Management of Himalayan thar (Hemitragus jemlahicus) in New Zealand: the influence of Graeme Caughley

Abstract

Graeme Caughley developed many of his ideas on wildlife management, and how it should be underpinned by evidence rather than by dogma, during the mid-1960s when he was working for the New Zealand Forest Service and doing the fieldwork for his Ph.D. on the population dynamics of Himalayan thar in the Southern Alps of New Zealand. However, there was a 30-year lag between the advice on the management of wild animals Caughley was providing to the New Zealand Government in the 1960s and its uptake in a national plan to manage thar in the 1990s. Eventually his ideas of setting measurable goals that were based on science, in this case on his ideas on interactive systems between herbivores and their food supply, and on management systems that led to stable outcomes were at least partially taken up. This paper reviews how some of Caughley’s ideas were, or were not, included in a plan developed in 1993 and its subsequent application to manage Himalayan thar in New Zealand.