With assistance from the Game Animal Council (GAC), the Central North Island Sika Foundation Conservation Trust applied for, and was granted funding through, the Government’s Jobs for Nature Programme to deliver deer management and conservation projects over a three year period (starting 2022).
One of the deliverables is an adaptive deer management and research programme in the Kaimanawa and Kaweka Forest Parks. The project is led by the Sika Foundation, strongly collaborating with, and enabled by further funding from, the Department of Conservation (DOC).
SIKA FOUNDATION PURPOSE & GOALS
To help develop more sustainable sika deer management outcomes and to facilitate a process of hunter engagement with the Department of Conservation (DOC) and the Game Animal Council (GAC) to help, the Central North Island Sika Foundation was formed in 2015. The Foundation has as its vision and whakataukī:
“A healthy Sika hunting resource, thriving in resilient natural habitats, valued by stakeholders.”
‘Ko te taiao te kura’ – The environment is the school.
The Sika herd, which inhabits the Kaimanawa Kaweka and Ahimanawa Ranges, is the only wild herd of Sika in the Southern Hemisphere. Whether you hunt for meat, trophy or both, there is no denying that Sika presents the hunter with challenges and interactions like no other deer species. Their vocal and inquisitive nature, combined with their ability to learn quickly from mistakes and adapt to hunting pressure makes them one of our most exciting and addictive big game animals to hunt. It is these traits that make the Sika one of New Zealand’s iconic hunting resources.
Adaptive deer management is a cycle of research, monitoring, and management. Areas of stress identified through this process are carefully managed and monitored to maintain the balance between impacts of the Sika herd on the habitat, and their immense social, cultural and economic value.
The CNI Sika Foundation recognises that in order for a healthy sika herd to exist, there must be;
- A foundation of healthy, sustainable resilient natural habitats.
- Iwi and stakeholder support for a shared vision of how to improve both the habitat and the Sika hunting resource.
- Hind focused management. Targeting “hinds at place” – who live in matriarchal family groups with limited home ranges – not only effectively decreases stress on the environment, but it also improves rutting intensity by increasing competition between stags for fewer but better conditioned hinds.
- Facilitation of recreational hunters and the wider hunting community to be involved in the programme, and learnings shared to all.
KAIMANAWA AND KAWEKA FOREST PARKS
Kaimanawa Forest Park
Kaimanawa Forest Park is situated south of Lake Taupo and east of Mount Tongariro in the Taupo Volcanic Zone. It is a mix of Hawke’s Bay (Mohaka catchment), Waikato (Lake Taupo catchment) and Horizons (Rangitikei catchment) Regional Council boundaries in New Zealand’s North Island. The 75,957 ha park was established in 1969 and is managed by the Department of Conservation.
The northern Kaimanawa canopy is predominately comprised of red beech Fuscopora fusca and silver beech Lophozonia menziesii forest ranging from the 600m foothills bordering farmland, exotic forests and private land heading south to higher altitude silver beech, mountain beech habitat parcels.
The western side of the park is predominately red beech and podocarp forest, with mountain and silver beech parcels to the south and east. The forest backs up to the exposed alpine tussock grasslands of the 1591m Umakarikari range to the east.
Southern Kaimanawa is a similar higher altitude environment with a higher ratio of alpine tussock grasslands and shrubs above the bush line inclusive of the Thunderbolt and Whakamarumaru Ranges, split by the headwaters of the Rangitikei. The vegetation in southern Kaimanawa below the bush line is predominantly mountain beech Fuscopora cliffortoides and sub alpine shrubland belts between the beech and alpine tussock tops.
Kaweka Forest Park
Kaweka Forest Park is approximately 60,000 ha borders and runs to the southeast of Kaimanawa. Northern Kaweka is comprised of a mixture of red, silver and mountain beech. Central Kaweka is predominantly mountain beech leading up to the main Kaweka Range summit 1724 leading down manuka/kanuka on the eastern and southern faces of the main range. There are also extensive manuka shrublands in the east and south as a result of historic fires both natural and intentional for farming.
Acid soils, based mainly on pumice and volcanic ash (in particular the central Kaweka and southern Kaimanawa higher altitude mountain beech habitat), get lashed by wind, rain and snow, while being fractured and heaved by serious winter frost. Summer and autumn drought is common, so wildfire has been a regular feature of this landscape for centuries, each successive fire kick starting a short-lived ‘puff’ of biological activity before driving the system further into nutrient deficit.
Seabird colonies of mottled shearwater, grey-faced petrel and black petrel that once came all this way to breed here bringing important marine nutrient critical to the sustainability of the ecology, have been snuffed out by rat and stoat predation in the past century, robbing the landscape of its natural replenishment.
