THE FORESTRY Department has decided to exterminate the fallow deer population in the Tylliria Mountains to prevent the unwelcome species from getting out of hand and eliminating the treasured moufflon population.
The order for a mass cull was given after attempts to return the deer to their native Switzerland or offload them onto zoos came to nothing.
Some 50 to 60 deer are housed in an enclosure – originally built for three – near the remote point of Stavros tis Psokas.
Unless drastic action is taken, forestry officials fear the population will multiply to nearly 120 in less than two years.
The deer boom could have catastrophic effects on the some 2,000 moufflon that roam the forest.
There is no question that the Ministry of Agriculture will sacrifice the prized indigenous moufflon to the deer after the species recently bounced back from the brink of extinction.
The slaughter, to be carried out systematically over the next five years, should stock the kitchens at exclusive restaurants with the odd slab of venison.
The Ministry of Agriculture is expected to offer tenders to interested parties to begin the butchery early in 2002.
Experts consider deer meat a tidy profit-making business. Licensed buyers will have to confront high prices for the gourmet meat.
If successful, the cull will end the deer problem that has lingered for over 20 years.
Two female and one male deer were shipped over from Switzerland in 1980, a mistake from the word go.
The government had wanted to breed Persian fallow deer on the island, a species native to western Asia and the Mediterranean and therefore considered most appropriate.
But the Swiss sent the wrong species. When challenged, they reportedly refused to take them back.
“They must die because the enclosure is too small for them. But neither can they roam in the forest because the vegetation is not appropriate for this species and they would harm the moufflon population, which, endemic to Cyprus, has to be our priority,” Demetris Christofias, Paphos divisional forestry officer told the Cyprus Mail.
“We did write to zoos and institutions to see if they could give these animals a home, but they don’t want them. We’ve been battling with this problem for the last four years,” he added.
Deer are stronger than moufflon, so guzzle up the moufflon’s food. The two animals can also fight to the death, the deer more often the victor, if they encounter each other.
Meanwhile, the Veterinary Department is to order an open season for the nation’s 45,000 hunters to gun down some 200 wild boars rampant in the Troodos Mountains.
The Ministry says there is a real danger that boars could pass foot and mouth disease and swine fever to farm pigs.
If that happened, then Cyprus pig farming would be ruined.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
