Tina Venables was keeping an eye out for kangaroos as she drove home from work last week. What she came across instead at the top of a hill left her shocked and shaken.
Deer numbers were 1-2 million in 2022 up from 50,000 in 1980 and 200,000 in 2002.Farmers warn deer could be the next rabbit plague. Road accidents are rising too.In NSW, deer are an invasive pest species. In Victoria, they are protected as game.Tina Venables was keeping an eye out for kangaroos as she drove home from work last week. She was not expecting the large deer standing in the middle of the road as she reached the top of a hill.
The race is now on to stop deer getting a foothold in the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, which has historically been free of the animal, and control its numbers in the NSW and Victorian alpine regions. But experts fear it is now too late to eradicate them from much of the east coast, where they are encroaching on cities and towns, including Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
Different state approaches to deer also make it difficult to tackle the problem. In NSW, the animals are a “pest species”, and landowners are legally obliged to control them, while in Victoria and Tasmania they are deemed a “game animal”, and some species have open seasons and bag limits.“Deer are one of Australia’s worst emerging pest species,” Invasive Species Council advocacy director Jack Gough said.
Deer were introduced to Australia in the 19th century but really took hold in the 1990s, the report says, when the venison industry declined and farmed deer escaped. The species of deer in Australia are: fallow, red, chital, hog, rusa and sambar. Feral deer have almost doubled their range over the past 20 years and are now found across almost a quarter of NSW and Tasmania, and nearly half of Victoria.
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