Aerial meat hunting is carried out on public land by operators who have a WARO permit. The proposals are for commercial aerial hunting by paying clients on the public estate. Aerial culls are carried out by DoC where required at great expense. On most Department of Conservation administered land recreational hunters are encouraged to shoot several females/juviniles per trophy male in order to keep populations at levels at or below the carrying capacity of the land.

Heli-hunting with paying clients will be of short term financial benifit to several operators although hugely detremental to the game resource in alpine areas. If allowed, these areas of public land will be shot out of mature Bull Thar and Chamois Bucks in a short period of time. The heli operators will not care, as they will have made some fast bucks, while recreational foot hunters will struggle to find mature animals.. as with deer etc. Thar & Chamois need time & hunter restraint to produce good trophies.

No other country I know of would allow people to harvest animals in such a way. Although non-native species, Thar & Chamois if managed correctly are a great national asset, in the eyes of many tens of thousands of kiwis anyway.

Joe