Hunting Good News Story? Or Beginning of Rich-Only Hunting?

[erron]

From the Age newspaper today...

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/ ... 33851.html

Hunters do their bit to bag wealthy tourists
By Melissa Marino
Regional Affairs Reporter
April 12, 2004

Victorian deer hunters want to turn their sport into a tourist attraction and aim to boost hog deer numbers on Gippsland farms. A seminar in Melbourne this month will explore how hunters and land-holders can work together to achieve this.

Under the program, hunters would be allowed on to private properties for a fee or for help with work around the farm.

At present hunting on private property is individually negotiated between landowners and hunters. "Because it's ad hoc, it doesn't work very well," said Australian Deer Association Victorian president Max Rheese. He said farmers were poisoning the deer while hunters wanted to build up a herd.

Mr Rheese, a deer hunter who sees himself as a conservationist, said Gippsland was home to a world-class population of hog deer, which are native to Sri Lanka, but numbers had declined through poor management of deer and habitat.

While he said he had a vested interest in increasing animal numbers for hunting, he said his first aim was to build a viable population of hog deer. This could mean no hunting for four or five years in areas where populations were small, he said.

Once numbers were up, hunting could be promoted as a tourist attraction, he said.

"The United States does not have hog deer and those people will come over here and pay big money," he said. "A lot of people travel the world doing that."

Mr Rheese said hunting could prove more lucrative for land-holders than their primary farming interests. "People will pay several thousand dollars for the opportunity to hunt," he said.

"We're saying 'hold on, these deer can be more valuable than your stock so let's get together and do something that is good for the land-holder, good for the hunter, good for deer conservation' . . . it really is win win win all the way round."

Patrick Ross, a sheep and cattle farmer in south-western South Australia, which has a farm-based hunting program, said many hunters paid land-holders in kind. They could build shearing sheds, cattle yards or fences, fix machinery or help control vermin such as rabbits and foxes, he said. And they also kept poachers out.

"The legal hunters, once they have access, keep the illegal hunters off purely because the illegals don't want to be seen by anybody else," he said. "They just don't go to properties that have legal hunting."

He said the program had helped build the population of deer since the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires in south-eastern South Australia and now numbers that suited both hunters and farmers were sustained over thousands of hectares and across a number of properties.

Hunters would cull some females and juveniles to keep the population in check and then have the opportunity to trophy hunt the stags, Mr Ross said.

Mr Rheese said that under the program the Australian Deer Research Foundation and the Australian Deer Association would monitor conditions each year to determine how many deer could be killed each season. He hoped the Department of Sustainability and Environment would also be involved.

A spokeswoman for the department said representatives would attend the seminar to hear the association's plans and would respond after that. "At the moment we've got no idea really of what they intend proposing and whether or not they want government support," she said.

The seminar, jointly hosted by the research foundation, will also feature two US wildlife biologists, one of whom oversaw the introduction of a similar program in Tasmania in 1993. They will spend this week meeting farmers and inspecting farms in Gippsland.

[RICKO]

Well can see further down the track only the rich will have access to this type of hunting,as the Americans are prepared to pay heaps$ to hunt then so will the locals have to pay big $,reports of numbers of Hog deer in the prom area,but these are being poisoned by the government,why not open up this area for hunters during the winter months,(not many tourists around then) for a permit fee.

[DAD]

Many land holders see deer ,foxes ,pigs any game animail as a pest/ competor, for food (all anials have to eat). Just look at how many stations up north cater to hunting for$s they must make thier properties economicaly sound or they go under .so if a deer eats the same amount of grass as a cow and he has say 100 wild deer on his land thats 100 less cows he run for the same amount of grass so he sees the deer as non paying pest so he distroys them the most ecconimical way he can eg poison . But if he is offered the same $value for 1 deer as 1 cow he most likely still says no to hunting on his land becouse of other factors such as how doese he keep the hunter in cheqe eg not littering ,leaving gates open etc but if farmer Bill can get 10 times the $value of his for adeer of course he will start to think about allowing paid hunting on his land . You cant blame him for turning a$ .I dont like it but thats the way its going.
Us poor people will just have to hunt legaly on crown land or private properties that will still allow us on. Like most things MONEY TALKS
Sad but thats how it will most likely go.
Steve

[erron]

Welcome to Ozbow, Dad!

