Minister James Meager with Roy Sloan (Fiordland Wapiti Foundation) and representatives from the Department of Conservation and Game Animal Council, outside the Fiordland Events Centre on Monday. Photo: Tayler Mutton HOSI is such a strange little word; it feels like it should be the name of a type of medieval bagpipe or that of a mascot from the 1982 World Cup in Spain. However, in a New Zealand context it is an acronym — it stands for Herd Of Special Interest — and the South has the very first one declared under newly passed law. Fiordland wapiti are the inaugural beasties who are fortunate enough, or not, depending on your point of view, to have received this special designation. Hunting and Fishing Minister James Meager, who is also Minister for the South Island and a keen hunter in his own right, trekked to Te Anau on Monday to make the announcement. In expectation that no wapiti would be game enough to wander into town and make themselves available for potentially lethal photoshoot, Meager and assorted others stood in front of Te Anau’s wapiti statue, and a fine looking thing it is too. For the background to this announcement we need to rewind a couple of weeks, to the committee stages and third reading of the Game Animal Council (Herds of Special Interest) Amendment Bill. Put simply, there are a lot of herd animals roaming wild in New Zealand. And they are not interested in roaming anywhere near where people with rifles or crossbows might attempt to kill them for food. Animals like wapiti — which, to be fair, were introduced into this country for the purpose of hunting in the first place — like to get away from it all in some of New Zealand’s most remote locations. Locations which as often as not happen to have high conservation value, and are the last place you want a voracious 300kg beast ravening your scarce native forest. The legislation, which has come to this point after an extensive consultation process, attempts to balance the interests of the hunters who want there to be a functional wapiti herd which they can continue to hunt, and the need to preserve the flora and fauna which call Fiordland and other beauty spots home. There was already a system in place which attempted to do this: the Fiordland Wapiti Foundation managed a ballot system for hunters wanting to track the animals and also culled numbers if they got out of hand, as well as looking after infrastructure in the wapiti zone. However, it was felt that there was a need to formalise the system and provide certainty and protection for everyone and everything — except, perhaps, for the animals unknowingly about to have hunting season called on them. In fact, people felt that quite some time ago — the Game Animal Council legislation was originally passed in 2013. However, the sticking point on many HOSI’s becoming a reality back then was that it was unclear whether the relevant minister could designate such a herd in a national park area — where other legislation mandated that browsing animals and other vermin had to be eradicated. Extending HOSIs to national parks was a National campaign pledge, and Meager was more than ready to redeem that promise. ‘‘A sensible, adaptive, management-focused herd management plan will manage those animals down to a level which achieves acceptable environmental and hunting outcomes,’’ he said. ‘‘If we want to improve our conservation estate, we will support this Bill. If we want to empower hunters and their families to contribute to our conservation estate, support this Bill. If we care at all about the rights and interests of hard-working New Zealanders who slog their guts out at work all week and just want to go for a hunt on the weekend with their son or their daughter, for a truly magical outdoor experience, we’ll support this Bill.’’ Labour Environment spokeswoman Rachel Brooking does support most of those things, but despite that she had no intention of supporting the Bill. ‘‘There were some interesting contradictions in that speech from the Minister. On the one hand, he says he’s all about conservation, but on the other hand, he’s very definitely not,’’ she started, before Meager fired back from across the House: ‘‘I shot three goats the other day. How many did you shoot?’’ ‘‘Oh, and now this is all fun and games, isn’t it? How many deer have I shot?,’’ Brooking responded. ‘‘I’m happy to report to the House that I’ve shot one, with one shot. It was a very good shot, right into the lung, from over 300m away.’’ It turns out that Nicole McKee is not the only woman who is a crack shot in the Parliament. But Brooking’s point was that one did not need to be 300m away from a deer to shoot it, because they were everywhere in national parks. ‘‘That is what we should be focused on, in this House, is: what do we do with all of those ungulates wreaking havoc in our conservation lands? Not: why are we trying to protect some of them? That seems a very strange thing to be doing when we know we have this huge problem.’’ Back in the committee stages Greens Taieri candidate and list MP Scott Willis — a hunter himself — raised a similar objection. ‘‘The reason we see fallow deer in the St Marys Range in Otago is because they’ve been introduced — because they’ve been introduced for hunting. The reason we see wallabies south of the Waitaki River is not just that they hop across the bridge; it’s because some people have introduced them. Hunters have introduced wallabies south of the Waitaki River,’’ he noted. ‘‘The myth, Minister, that we are going to see a fantastic conservation result from the herds of special interest I think, is something that we need to challenge, because we are not already seeing it. We are seeing spot examples of good practice in a wider space where things are totally out of control. ‘‘That’s what this Bill is about. It is a small Bill, but it is significant, and that’s why we oppose it.’’ The issue, Willis said, was pretty straight forward: large, invasive species were wrecking national parks and anything which encouraged them to browse there should be stopped. Taieri Labour MP Ingrid Leary had led Labour’s charge against the Bill at its earlier stages, having put up a firing range full of amendments which had all been shot down. She borrowed a line from colleague Duncan Webb in summing up her opposition to the Bill: ‘‘This Bill isn’t about conservation; it’s actually about trophy hunting.’’ ‘‘Labour’s got nothing against hunting,’’ she continued. ‘‘We support responsible hunting and we do recognise that hunters make valuable contributions to conservation in many parts of New Zealand. But this debate is not about whether hunting is valuable; it’s about whether Parliament should weaken the conservation framework applying to our national parks without first demonstrating that doing so will improve conservation outcomes, and that evidence hasn’t been presented to the House.’’ Whether that was the case of not, Mr Meager got his Bill passed in time for his Monday morning HOSI hoe down. mike.houlahan@odt.co.nz
