The deer invasion is coming, warns Andrew Cox, the chief executive of the Invasive Species Council (ISC).
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"[Deer] will be eating Sydneysiders' gardens, creating traffic havoc and wrecking bush land remnants that have been nurtured back to health by thousands of bushcare volunteers," he said.
The ISC, a not-for-profit conservation group, regards feral deer as the country's worst emerging vertebrate pest problem in Australia. Modelling shows that deer could easily spread across the entire mainland, says Mr Cox.
In Wollongong, perhaps the most affected urban area in Australia, Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery said deer are eating the "lovely camellias" in his backyard. They're munching on the roses in the city's botanic gardens and increasingly coming into backyards, particularly those near bushland.
The deer are causing car crashes and near misses. They're also triggering erosion in the escarpment - the equivalent of a deer superhighway running parallel to the Princes Highway from Sydney to the south.
The ISC's submission to a federal senate inquiry into feral deer, pigs and goats, calls for an independent investigation of "perverse incentives that stymie or undermine" efforts to reduce the threats of invasive species.
This includes policies, such as those in NSW and Victoria, that protect feral deer as 'game' animals and commercialise the harvest of feral goats.
Deer numbers increased by 60 per cent between 2009 and 2016, said the ISC. There are about one million in Victoria, and the state estimated more than than 1000 plant and animal species had impacted by deer.
These hard-hoofed ruminants are coming into cities searching for food and water. Once freak incidents, such as the 250 kg deer that crashed into a Melbourne funeral parlour in 2017 or the one killed in a car crash in Bondi Junction in 2016, would become more frequent, said Mr Cox.
In its submission to the senate inquiry, CSIRO warned deer were now in a high growth stage when "invading populations" caused irrevocable damage. Most of Australia's now extinct mammal fauna were seen for the last time when rabbit and fox numbers went through a similar boom in growth.
The existing six wild deer species in eastern Australia will progressively colonise nearly the entire eastern seaboard, Great Diving Range and the western slopes.
Cr Bradbery said the council had culled 3500 deer since 2011.
"That's not even keeping the lid on it," he said.
It spent about $300,000 a year on deer control, but to make any difference it would need to spend $1 million a year. Wollongong's problem is worse than most places because it is surrounded by bushland. Culling deer in a built up area was "almost impossible".
The council also needed to use professional shooters who would kill the animal humanely, and extract the carcass.
"Those things can't be left to rot in the water catchment," he said.
In NSW, wild deer are identified as a priority species in the Local Land Services Regional Strategic Pest Animal Management Plans. But as a game animal they can only be shot by someone with a hunters licence in NSW.
To reduce deer numbers, though, NSW relaxed deer hunting regulations last November, allowing hunters to shoot from vehicles, shoot at night, shoot all year round and on private properties with approval.
A spokesperson for the Shooters Fishers and Farmers Party said the party supports the current classification in NSW of deer as a game animal. "We do not believe re-classifying deer as a pest will assist in reducing deer numbers," he said.
