All image credits: Steve Lurie, using his Kodak instamatic he would take with him every trip.
For professional hunter Steve Lurie, eradicating feral goats from the Kaimai has always been 'unfinished business'.
The helicopter whirrs as four men fly into a remote area of the Kaimai to start 10-days of hunting feral goats.
Steve Lurie was overseeing the Department of Conservation Kaimai goat culling programme for three years between 1995-1997, before funding cuts left him and his team without jobs.
“80% of my time was in the field,” he explains. A normal day was “get up, split up and hunt”.
While he loved the work, it was gruelling. He says the best part was getting home as the low numbers of goats, unpredictable weather, and the nature of the forest made for hard physical and mental work.
“We would hunt all day. And then repeat for 10 days on and four days off.”
Feral goats destroy the forest, hinder restoration efforts and consume valuable pasture. Manaaki Kaimai Mamaku Trust CEO Louise Saunders says they wreak havoc wherever they go.
“They eat understorey which stops forest regeneration, they have the potential to spread kauri dieback disease and they eat grass at record speeds which severely impacts farm productivity,” she says.
The management of feral goats in the Kaimai started in the 1940s. Steve, his team, and every hunter who helped before them, almost got the numbers to a zero density.
“That’s one goat or less for every 10-man day hunted,” Steve explains.
“We had four hunters, working with dogs, hunting ten days swings, and quite often they weren't encountering a goat! We were pretty close to it”.
Steve currently lives in Queensland and still works as a professional hunter. He says getting that last goat out of the Kaimai has always been ‘unfinished business’.
“We got so damn close in the 90s. It was very disappointing when the redundancies came. 30 years of hard work was out the door”.
For the past three years, Manaaki Kaimai Mamaku Trust have worked with Waikato Regional Council, Bay of Plenty Regional Council and Department of Conservation on a feral goat eradication plan.
Steve Lurie loading the chopper before Steve Collins flies them into the back country for 10 days.
