Introduced Plants and Animals of Victoria

A hunted animal

The Sambar (Cervus unicolor) is a large, dark brown deer, to 1.4 m at the shoulder and weighing up to 240 kg, with broad, branched antlers on males and a pronounced ruff around the neck. They are found throughout the wet forest country of Victoria in areas where the rainfall is generally above 1000 mm a year. Most of the time the animals are browsers which feed on a range of leaves, and perhaps fruit, of forest shrubs and climbers. They are also opportunistic grazers which will sometimes venture into slightly more open country while feeding on grasses and sedges. The Sambar is native to South-east Asia including India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines.

The Acclimatisation Society of Victoria, lead by such eminent scientists as Frederick McCoy (Director of the Melbourne Museum) and Ferdinand von Mueller (Victorian Government Botanist), was the principal body responsible for the introduction of useful species to Australia. This august group of men, all Europeans, reasoned that life in the new colony would be improved by the addition of true game species such as deer. Their first preference was for Red Deer (Cervus elephas), a native to England and Europe, which was considered to be the noblest of animals for gentlemen to hunt. Next in the rankings was the Fallow Deer (Cervus dama) which was native to eastern Europe and probably introduced to the rest of Europe, including England, by the Romans, where it became another of the royal game animals. Both were introduced to many parts of Victoria from the mid 1800s but with little success, neither have become widespread and nearly all of the original populations died out. The Red Deer is currently more or less restricted to the Grampians National Park (where hunting is prohibited) while the Fallow Deer survives mostly within deer farms.

Cervus unicolor - Sambar

The Sambar was introduced into Australia at about the same time, from populations in Sri Lanka, India and the Philippines, and it faired much better. The initial colony was at the northern edge of Westernport where the animals spread into the great swamplands around Koo-wee-rup - all of which have since been cleared and drained. From there they moved north-east into the Victorian highlands which is now their stronghold. With the Sambar, the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria (ASV) achieved its goal of introducing a new species to Victoria which would survive in the wild and provide benefits to the people of this state. This viewpoint is one that is endorsed by groups such as the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia (SSAA) and the Australian Deer Association (ADA) who praise the ASV for their foresight and rate the Sambar as one of premier game deer in the world.

There are, of course, those that would argue differently and suggest that the Sambar is an alien species that is no less a nuisance than any other introduced animal. While this argument is a persuasive one from an ecological standpoint it has largely been dismissed by Victorian legislators, and the reasons for this are fairly obvious. Sambar have not generated the economic problems that other non-native species have. The European Rabbit, European Hare, Red Fox, House Mouse and Black Rat all invade farmland, pastures and human dwellings and compete with existing livestock or adversely effect the amenity of an area for humans. As a result enormous amounts of time and money are expended on - relatively unsuccessful - eradication programs for these species. The Sambar, on the other hand, don't compete with domestic stock or cause significant damage to property. In addition, they are the principal focus for an industry which supplies weapons, ammunition and equipment to the 14,000 or so registered deer hunters in this state. They are an economic success story and it is in the hunting industry's interests to maintain healthy, sustainable populations of Sambar.

Sambar are forest animals and are very elusive so few people ever see them. Whatever damage they may do to forests, by way of over browsing, ring-barking trees, physical disturbance, distributing weeds or competing with native species, is poorly documented so it is difficult to be definitive about the adverse effects of these large animals. The view that Sambar is a benign species, which has a minimal effect on the environment, is one that is held by many members of the deer hunting fraternity and is often presented, with some success, when deer eradication programs are proposed. As a consequence, prior to 2007, virtually no formal strategies had been developed by government agencies to remove the species from native forests and national parks.

In November 2007, the Victorian Minister for Environment and Climate Change, accepted a nomination for listing the Sambar as a threat to biodiversity under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act (FFG). This policy initiative would seem to have the potential to create opposition from deer hunters who regard the Sambar as the most important game species in the state. However, the Minister stated that the aim of this listing would not be to eradicate the Sambar from Victorian forests but rather to manage its numbers, and that deer hunters would be part of that management process. This program fitted well with a call from another member of parliament who earlier claimed that Sambar numbers were getting out of control and damaging native vegetation, particularly in national parks. His plan was for deer hunting to be allowed in national parks to help reduce numbers, a plan that is partly endorsed by Parks Victoria in a Memorandum of Cooperation with the ADA in 2004.

This approach to a threatening process listed under the FFG is different from others that focus on a single species. For example, other species listed under this part of the FFG include the European Rabbit, the Red Fox and Blackberry, all of which are regarded as economic and environmental problems. There is no caveat in their management plans that states their numbers should only be controlled (although that may be the only practical outcome). If it were possible there is little doubt that all wild populations of each species would be eradicated. In the case of the Sambar, the broad management proposal put forward by the Minister follows much more closely to the approach used for native species, such as kangaroos, that periodically multiply to unsustainable numbers. Clearly the Government wants to maintain the Sambar as a game species in Victoria.

In this discussion it is difficult to ignore the fact that the majority of the records for Sambar in the Victorian Illustrated Fauna Information System are from within national parks where hunting is currently prohibited (under normal circumstances) and that hunting clubs have regularly requested this prohibition to be relaxed. It appears paradoxical that listing Sambar as a threatening process under the FFG, using arguments that deer hunters have consistently opposed (i.e. that Sambar are damaging native vegetation), may create the outcome the hunters have wanted for some time.