On Saturday, the government released a draft management plan on wapiti becoming a herd of special interest (HOSI) under new legislation. The plan is open for submissions.
Fiordland Wapiti Foundation general manager Roy Sloan said on Sunday it was a plan which made few changes to the current rules but opposing groups should support it as it increased the monitoring of the introduced animal. Mr Sloan said the foundation looking after wapiti was the best example of deer management in the country.
Forest & Bird regional conservation manager Scott Burnett said there was no way the group supported any HOSI proposal.
"I feel like Mr Sloan may be a bit of a comedian because we think the draft herd management plan’s a bit of a joke," he said.
"It talks vaguely about monitoring, but the draft plan is really light on details. It’s kind of very vague. Our wider concern in this space is that around the country, numbers of ungulates — deer, goats, pigs — are growing, are impacting and not only our native forests, but also our croplands."
He said there needed to be a co-ordinated response mirroring the responses to wallabies and wilding conifers.
"We think that the herds of special interest sort of set a dangerous precedent in this space. In effect, the hunting lobby are trying to normalise the presence of these animals on the conservation estate through these herds.
"They will then be able to argue that ‘hey, they’re valued, they’re protected here’, so that gives them more ammunition to oppose control in other places as well."
Forest & Bird was not against recreational hunting, but it alone did not stay on top of population growth of these animals.
He said there needed to be national leadership on this issue.
The group was very sceptical of the plans and other species such as white-tailed deer and Himalayan tahr would be next on the HOSI list.
"In 1993, the Himalayan tahr control plan was produced, and that had an agreed limit on the maximum number of tahr that were allowed, and to date, that limit has not been achieved.
"That limit is currently thought to be three times that number of tahr within the tahr control plan boundaries, and the sort of feral population is expanding further and further. We see that as an example of hunter-led management that isn’t working, and that’s been going on for some time.
"If it could work, it should have worked, and it’s not, and so before we agree to any more of these things, you know, show us that it can be done."
Hunters paying for conservation of the animals they hunted and the state not chipping in was unrealistic, he said.
It was probably technically infeasible to get rid of the wapiti, but they needed to be controlled so they did not impact native vegetation.
