Feral deer in regional South Australia are becoming an increasing problem for our state’s agricultural sector and natural environment.

South East landholders know all too well feral deer cause severe economic and environmental damage.

They damage crops, eat pastures, damage infrastructure and force landholders to build expensive exclusionary fences.

Environmentally, deer have a profound impact on the composition of plant species in the native environment.

They pre-date on young trees, destroy mature trees by ringbarking and facilitate the distribution of noxious weeds.

They also contribute to erosion and degrade the water quality in our creeks and river systems.

Feral deer also pose significant biosecurity risks. As hoofed mammals, deer can act as carriers of disease that affect livestock.

Should foot and mouth or rinderpest ever enter Australia, deer would not only aid its spread but their unrestricted movement would render useless attempts to quarantine any outbreak.

Such an eventuality would be catastrophic for the South Australian livestock industry.

Feral deer numbers are at the tipping point.

We need to ramp up efforts to reduce the size of the feral heard or risk deer populations running rampant across regional South Australia.

Aerial abatement is the most effective way to remove large numbers of deer from our landscape.

Since the aerial abatement programs started in the Limestone Coast in 2009 more than 12,000 deer have been removed from the region.

Most recently, an aerial shoot in May last year which involved the use of thermal imaging for the first time, shooters removed 777 feral deer from over 111,000 hectares across 46 private land holdings and 16 national parks.

While these numbers are impressive the reality is good seasons combined with the pests strong reproductive rates means that much more needs to be done.

We need to act now before feral deer numbers run out of control.

By Federal Member for Barker Tony Pasin