Speeches 

Thank you for your welcome. It is a pleasure to be here with you this evening. When you first invited me to speak I was the MP for Rotorua, now I am here as Minister of Conservation, and have many more things to talk to you about now!

I know you are all keen to hear my decisions on the Ministerial panel's findings on managing numbers of deer, chamois, tahr and wild pigs. I have considered the panel's recommendations very carefully, but as I am currently discussing these with colleagues, today I am unable to give you my final decisions on all the specific issues raised by the panel.

But I can give you my response to some of the issues raised.

The panel concluded that existing legislation, policy and planning provide a range of opportunities for commercial and recreational hunting for meat and trophy values.  I am committed to ensuring that those opportunities are fully utilised. 

The panel didn't identify an urgent need for legislation change, and I agree. So what I want to do is use the existing tools to deliver those opportunities.  I will be giving clear instructions to DOC on the level of response I expect to see in this regard. 

The panel also found that more can be done to encourage, coordinate and facilitate hunting to improve conservation outcomes.  In its work, the panel endorsed a large number of exciting initiatives identified by DOC that are already improving the effectiveness of recreational hunting. 

But there are clearly untapped opportunities to improve the cooperation between hunters, hunting organisations and DOC, and I am looking at ways to ensure that best practice approaches are identified and spread throughout the country. 

These include hunter education initiatives by your own organisation, and affiliate groups, such as your very successful HUNTS programme (Hunter National Training Scheme) run in conjunction with the Mountain Safety Council. 

The leadership of NZDA is critical to building a new generation of hunters who have strong hunting skills, can operate safely in the bush, and can contribute to conservation. DOC has contributed in the past, and I urge you to retain their expertise on your hunter training schemes into the future.

DOC has also been active in facilitating hunting activities.  

A key role for DOC is sharing information about hunting opportunities.  As well as general information on recreational opportunities - huts, tracks, safety etc - I want to see DOC continue and expand its targeted information for hunters.  This has to be delivered in a variety of ways - younger hunters are likely to want web-based information, while those of us who are a bit older prefer to have face-to-face conversations at the local DOC office. 

And then there are the increasingly popular special annual events, such as the hunter-led ‘Sika show' in the North Island and the ‘Tahr show' in the South, which are great opportunities for hunters to find out more from DOC, face to face, about the best hunting opportunities, easiest access,  and new opportunities resulting from tenure reviews.

At this year's tahr show, held recently in Christchurch, the upgraded CD-ROM from last years show was free to anyone who wanted it. This CD shows Tahr hotspots, allows detailed maps to be printed, shows the various hunting blocks inside the feral range of tahr, and the nearest DOC offices to any place that hunters would like to go.

As well as sharing information, DOC can work more directly to encourage hunting.  In some cases, for example, through the conservator, DOC have waived helicopter landing fees for organised hunts. This level of flexibility shows that the department does have an attentive ear to the requests of hunters where there is mutual benefit.

Hunters' needs continue to be an important consideration in decisions about recreation facilities. Not far from here, in the Whirinaki forest, DOC is looking to designate huts as specific hunters' huts. This means hunting is the primary activity at that site and DOC would look to include facilities like meat safes adjacent to the huts. All this will be done in cooperation with the local NZDA branch.

Another conclusion of the panel was that while wild animals are an important resource, they also affect indigenous biodiversity, and their impacts have to be managed. It is clear from the submissions to the panel that native biodiversity matters to the hunting community.  So I want to see hunters given more opportunities to become actively involved in broader conservation programmes. 

One excellent example of how this could work is the work of the New Zealand Wapiti Foundation.  When the Fiordland National Park Management Plan was reviewed, provision was made for the Foundation to ensure the enduring status of that specific wapiti herd, to carry out vegetation monitoring and undertake significant pest control work. Many of the red/wapiti crosses have been shot, not by DOC, but by Wapiti foundation to improve herd quality, and retain native biodiversity values.

Before I finish this evening, I would like to move from general responses to the Panel's findings to some specific areas which I have made decisions on.

We want to facilitate recreational hunting activities, and I am sure that hunters probably hate having to get a permit before they go out for the weekend. Fortunately, this is no longer the case in many places. In Canterbury Conservancy, for instance, hunters get a permit for 12 months, valid for most conservation lands within the Conservancy, and there is a move to extend the period to the lifetime of the firearms licence. I have asked DOC to reduce permitting requirements as far as possible within current law, and in the longer term I will be working towards reducing the overall legislative requirements.

I have looked at the way DOC control of tahr affects access to trophy bulls. DOC already avoids shooting trophy bull tahr outside the National Park boundaries - in Canterbury, no bull tahr has been shot outside the National Park for two years. I will ensure that implementation of the Tahr Plan maximises trophy tahr access as far as possible.

I have also asked DOC to carry out a careful review of the use of deer repellent and to see whether wider use is appropriate. But I must emphasise that DOC's ability to use deer repellent is not only limited by the policy.  Operations with deer repellent cost considerably more per hectare than those without, and it would be inappropriate to fund this by reducing the amount of biodiversity protection achieved through possum control. But we will be exploring those issues as the review progresses.

So to sum up. The panel has made clear that the system can deliver and I will be making sure that it does. 

And I am looking to NZDA as the key leader for the deer hunting community, to continue the work you have been doing to champion and strengthen recreational hunting in New Zealand.  Free access to recreational hunting opportunities has long been part of New Zealand's national identity and way of life - and it will remain that way. Together we can ensure that more New Zealanders get out and enjoy the outdoors, and that the indigenous biodiversity in the areas they are enjoying is safeguarded.

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