Photo credit: Dylan Higgison

Tēnā koe,

As a current recreational hunting permit holder, I’m contacting you to provide an update on the Department of Conservation’s (DOC) Himalayan tahr control programme in the central South Island.

You may have recently heard about a High Court case involving the New Zealand Tahr Foundation (NZTF) who sought a judicial review into the lawfulness of DOC’s Tahr Control Operational Plan for 1 July 2020 to 30 June 2021.

I wanted to share the outcome of this case with you directly.

High court case:

Recently, the New Zealand Tahr Foundation filed judicial review proceedings against the Minister of Conservation and Director-General of Conservation regarding DOC’s Tahr Control Operational Plan.

The Judge upheld one aspect of NZTF’s complaint, which was a partial inadequacy by DOC to not provide tahr stakeholders (the Tahr Plan Implementation Liaison Group) with the number of control hours that we had proposed to undertake in a reasonable timeframe for feedback.

As part of Justice Dobson’s decision, we can undertake half of our planned control programme (i.e. 125 hours of control)  inside of the feral range while we undertake further consultation with tahr stakeholders and reconsider the Operational Plan for 2020-2021. This is essential control work. There are simply too many tahr and they have an impact on native plants at high densities (I have included a link to more information about this below).

Key tahr facts:

I would like to share some facts with you about our tahr control programme:

· We have no plans to eradicate tahr and are undertaking a phased approach to meet the objectives of the statutory Himalayan Thar Control Plan 1993.

· There will continue to be thousands of tahr for recreational and commercial hunting across 573,000 of public conservation land. This includes 425,000 ha outside of Aoraki/Mount Cook and Westland Tai Poutini National Parks. There is a further 133,000 ha of Crown pastoral lease and private land within the tahr Management Units.

· In Autumn 2019, the tahr population was estimated to be approximately 34,500 tahr on public conservation land alone. DOC, commercial hunters and contractors controlled approximately 11,000 tahr between July to November last year. There has since been another breeding season.

· We first signalled two years ago we needed to step up our tahr control efforts to protect the natural values of the national parks. National parks are special places and they need to be protected and preserved for all New Zealanders.

· Bull tahr will only be targeted by DOC in Aoraki/Mount Cook and Westland Tai Poutini National Parks where DOC legally needs to reduce tahr numbers to the lowest practicable density.

· Outside of the national parks, DOC will leave all bull tahr for recreational and commercial hunters and only target high localised densities of female and juvenile tahr.

· DOC will record bull sightings (outside of the national parks) and upload this information to the tahr webpage for hunters to plan their next hunt.

· DOC’s planned control work will have a minimal effect on the commercial hunting industry as the vast majority of commercial hunting takes place outside of public conservation land.

· Data from trophy exports between 2014 and 2016, indicates on average, 1000 to 1100 commercially hunted bull tahr leave the country each year.

· Concession returns show just 316 trophy bull tahr are commercially hunted on the conservation estate annually, and less than a hundred of those are taken from the national parks (the only place where DOC will control bulls).

More information:

Tahr Control Operations: https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/things-to-do/hunting/what-to-hunt/tahr/tahr-control-operations/

Learn more about why DOC undertakes tahr control: https://www.doc.govt.nz/globalassets/documents/conservation/threats-and-impacts/himalayan-tahr-in-nz-factsheet.pdf

Information on tahr and their impacts is available at: www.doc.govt.nz/monitoring-reporting

Recent media release: https://www.doc.govt.nz/news/media-releases/2020-media-releases/himalayan-tahr-control-to-protect-national-parks/

Ngā mihi nui,

Dr Ben Reddiex

Operations Director