The Norfolk Deer Strategy Project Manager, Michael Anker, has been involved in deer management for over 30 years. Both as a deer manager, as well as co-ordinating deer managers on his farm. A member, and collaborator, with many of the deer management groups, Michael is well placed to comment on the 10 year deer strategy recently published by DEFRA.
Read DEFRA’s Press Release Here
The recent publication of DEFRA’s ten year plan to reduce the impacts of wild deer across the country is a welcome step in the right direction, although past strategies, such as the 2004 ‘Action Plan’ which set out the sustainable management of wild deer populations in England did little to bring about any change and was based on many of the same key actions of the new release.
Key statements such as; the new strategy will allow farmers to cull more deer and thus reduce impacts, are likely to take years to implement and show benefit, bearing in mind that it has taken nearly four years to go from consultation to strategy release. Responsibilities for key aspects have been apportioned to various government bodies, NGO’s and other stakeholders, which will delay efficient rollout while the inevitable discussions take place.
All actions aim to reduce deer populations and there is an emphasis on invasive species especially Muntjac, and to monitor others, but monitoring must focus on culled deer counts with live deer censuses being complimentary. Changing night shooting of deer licences may ease culling in the short-term, but deer will adopt new avoidance strategies and may cause more damage to woodlands if they don’t venture out into the open to get shot. And the fact that hard pressed deer managers who cannot manage the size of their task will use extra shooting hours, possibly in conjunction with other full-time employment will only produce short-term gains. There is also the added risk of accidents when weather conditions are bad during night shooting operations especially over flatter terrain. Improvements in current legal daytime management practices should always be the goal.
In summary, a lot of proposed actions than can be of benefit, and most long overdue on a national scale. Some will need to remain adaptive and more effort must be put into getting stakeholders to engage on a collaborative landscape scape. The case in point being the Norfolk Deer Strategy, delivered here at Norfolk FWAG, which has already actioned many of the points within the DEFRA strategy and now has over 84,000 hectares of deer management collaboration across Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.