Matthew Littlewood15:26, Jun 07 2021
John Bisset/Stuff
Tahr at Aoraki/Mt Cook National park. The Department of Conservation has a policy of “zero density” of the animal within national parks. (File photo)
Hunting organisations continue to call for the “zero density” policy for tahr control in New Zealand national parks to stop, documents show. Documents released to
Stuff under the Official Information Act show that in submissions to the Department of Conservation’s tahr control programme for the 2021-22 season, released last month, there was much debate among members of the Tahr Liaison Group. The group, which features a mix of conservation and hunting interests, met in December 2020 and March this year in order to progress the tahr control programme for the upcoming season, which begins next month.
“Hunters and other recreationists can expect to see helicopters flying at low levels for 20 to 30 minutes at a time monitoring all tahr observed within 2km by 2km grids. This work is weather dependent and will likely be carried out in the early morning and late evening. Tahr, valued by hunters as a trophy animal, are also known to cause major damage on conservation land to native flora and fauna and between 2016 and Autumn 2019, DOC estimated their population to be about 34,500 on public conservation land alone. DOC’s Himalayan Tahr Control Plan stipulates there should be a limit of 10,000 tahr across the 706,000ha of private land, Crown pastoral leases and public conservation land known as the “feral range”, while the plan also says there should be “zero density” of tahr within national park units.