Thread: Thar extermination

Any word on what's happening with the cull , has it been postponed this spring/summer ?

24th Oct Tahr Foundation
DOC Update received

Reg Kemper, DOC operations manager, has confirmed that the tahr cull is on hold pending review of Department of Conservation procedures. The cull will proceed, but there is no time frame for completion of the review or recommencement of culling. The Department will make an announcement when more information is available.

26th Oct Tahr Foundation

While the DoC culling is on hold after the tragic helicopter accident in Wanaka last week, we need to be thinking about what we need to be doing as recreational hunters.
The biggie really is recreational hunter tahr tallies being able to be included in the management total. The GAC is working on a kill return system at the moment that will be reliable and provide accurate data. Once they have presented this to DoC, then we need to lobby the hell out of them to get them to accept it. Watch this space on that one.
The kill return that DoC have on their website at the moment is not fit for purpose and DoC have said they aren’t going to include any numbers gathered in it anyway against the tally of 10,000 they are wanting to achieve by August. Please do not use DoC’s system. What we ask you to do is keep you own info on any tahr taken so that we can include it once we have the system accepted. What we will need for each animal taken is a GPS location, a geotag if you can or a photo of the animal in its surroundings, sex, and best guess on age. Please record and keep this information until we are ready to receive it.

Hunting wise, what we ask is you just treat it as business as usual at this stage. If you want to shoot some nannies for meat or a trophy for the wall, go ahead as per normal. But do not go crazy culling any nannies yet until we have DoC agreeing to the numbers being countered. And certainly do not go shooting/culling any young bulls. This age class of animal is going to be under enough threat from the aerial culls as it is even though they are not going to shoot them intentionally, so recreational hunters must show even more restraint than normal.
We are going to have to live with a lower tahr population than we’ve had in recent years, and it is crucial those young bulls that survive the aerial culls get to grow into old bulls. If we can’t restrain ourselves better than we have in the past, there will be nowhere near enough trophy bulls to meet recreational and guided hunting’s needs. That will just create huge conflict that does nobody any good.