Veteran Fiordland hunter Ken Tustin believes it is unrealistic to expect to exterminate Himalayan Tahr from New Zealand, and warring environmental groups should focus on how many of the alpine animals they are prepared to tolerate.

The vexed issue of the Department of Conservation’s (DOC) Himalayan Tahr culling programme hit the courts this week. 

The New Zealand Tahr Foundation is taking first shot at DOC for being too tough with its planned mass killing of the unusual, shaggy-maned, creatures described as sort of half-sheep, half-goat.

Tahr were introduced to New Zealand in 1903 and prefer living above the forest lines in the Southern Alp. They are regarded as a threat to New Zealand’s fragile alpine environments but they are endangered in their home range, the Himalayas.

The Tahr Foundation’s application for an injunction against DOC’s winter shooting programme, and a direction that a compromise be reached, is now before the Wellington High Court.

Meanwhile, Forest and Bird is waiting in the wings for its turn to bring a court suit against the department for not being tough enough in achieving zero tahr numbers in national parks.

Mr Tustin says the “fair bit of controversy” has been going for decades and could have been resolved when a management plan was drawn up in 1993.

The Himalayan Thar Control Plan 1993 set a herd limit of 10,000 tahr, with zero in national parks, and also required ongoing reviews and scientific research into control programmes.

“It is unrealistic to exterminate an animal. Once you get your head around that, you have to work out how much you are willing to tolerate,’’ Mr Tustin said.

Recently, numbers boomed up to an estimated 35,000. An estimated 12,000 animals were killed in a cull in 2019.

DOC is now ready to kill lots more, upsetting hunting groups who allege they were not been given enough time for comment on the 2020 cull. Their concern is the herd will be decimated and not recover.

Mr Tustin says tahr bulls in particular are a “handsome animal”, a sought-after hunting trophy that has value to the commercial guided hunting industry and for recreational hunters.

“Even though tahr are easier to get than a rat in your compost bin, it is still hard to get zero tahr.. A tahr doesn’t know the boundary of a national park. You can bring them down to low numbers, and there was a while we had them less than 2000,” he said.

Mr Tustin worked as a scientist for the Forest Research Institute from 1969 to 1979, and at one time spent two and half years living in a tiny hut in the Godley Valley so he could study the animals.

He has retired now and everything he wrote about tahr that was not published in scientific journals was written up in his 328-page book Mountain Monarchs: Unlocking the secrets of Himalayan Tahr in New Zealand, published in 2011 by Halcyon Press.

He recalls a lot of work went into developing the 1993 plan and setting a 10,000 cap on the herd.

“I thought it was extraordinary for New Zealand to have a management plan that seemed so workable”.

“It acknowledged firstly that the animal had permission to exist, which was a monumental change in attitude.’’

Mr Tustin said an allowable number of tahr – “or a number you are prepared to tolerate” – was common sense for all parties.

However, the goal of sustaining the herd at 10,000 never happened and numbers were allowed to climb.

In his opinion, that meant hunters and the guiding industry became conditioned to higher numbers of tahr. “So, if you get fewer than 10,000 tahr, it all gets agonising.” 

“If [the herd] had been held to 10,000, it would have given time to collect data on how alpine vegetation was recovering. The original tahr control plan was very sensible and ahead of its day. Had we adhered to that, we would be in an excellent position to maintain a sustainable hunting resource at a level that is tolerable,” Mr Tustin said.

Mr Tustin said the tahr control plan had recognised the national park policy for zero tahr was “a little unrealistic” and aimed instead for low density. While it required significant effort, it was still workable, he said.

Other parties have complained there is not enough science about the impact of tahr on the environment and the impact of the monitoring programme.

Mr Tustin said scientists could monitor the effects of tahr on alpine vegetation and more science would help decision-making, but the tahr population had changed since 1993.

“If you don’t hold the density [of tahr] for some time, you don’t have much to go by,” he said.

In his opinion, there was a clash of conservation philosophy and practice.

“For some, there will never be enough [tahr] and for some there are too many.”

The 1993 policy still made good sense, but the solution would be as much about human management as animal management, he said.

“If they could pursue that policy [of a herd of 10,000], grit their teeth and bear with it while they get the science, then we could be getting somewhere. There’s a lot of passion out there... but it comes back to a question of values, which differ between individuals... It would be better to manage sustainably rather than let numbers increase and then have a mass slaughter which upsets everyone.’’