ConservationBytes.com

In collaboration with Biosecurity South Australia, the Global Ecology Lab at Flinders University is happy to announce a wonderful new PhD opportunity in feral deer control strategies for South Australia.

The project is tentatively entitled: Refining models of feral deer abundance and distribution to inform culling programs in South Australia

The project brief follows:

South Australian legislation requires that all landholders cull feral deer on their properties. Despite this, feral deer abundance and distribution are increasing across South Australia. This arises because culling by land managers and government organisations is not keeping pace with rates of population growth, and some landholders are harbouring deer for hunting, whereas some deer escape from deer farms.

There are an estimated 40,000 feral deer in South Australia, and state government agencies are working to ramp up programs to cull feral deer before their numbers reach a point where control is no longer feasible.

Planning such large-scale and costly programs requires that government agencies engage economists to measure the economic impacts of feral deer, and to predict the value of these impacts in the future. That modelling is done regularly by governments, and in the case of pest-control programs, the modelling draws on models of feral deer population growth, farmer surveys about the economic, social, and environmental impacts of feral deer, and analyses of culling programs and trials of new culling techniques.

The economic models predict and compare both the current and future costs of:

• deer impacts on pastures, crops, native plants, and social values (including illegal hunting)
• culling programs that achieve different objectives (e.g., contain vs. reduce vs. eradicate)

The outputs of the models also inform whether there are sufficient public benefits from the investment of public funds into the culling of feral deer.

This PhD project will collate published and unpublished data to refine models of feral deer distribution and abundance under various culling scenarios. This project will drive both high-impact publications and, because this project builds extensive collaborations with government agencies, the results will inform the management of feral deer in South Australia.