biodiversity, climate change, conservation, deer, native forest, pest impact, pest management, resilience, ungulate

A slowly unfolding native forest crisis is currently occurring in Aotearoa | New Zealand (hereafter New Zealand) because the numbers of deer in many native forests have risen rapidly to unsustainable levels. The natural forests of New Zealand are critical for many reasons: as habitat for native biodiversity, for providing resilience to catchments, as vast stores of carbon, and for their cultural values to Māori (indigenous people of New Zealand) and Pākehā (non-Māori people of New Zealand) alike. These critical values are being compromised by high deer numbers.