Issue 107 - June / July |
On Sale Monday 9th June

There’s a bit of snow on the hills and tahr rut is in full swing as I write this

We’re just back from a seven day family wander through the Hooker Landsborough Wilderness Area, but you’ll have to wait till next season to see how that trip unfolded – it produced a nice surprise for Fiona to be sure!

We saw pretty good numbers of bull tahr and not excessive numbers of nannies, but we need to keep the hammer down on control for a few years yet to ensure we get the vegetation back to the state it should be in.

You’ll have seen the announcements by Minister Meager about the Herds of Special Interest (HOSI) applications for Sika and Wapiti. This is fantastic news and hats off to the Minister for supporting these applications and committing to help them through the process that is yet to come – including making some minor pragmatic legislative changes to our out of date conservation legislation to allow them to proceed. The NZ Tahr Foundation is also working hard with the Department of Conservation and all sector groups on collaborative tahr management systems, towards a HOSI being the ultimate end goal in this space as well – as supported by the National Party election plan for hunting and fishing. The awesome work of the Foundations is the way of the future for New Zealand, showing the way for combining big game animal management and maintaining and enhancing strong conservation outcomes. . Unfortunately Forest and Bird have come out against the Wapiti HOSI, playing their usual game of only telling part of the story to hoodwink the general public who know no better. “Lies, lies and more damn lies” or words to that effect someone famous once said. Forest and Bird in their recent propaganda are only mentioning the animals the FWF removes in the annual bugle ballot hunt, but not the 1200 animals they also remove via helicopter culling after the ballot hunts. They also have failed to mention this is the only part of Fiordland National Park that is getting any regular deer control, way more than the rest of the Park, and backed up by regular vegetation monitoring to go with it. And they have conveniently failed to mention the miles of predator trapping lines run by the FWF. All of this leads to the huge biodiversity gains this area of Fiordland alone is getting through hunter led management at no cost to the taxpayer. And section 4 2 b of the National Parks Act (long overdue for an overhaul) precludes all this happening by saying all introduced species must be as far as possible eradicated, which is what Forest and Bird used to instigate their original judicial review of the agreement between the FWF and the Department of Conservation. Thankfully Minister Meager has said he is going to deal with this draconian and totally unrealistic piece of legislation that has never eradicated a single pest species in any National Park, to provide the ability for win wins for both hunting and conservation. The way forward here is simply to ignore Forest and Bird’s propaganda, and for the hunting sector to continue to tell the good news stories to the public of New Zealand. Lead from the front, set great examples and show what can be done – and the eternal optimist in me says common sense will prevail!

We’re are really looking forward to welcoming Corina Jordan to her new role as CEO of the Game Animal Council. She has come from an at times very challenging job as CEO of Fish and Game NZ. For those who don’t know, Fish and Game was set up under conservation legislation long overdue for an update. It has a Federal structure of 13 independent councils where the 12 regional councils are autonomous and do not answer to the 13th National Council. The CEO of the National Council has the unenviable task of trying to coordinate the regions to work together in the interests of hunters and anglers, but he/she cannot compel them to do anything. There has been some recent media about some issues in some regions that has put the spotlight on Fish and Game, and Corina has had to deal with this publically despite not being able to influence what the region says or does. As both a HB regional and a national councilor, I have seen exactly what this is like, and to put it bluntly it’s like herding cats!

With the tahr, Rusa then Sambar ruts and the rest of the waterfowl and upland game seasons to look forward to over the coming months, there’s so much opportunity out there that there’s no excuse for not getting out and stretching your and the dog’s legs no matter what part of the country you live in!