Melbourne deer invasion to worsen with Great Forest National Park

Hunters are warning Melbourne’s deer invasion is set to worsen as the government moves to lock them out of state forests to create the Great Forest National Park.

Hunters warn Melbourne’s deer invasion is set to worsen as the government moves to lock them out of 486,412ha of state forests to the north and east of city to create the Great Forest National Park.

Green groups are pressuring the Allan Government to almost triple the parks and reserves network to the east and north of Melbourne, from the current 165,747ha to about 486,412ha.

But hunters warn locking them out of these forests would exacerbate Melbourne’s feral deer invasion, with Yarra Ranges, Manningham and Knox City councils already forced to pay professional shooters to cull hundreds of deer each year, at a cost of anywhere from $170 to $600 per kill.

Yarra Ranges deer project officer Brian Davey said the council had employed professional shooters to cull 434 deer in the shire over the past 12 months, with reports from landholders of another 1000 to 1200 sighted on properties.

Procull Solutions professional shooter David Rowland – who shot 285 deer in Yarra Ranges, 221 in Manningham and another 60 within the Knox City Council area – warned the problem would only get worse if more land was locked up in national parks.

“If they make that Great Forest National Park, it will be an expensive disaster,” Mr Rowland said.

“A lot of the deer I shoot on private properties, at night with a thermal scope, are coming out of parks and Melbourne Water’s catchments. They’re the cane toads of Victoria.”

The Game Management Authority’s recent harvest report estimated hunters shot 137,090 deer in 2023, 11 per cent more than 2022, as the number of game licence holders endorsed to hunt them increased by about 10,000 to more than 52,000.

Sporting Shooters Association of Australia Victorian division spokesman Barry Howlett said maintaining hunters’ access to public land was critical to controlling deer.

“A crude rule of thumb is that you need to remove 30 per cent of a wild deer population in a given year to keep a lid on population growth,” Mr Howlett said.

“It is clear that the recreational harvest of deer is the most significant factor in achieving that.

“That is a part of why we are so strong on maintaining the public land access that we currently have. If you make it harder for hunters that’s obviously bad news for hunters, but the negatives would logically flow on to the environment, to agriculture and to local economies.”

In October last year the Arthur Rylah Institute released its first estimate of the deer population on public land, which it put at somewhere between 146,732 and 255,490; a mean of 191,153.

Just how many deer there are on both public and private land is unknown with estimates ranging from a few hundred thousand to a million.

The government has awarded 16 contracts over the past 18 months, worth a total of $5.3m to cull deer across the state, with at least half the funds going to aerial shooting.

“Aerial shooting will continue to be delivered under biodiversity programs, including the Victorian Deer Control Program, to ensure that localised reductions in deer numbers are maintained and that effective, long-lasting biodiversity outcomes are achieved,” a government spokesman said.