t been in past. There are now some 3000 community conservation projects underway around the country, and some 6000 private projects. Many people who hunt are involved in these projects, and there is a much broader awareness and acceptance of the impacts of introduced species on native plants and animals.
What is more, there is also a widespread acceptance of the importance of outdoor recreation, a real sense that it is part of our evolving national identity, and an anxiety that not enough kids are doing it.
We have more tools now at our disposal to achieve compromises, such as deer repellent, and of course, the Environmental Risk Management Authority is also currently reviewing 1080.
The ERMA process is providing a valve for releasing some of the public anxiety that has built up about 1080 use, and hopefully, at the end of the process ERMA will come up with a clear and well argued ruling that will allow us all to move forward with certainty.
I’m pleased to say the Deer, Tahr, Chamois and Pig Panel recently had its first meeting and the signs were positive. Chair Margaret Austin has already told Hugh Barr to eat his greens and tidy himself up, which is probably a reflection of Hugh’s great work advocating for the cause of deerstalkers.
Seriously though, it is important that the relationship between DOC and the Deerstalkers Association remains co-operative. I am committed to doing my part to ensure that is the case and I hope you are too.
A key issue we are going to have to contend with is deer numbers, which reputedly are rising rapidly, particularly in areas like Fiordland.
Last year I thanked the Deerstalkers Association for their acknowledgment of the need to maintain pressure on deer numbers in the absence of a viable commercial deer recovery industry.
I want to underscore that need again this evening. The extent to which DOC controls deer or is even practically capable of controlling deer, is often hugely overstated.
We believe there is deer on about 6.7 million hectares of public conservation land. DOC’s possum control on the deer range covers about 655, 300 ha, less than 10 per cent of the range. And this does not include the other 6 million hectares of private land which deer are found on.
To deal with this situation, DOC must develop new ways of facilitating hunters to practise their sport strategically. By that I mean, DOC must encourage hunters to hunt in places where we know there are the most deer, and they are having the biggest impact.
DOC is responding.
An idea is under development where hot-spots for hunters will be flagged conservancy by conservancy, most probably on the hunting section of DOC’s website. These hot-spots will be locations where we believe there are very high deer numbers, and they will be regularly updated with new information.
The idea is at a fledgling stage, but provided the information is well researched, its advantages could be significant. Obviously hunters themselves will need to feed in to this system from their own knowledge.
From my point of view, I would far rather a hunter shot a deer than it was poisoned by 1080. I say this for the simple reason that 1080 costs money, and you practise your sport for nothing.
On that note, I’ll stop rattling on, and let you ask some questions.
I wish you all good hunting, and thank you again for the invitation to join you this evening.