A new study warns New Zealand is sleepwalking into a native forest catastrophe and calls for a national deer management strategy. Author and University of Canterbury emeritus professor David Norton says expanding carbon farming is adding habitat as deer numbers keep climbing.

“For a lot of people when they go into our forests, they’re just not aware of how degraded the forests are,” he says.

“So we’re losing the understory, we’re having more sediment coming out, we’re having more water flowing out.”

He says the country must decide where to prioritise deer control, and the Department of Conservation should lead the work.

“We can’t eliminate deer; it is not possible.”

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