The same minister has a proposal to poison trout in rivers, at the discretion of the Department of Conservation, without consultation with Fish and Game (who oversea trout fishing in NZ).
The problem with these environmental evangelists is that they're so focused on the environment that they are incapable of contemplating bigger picture items like social and cultural impacts, not to mention economic implications.
By qualification I'm a biologist and when I used to work in that field it was a never ending source of frustration that people were so short sighted and self righteous in their approach to nuanced issues like this.
It's certainly a left of center political issue, everyone has the right to a voice as long as it's the same as mine otherwise shut up type thing.
Hunters in nz just like in Aus shoot themselves in the feet sometimes. We get guys as justifying bomb ups of animals as "conservation because after all they're not native". What you're then saying is that they have no place which confirms what these purist green idiots believe.
We, and I mean both nations, need to start focussing on bigger picture arguments like those mentioned above e.g. social and cultural importance, economic importance etc. I'd argue a couple of points in addition pertaining to deer in Australia, one that we are beginning to accept that aboriginals caused the extinction of megafauna here, which has created a niche free for large mammals to fill. To that point I would add that a niche cannot be filled unless there is space to fill it.
Secondly, we suffer from the shifting baseline effect when trying to ascribe a measure of normality and pristine to any environment.
Thirdly, I'd argue that given how variable and resilient nature is does it really matter? No animal is as damaging to the environment as us, so yeah maybe manage any species numbers so they don't overwhelm resources, but that should go for natives too. Yet we rarely hear of calls from greens to reduce over populations of roos in Aus do we?
Apologies for rant, for what it's worth I plan on writing a more articulate letter to your government.
