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Bounty for feral deer?

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Chris Oldfield, Naracoorte Community News

A bounty on feral deer similar to Victoria’s bounty on foxes was suggested at the Naracoorte Lucindale Council’s June 22 meeting.

herd of deer
Photo: Pixabay

Landscape SA chiefs Penny Shulz and Steve Bourne were invited to attend the meeting in response to queries raised by Cr Cameron Grundy regarding the use of levies, as well as a motion for the board to explain its draft business plan.

Following a presentation by Mrs Shulz and Mr Bourne, Cr Ken Schultz asked how big the feral deer problem in the South East was.

“It’s huge,” Mr Bourne said.

“There is a recent senate inquiry report which shows that we are still in the very early stages of deer emerging in Australia as a pest.

“Fallow deer could take over the bottom half of Australia. We need to get on top of it.

“With fallow deer you need to remove 40 pc of the population each year to break even. It’s a big problem.”

Mrs Shulz said: “We are spending almost $1m a year on that problem and we are not having the impact that we want.”

She highlighted the use of satellites to help and said the population kept moving.

A problem for the board was how much more money to throw at it to help eradicate the feral deer.

Cr Schultz asked if it was possible to do what the Victorians did with the foxes and have a bounty on them?

“They certainly cleaned them (foxes) out a bit.”

There was laughter by some councillors, and the presenters before Mr Bourne said “everything is on the table”.

No other councillors commented regarding the matter.

Naracoorte Community News 7 July 2021

This article appeared in Naracoorte Community News, 7 July 2021.

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