I guess those of us who are not rich will just have to be vigilant in keeping the public access we have now, and not losing too much private access to the Holy $.


Erron

[RICKO]

The best way for any Government to stop hunting,is to ban it on public land completely,then hunting will only be on private property,with a large fee attached to it,this is what i fear will be the future of hunting in this country,just think if the government banned hunting on public land here in Victoria,that would end the Duck,deer hunting right there,all other game can then be poisoned (ie foxes,rabbits etc),

[DAD]

Agree Ricko the goverment (state federal) could put a blanket on all hunting but I personaly can not see that happening while they can gain revenue via taxes on hunying equiptment (bows.arrows guns ammo ,etc) plus fees for hunting permits.Ibelive we will be able to hunt public land whilst goverments raise revenue . Money even talks politics!

[RICKO]

I also tend to agree with you DAD, hopefully we will always have the opportunity to hunt public land,but then Governments tend to do silly things,look at the HOG deer in the WILSON PROM National park,instead of allowing hunters(whether by ballot or permit) hunt these deer,they have had a poison programme to cull them out off the area,same happened near here in the BARMAH State forest,there were a large number fallow deer (escapes) in the forest,we are not allowed to hunt them,but the department laid poison baits,now this is a huge forest area,Also agree with the farmers wanting feral animals culled from their properties,what they eat is then less for the farmers stock to eat,this is why i feel that in the future we will have hunting only for a price,as once animals have a price on their heads they then become valuable,look at the game farms in africa,the hunting fees have saved many animals from extinction,and also has helped the locals have a living,So where does this leave us typical hunters,out on the limb i feel,but then i have had some good hunting over the years,so this will not affect me so much as the next generation of hunters.I will keep going out and hunting and try a chase the SAMBAR deer down here,that is my next aim is to get a sambar with the bow,now whether this happens only time will tell.

[DAD]

Ricko
best of luck with your sambar hunting any one taking a sambar with trad gear has my utmost respect, Ive tride a couple of times but just couldnt get in close enough.
PS I hate you ,you lucky bugger work stops me from getting out hunting to offten.
Best of luck & happy hunting
Steve

[Dennis La Varenne]

Ricko and Dad,

I have been watching this privatization of public hunting for many years and I do not have any sympathy for it. Privatized hunting always degenerates into rich-only hunting. Whereas, keeping in the public domain never excludes it from the wealthy. Deer are legally Game Wildlife under Victorian law and are the property of the people and must remain so.

Private landholders should not be allowed any proprietorial interest in Wildlife. They do not and cannot husband them as they do livestock and if they have a clearly demonstratable problem with them as a pest animal, then they can apply for a pest destruction permit.

Hog Deer particularly are not very big grazers, nor are they really numerous enough to compete with sheep and cattle (except in very bad drought perhaps) and they eat a wider variety of forage (see Mayze and Moore, 1986) than sheep and cattle, so I do not believe there is direct competition.

There are as many farmers who like having them around as don't and it has little to do with loss of feed for domestic livestock. I don't accept that they are a general agricultural problem, but it is useful propaganda if you are pushing the barrow of privatized hunting.

Victoria is the only State at present where there is general access on much public land for hunting. However, if it ever closes off because of the planning of the dark greens who run Parks Victoria, then the common hunter will have lost a traditional heritage forever.

The average wage earner hunter will be almost completely excluded from hunting by the big spenders from overseas because of the economic rationalism of farmers understandably wanting to make money from pest animals.

