Last night I attended the AGM of the Macclesfield Landcare Group. Guest speaker Ian Temby from the Department for Sustainability and the Environment delivered a very interesting presentation on living with wildlife. This event was preceded by coverage in the local paper of problems that residents have been having with wild deer populations. It was both fascinating and disturbing to hear about the range of issues that people are having with wildlife and the limited range of options available to manage these problems. Ian spoke about deer, kangaroos, wombats, birds and fruit growing, flying foxes, swallows and nesting birds as well as snakes. More information is available on the DSE website here.

Ian described how animal populations are not static and that he believes that many of the issues we are facing with pest animals is as a consequence of landscape scale changes.

One of the members of Macclesfield Landcare Group spoke of the problems that deer are causing in the area. In particular Sambar deer. Deer are highly adaptable to the Australian bush and have been seen in herds of 30 to 40 animals at times! Later the AGM proceeded and I would like to note what an amazing amount of activities the group are involved in and they have an extremely healthy membership of 70 properties. Much thanks to the committee for the far from easy task of making all this happen.