Weather events form SE winds from Cyclones Bernie (1982) and Bola (1988) knocked over vast areas of beech canopy. These have regenerated on some places buy not in others. Impacts from Cyclone Gabrielle (2023) are still yet to be quantified.
Since 2018/19 areas of mountain beech die back have become evident throughout southern Kaimanawa particularly prominent in the lower Waipakihi, Rangitikei and Mangamaire mountain beech habitat. These die back sites can be ‘high activity’ sites for Sika due to the increased sunlight and nutrients from rotting vegetation. For natural canopy replacement to occur, ensuring deer densities are managed appropriately through these habitats is crucial.
INTRODUCED DEER
Red deer Cervus elaphus reached a high population density throughout Kaimanawa Forest Park by 1930 after dispersing from liberations in 1896 at nearby Tongariro to the west, and in 1883 at Matapiro to the south-east.
Similar patterns were observed following deer introductions in other parts of New Zealand, where deer numbers typically reached eruptive peaks within two to three decades of establishment. Sika deer Cervus nippon were liberated in Kaimanawa Forest Park in 1905 but colonised the area much more slowly. They only colonised western parts of Kaimanawa Forest Park in the 1950s and southern Kaimanawa Forest Park during the 1980s.
Sika deer are thought to have the ability to browse more intensively than red deer because of a different digestive morphology. In Japan, Sika deer eat unpalatable plants and litterfall when preferred food sources are not available.
Reproductive rates of both deer species were initially high, until carrying capacity was exceeded and deer numbers crashed and/or were reduced through intensive commercial and government-funded hunting. Recreational, hunting has remained the most consistent influence on sika deer abundance for the past three decades, but the impact of this hunting is limited by access and habitat type and terrain, resulting in highly variable outcomes in both habitat and deer condition, across the Kaimanawa and Kaweka Ranges.
ADAPTIVE DEER MANAGEMENT
The landscape across Kaimanawa and Kaweka forest parks is complex and diverse, there are different habitats that will differ in carrying capacity and deer abundance “limits”. Hunting pressure varies substantially due to access. This requires different approaches at ‘place’. There is no “one size fits all”.
Although Kaimanawa Forest Park has had little to no deer management in the last 30 years other than recreational hunting, Kaweka Forest Park had deer management operations associated with the Kaweka Mountain Beech Project through central Kaweka from 1998 to 2016.
See more here: Sika deer hunting in Kaweka Forest Park (doc.govt.nz)
RECREATIONAL HUNTER CONTRIBUTION
The Kaimanawa Forest Park Conservation Management Plan provides for just six designated helicopter landing sites, often associated with huts. This can restrict the recreational hunting effort in more isolated parts of the park.
In recognition of this restriction, recreational hunting interests, including the NZDA and Sika Foundation, have worked with DOC to identify strategic helicopter landing sites within Kaimanawa Forest Park, to allow for additional recreational hunter effort in more isolated catchments, on the basis that these are used for ‘Management Hunts’.
The Sika Foundation works with key partners to facilitate four to six management hunts a year, outside of the fawning period for ethical reasons, and in strategic locations to avoid times/locations where stags are vulnerable due to velveting in their “fattening country” to encourage hind harvest.
Data collection is a key part to understanding herd health indicators throughout Kaimanawa/Kaweka Forest Parks, the recreational hunter contribution and their associated impact on the herd.
See more here: Hunts
MANAGEMENT UNITS
Kaimanawa and Kaweka Forest Parks have been divided into 9 management units. These management units are largely based on canopy/vegetation type, altitude and recreational hunter access/pressure. Jaws and reproductive data provided by recreational hunters are allocated to these management units, alongside data habitat and relative deer abundance from monitoring operations to build the picture around habitat, herd health and hunting pressure at place.
See more here: Herd Health Indicators
Kaimanawa/Kaweka Management Units
REPORTING
Use these links to view the reports for 2022 and 2023
2024/2025 OBJECTIVES
- To maintain the downward pressure on Sika abundance and the reproductive output of the herd in the REZ during spring 2024, using aerial-based thermal hind culling operations (utilising learnings from previous management operations).
- To remeasure the REZ monitoring transects in February-March 2025 to gauge any response in REZ habitat and relative deer abundance measures to the 2022-2024 management operations.
- To measure neighbouring Waipakihi (WPK) management unit to better understand habitat condition and relative deer abundance in some similar mountain beech habitat and associated die back, as observed in the REZ.
- Produce SRI/FPI technical reports for monitored Management Units to provide an understanding of current habitat condition and relative deer abundance across difference parts of Kaimanawa and Kaweka Forest Parks.
- To socialise learnings to Iwi, DOC, the wider hunting community, key partners and stakeholders.
Management unit monitoring underway & planned