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New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 427, 29 August 1947, Page 5

Sir,-I. have read Wendell Endicott’s article on deer extermination in your July 11 issue with disgust. Here is revealed a\ visiting "sportsman," glorying in the large total of animals he and his fellow slaughterers might have been able to kill for "pleasure," had it not been for the extermination policy. ... I’ve been a tramper in my time, and have years ago observed unmistakable damage done to the Wakatipu forests by deer, in barking and killing trees, eating the undergrowth, and so opening the bush ~-which leads to slips and erosion. Proof of this erosion is seen in the rapidly increasing deltas of the two rivers at the head of Lake Wakatipu. Those who see most of our virgin country testify most to the soil erosion that is going on,

The Internal Affairs Department rust have had a vast amount of evidence of the destruction wrought by imported game before it could have been induced radically to change its former policy of conservation to one of extermination. Had the threat to our forests and our soil been foreseen when the déer species were first brought here to give lovers of killing something to kill, they would surely never have been imported. All honour to the Minister for Internal Affairs if he sticks to his present policy of "culling." The economic benefit arising from the deer-killing-for-pleasure "industry" is as nothing when compared to the economic loss from soil erosion.

F. K.

TUCKER

(Gisborne).