As part of a national program to reduce the impact of feral deer across Australia, a draft National Feral Deer Action Plan is now available for a three-month public consultation.

Feral deer is a growing threat to Australia’s primary industries, environment and cultural heritage as populations boom and spread across the nation.

It is estimated there are now 1-2 million feral deer in Australia, a rapid increase from an estimated 200,000 population in 2000.

Feral deer are now found in almost one-quarter of New South Wales and Tasmania, nearing half of Victoria and across approximately 40% of the South Australia’s agricultural regions.

This recent spread is prompting an urgent need to establish new tools and approaches to managing the pest.

The draft plan, written in consultation with the National Feral Deer Working Group, provides a nationally co-ordinated approach to ultimately slow and reduce the growth of feral deer populations in Australia.

The plan takes a multifaceted approach to reduce the impacts of feral deer by focussing on three goals:

• Stop the spread of large feral deer populations and reduce their impact.

• Control or eradicate small, isolated populations before they spread.

• Protect significant sites and species from the impact of feral deer.

Some of the draft plan’s proposed actions over the next five years include developing a national awareness program, better tools and approaches to control feral deer encroaching into peri urban areas, establishing a national containment buffer program, developing better ways to detect and respond to new incursions, and prioritising areas of national and international importance for conservation and cultural protection from feral deer.

The development of the plan is part of a National Deer Management Coordinator project that is funded by the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, through the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions (between 2020 and June 2022) and led by the South Australian Department of Primary Industries and Regions.

Visit the National Feral Deer Action Plan website www.feraldeerplan.org.au for more information and to download the Draft National Feral Deer Action Plan.

Australian Chief Environmental Biosecurity Officer Dr Robyn Cleland she said fully supported the plan with its focus on feral deer control to protect both agriculture and threatened and endangered plants, animals and their nationally significant habitats.

“It is vitally important that we look at eradicating feral deer while their numbers are low and in places where they have not yet established large breeding populations, including where hunters have illegally released feral deer,” she said.

National Feral Deer Management Co-ordinator Annelise Wiebkin said Australia’s feral deer problem was increasing.

“In just 30 years, land managers in both rural and urban areas have seen feral deer go from being a novelty to being widespread in many parts of the country,” she said.

“It is why there is now an urgent imperative to contain the distribution of feral deer to prevent the pest from becoming another widespread invasive pest like rabbits, pigs and foxes.

“The South Australian Government has been committed to leading this national program to reduce feral deer populations, not only just in the state but across the country.

“Already South Australia has seen the benefits of cross-government collaboration and cooperation on various feral deer control programs.

“The focus of the draft National Feral Deer Action Plan is to promote a pro-active, collaborative, and coordinated national control effort that engages and informs all stakeholder is an important next step forward.

“The next five years will be vital in establishing systems, programs and activities to generate momentum for strategic and collaborative national feral deer control and the plan is an important driver in making that happen.

“The plan focuses on improving tools, strategies, capacity, awareness and efficiencies to reduce impacts of feral deer, prioritising the need to contain large population and eradicate smaller isolated population where feasible.

“It also considers new control tools to augment current humane shooting, trapping and fencing control options with coordination across land tenures, including protecting significant sites.”