Hog Deer are classified as Wildlife under the Victorian Wildlife Act 1970 and therefore are protected as such for the time being. But Parks Victoria has a deer management policy of eradicating or controlling non-indigenous wildlife on any lands under its control. The are completely unwilling to entertain the idea of conserving any deer on their lands. Like the farmers, they see deer as competing with natives for habitat. Natives, therefore, have the only priority.

Parks Victoria also have an inbuilt anitpathy toward any form of hunting except by professional cullers hired by it. They are quite prepared to accept the by-kill of natives if poisoning gets rid of non-natives as Ricko mentions in the Barmah and on Wilson's Prom.

I was involved in many campaigns to have Hog Deer hunting allowed on the Prom at suitable times of the year and in areas less frequented by visitors but Parks would not tolerate the idea despite their not being able to produce a single shred of evidence that there would be any kind of adverse ecological impact on the Prom from deer hunting. They just hate the idea and that is that.

They will even look you square in the eye and flat deny that they poison Hog deer on the Prom.

However, if private lands become less available to hunting through the imposition of fees by farmers, I believe that poaching will definitely increase - not decrease as the article says. Historically, where the common people became shut off from their hunting heritage, they resorted to poaching.

It is not as simple as the CAMPFIRE projects in Africa suggest. The CAMPFIRE system returns money to the traditional tribal owners of an area who formerly were the hunters of that area. Until CAMPFIRE, these people poached on their own tribal lands. It is not quite the same as Australian farmers making money from a pest animal.

Much of the poaching over there is for biltong or bushmeat. When the old colonial governments controlled these territories, they instigated game laws which effectively excluded the native peoples from their traditional hunting lands. Those people then resorted to hunting their own tribal lands contrary to colonial law - which is still called poaching.

The same happened in Europe and in England after the Norman conquest in 1066 when traditional hunting rights were taken from the common people. Up until then, any Anglo-Saxon could hunt. It was a birthright. The Normans ended it and a strong poaching tradition developed (a la the Robin Hood legend) and continues to the present day in Europe as well as England.

When hunting rights were taken from the Anglo-Saxon people, many of them starved because they were in fact big meat eaters in those days contrary to what is now believed, and meat from hunting was a significant part of their diet.

After the French Revolution in the late 1700s for instance, one of the very first rights demanded by the common people was the restoration of their hunting rights which had been taken from them by the aristocracy (read wealthy in these times).

This is one of the reasons that I see considerable dangers in the privatization of hunting in this country. Hunting will degenerate in to trophy shooting by the wealthy.

Personally, I will not support the move into this kind of hunting.

Hunting is the traditional right of all the people, not just the well off. Having it as such does not mean unrestricted access either. Hunting must always be consequent upon ecological sustainability, and we support its continuance through our taxes and licences - not trophy fees by another name.

The problem with the privatization of hunting is that this coin has two sides. When there is a profit to be made, the animals are conserved and when the market declines, they are just as readily gotten rid of for something more profitable. Their intrinsic worth as a specie of wildlife is reduced to that of livestock. That is not a very reliable prospect and does not guarantee the future viability of a specie once it is commodified.

Gamefarms in Australia are notorious for their rate of failure and they become more and more dependent upon attracting wealthy overseas shooters to defray their own operating costs to the exclusion of locals and that is a problem more likely than not to result in poaching.

The argument offered by the ADA president in the article that having legal hunters in an area prevents poaching is debatable.

Most of the year there is no hunting because privatized hunting is entirely about shooting trophies. Most of the year this does not happen and the hunters are not there. Farmers are left to husband an animal which is not bringing an income for most of the time and most of which will never bring an income because they are not trophy quality whereas all of his sheep and cattle are marketable for meat, hides, wool or breeding for most of their lives.

My opinion is that privatized hunting is being increasingly promoted at the expense of fighting for the continuation of public hunting on public lands. Its promotition is almost an admission that all is lost. Our main battle is to get rid of the entrenched position within Parks Victoria that all non-indigenous animals, especially deer, are bad and to stop them killing them off.

Hunting should be the right of all the people, and for all the people (with apologies to Abraham).

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the subject.

Dennis La Varenne