Hunting

About 450 hunters crowded the road from Lake Pukaki to Aoraki/Mt Cook to protest the Department of Conservation’s tahr cull.

The event had been running for 27 years and attracted close to 6000 hunters and their families.

Hunting operators have welcomed a High Court ruling instructing the Department of Conservation to undertake further consultation on its 2020-2021 tahr culling plans.

Hunting operators have thrown their weight behind a Tahr Foundation campaign which will see the Department of Conservation’s new tahr-culling operation challenged in the High Court this week.

Tourism businesses and rural communities will be undermined by DOC’s new tahr cull, according to ACT’s firearms and outdoors spokesperson Nicole McKee.

New Zealand’s guided hunting industry is appealing for support from domestic hunters as it struggles through the Covid-19 crisis.

The New Zealand Professional Hunting Guides Association and Game Animal Council is urging the Government to ease domestic travel restrictions in alert level 2.

Hunters will be able to hunt on private land with special restrictions when New Zealand moves to Covid-19 alert level 3 but not on public conservation land.

A new Government Order has banned hunting while New Zealand remains in level four lockdown during the Covid-19 crisis.