Wollongong City Councillor Leigh Colacino has first-hand experience of the problem with feral deer in the Illawarra.
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“I’ve had deer in my garage, I’ve had to chase them out of my garage,” the northern suburbs resident said.
“That’s a pretty weird scenario to be in. You’ve got deer wandering around in your garage trying to get through into your back yard because they’ve finished eating the plants in the front yard.”
Cr Colacino drafted a motion to put before council at Monday night’s meeting looking to deal with the worsening problem of feral deer.
It wasn’t his own confrontation with deer that inspired the motion but a call for help from a resident “who was at his wit’s end”.
The resident has been trying to deal with deer that come onto his residential property in numbers and destroy his garden by eating plants.
“He’s a keen gardener and he tries to plant new plants to make up for the loss he had last week and that night the deer have come back and eaten them,” Cr Colacino said.
In the six-point motion, Cr Colacino called for council to write to the state members in the area to highlight the problem.
He also wanted the NSW government to offer increased assistance to council in dealing with the feral deer population.
A spokeswoman for Primary Industry Minister Niall Blair said deer had been declared a “priority pest” .
She said the framing of the regulations effectively allowed “any landowner to manage deer as they see fit on their own land”.
Cr Colacino felt that approach may be sufficient for rural areas, but wasn’t suitable for a suburban environment like the Illawarra.
“The trouble with that is, the Wollongong LGA is predominantly residential,” Cr Colacino said.
“You aren’t going to be happy if I’m you’re next-door neighbour and I’m shooting a gun off.”
Pointing out that an Otford man was gored by a deer last year, Cr Colacino said they weren’t dealing with “Bambi or one of Santa’s little helpers”.
“We’re talking about wild animals that are the size of cows roaming around the streets and also along our highways,” he said.
“We don’t allow herds of cows to wander up and down residential streets but we’ve virtually allowed herds of deer to do so because Wollongong council does not have the resources to handle this issue,” the Wollongong City Councillor said.
“That’s what I’m asking for, for the state government to recognise just how big this problem is becoming and [that] they need to assist in some sort of humane culling program.”