The president said that, for at least a decade, farmers had been expressing mounting concerns about both the surge in deer numbers and their geographic expansion out of traditional areas of habitat. “In addition to the well-known role that expanding deer population played in spreading bovine TB, there were issues around road safety, forestry destruction and other biodiversity aspects that demanded action,” he said. He has urged Minister McConalogue to ‘push through’ with his decision and begin the cull in January 2024.
Noting the minister’s remarks about the possibility of a single agency or body being made responsible for national deer management, the ICMSA president said that the likely efficiency would have to be weighed up against the reality of ‘yet another quango or state agency with whom farmers and landowners would have to engage and on the basis of yet more regulations and restrictions’.