Sage Eugenie: Game Animal Council Bill — First Reading 
Sage Eugenie: Game Animal Council Bill — First Reading 
[Advance Copy - Subject to minor change before inclusion in Bound Volume.] 
EUGENIE SAGE (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Deputy Speaker. I rise to speak on the first reading of the Game Animal Council Bill. The Green Party opposes this bill because of the pre-eminence that it gives to introduced deer tahr chamois and pigs in the management of our public protected lands and the way that that cuts across the statutory purpose of conservation legislation. The bill creates the Game Animal Council as a statutory authority and in so doing elevates and gives special status to hunting and problem animals such as deer and tahr. The bill is a big lollipop for United Future but it is a huge backward step. It is poisonous for conservation and particularly our indigenous plants. Our alpine flora evolved without browsing mammals and species such as  
Ranunculus lyallii 
 the Mount Cook buttercup are very vulnerable to the heavy browsing and trampling of big introduced herbivores such as tahr and chamois. So we believe that our conservation lands should be managed to protect their indigenous ecosystems and provide for a range of recreation not managed as game preserves for hunting. These game preserves are in direct conflict with the purpose for which conservations lands are managed and that is to protect our natural indigenous ecosystems wildlife and habitats. 
Although Mr Dunne may say that this bill does not dilute existing powers in the legislation it creates very real tension between the delegated functions of the Game Animal Council and the Department of Conservation. We have seen how many hunters interested in protecting deer from by-kill through 1080 operations have opposed and raised a lot of public concern about 1080 in order to protect their hunting interests and that same tension will be evident with this Game Animal Council. 
The bill enables the Minister to designate herds of special interest and allows the Game Animal Council not the Department of Conservation to manage areas of conservation lands for hunters and recreational hunting. In giving this privileged status to hunters and hunting we seem to have forgotten the deer menace and the huge financial and resource investment by the Crown over many decades in controlling deer and other pests on Crown land. Deer were declared noxious animals in the 1930s and it was the Department of Internal Affairs and then the New Zealand Forest Service that employed professional cullers from the 1930s right until the end of the 1980s to eradicate deer from New Zealand. We understood then the ecological impacts of deer browsing. We understood that it could contribute to erosion. We understood that it severely reduced the capacity for forestry generation. So the Crown funded those professional cullers and that saw nearly 3 million deer culled between the 1930s and the mid-1950s. 
It was that effort in professional deer culling and helicopter recovery of venison that dramatically reduced deer numbers in the South Island. It was this House that passed the Wild Animal Control Act in 1977 in recognition of the need to control these harmful species and to regulate the operations of both commercial hunters and recreational hunters if we were to get effective wild animal control. This bill undermines that past commitment and that investment of Crown resource because of the privileged status it gives to hunting. In our view the Government’s conservation priorities are all awry. Having cut conservation funding by $54 million the Government is now proposing to allocate $100000—it says in the regulatory impact statement—to the Game Animal Council when the Department of Conservation is having to pull back on its work. How is that $100000 to be found? Through reprioritisation within Vote Conservation. So it will be robbed from work on our indigenous species. A tramper emailed me only yesterday to say how impressed he was by the work of the department in the Hurunui Valley where staff are working to protect great spotted kiwi. They and he were worried that those staff would lose their jobs in the next round of restructuring in the department. The Government can increase the spending on noxious animals such as tahr but not on our indigenous species. 
As the regulatory impact statement highlights there is no need for this bill and no need for the Game Animal Council. I quote from the statement: “There is no information clearly establishing that current institutional arrangements in the management regime for wild animals requires change to improve participation among the different groups with interests in these animals and their effects”. It goes on to say: “There is no evidence that current user groups and organisations (for example the Deerstalkers’ Association) are deficient in representing their members’ interests.” We already have the Conservation Authority and conservation boards which enable people to participate in the management of conservation lands. 
We have an example of what happens when you get a herd management plan in the tahr control plan in the central Southern Alps. Himalayan tahr numbers were reduced to around 3000 in the early 1980s. Now with that plan which emphasises the role of recreational hunters we have seen tahr numbers climb to over 10000 with huge impacts on the alpine flora of that region including a number of threatened plants like the Mount Cook buttercup. So this bill in putting hunting interests first potentially compromises all of those indigenous ecosystems. 
I look forward to being on the Local Government and Environment Committee and hearing public submissions. There will be I think a strong swell of opposition because of the way the bill cuts across the Conservation Act and the conservation purpose to preserve and protect our indigenous biota. Thank you.