The Sporting Hunters Outdoor Trust has hit out at the government’s tahr killing plan. In a letter to the “Farmers’ Weekly” Laurie Collins, Sporting Hunters Outdoors Trust spokesman said the issue had become election issue.
Laurie Collins has had years of first-hand experience of tahr during years of employment with the NZ Forest Service. The Himalayan tahr is native to the Himalayas in southern Tibet, northern India and Nepal but is listed as “Near Threatened” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List.
SHOT’s letter said “Yet here in New Zealand tahr are treated as pests – vermin to be exterminated. While the Tahr Foundation and NZ Deerstalkers’ Association are seeking a High Court injunction, its worth noting Forest and Bird is also – for opposite reasons.
Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage has been a prominent member of Forest and Bird, whose deranged zealot-based ideology is extermination of “introduced” wild animals. Are not humans an introduced species too? Such is hypocrisy!
Whereas tahr, deer, wapiti, chamois and other game animals are managed population-wise overseas, New Zealand has crazed polices based openly or covertly, depending on species, of extermination.
The tahr is an asset that browses snow grass and other alpine plants. It’s no different generally, than moas, the various species of which for millions of years, browsed the shrublands, forests and alpine herbfields of prehistoric New Zealand. Then, in a matter of centuries, they were wiped out. So browsing game animals have generally replaced the browsing component of the million year old ecosystem.
Shot tahr are left to rot, in itself a shocking waste of valuable protein. The cruelty of crazed culling is to leave young kids motherless and facing a slow death by starvation. A major criticism is the extermination ideology is the lack of justification, a waste of taxpayer money, ironical in view of government’s covid19 massive borrowing.
For myself and many of the hunting public, this will dictate how I vote in the coming election.”