To mark its 40th year, the New Zealand Deer Farmers Association will unveil a memorial plaque at the Wanaka Airport to the helicopter pilots and crew who died while recovering venison or live animals from the wild.
Deer Industry New Zealand producer manager Tony Pearse told the Otago Daily Times yesterday it was a business often ''pushing the limits''.
''The industry owes so much to a few brave adventurers - helicopter pilots and shooters and gutters - that started off the feral venison recovery industry and then moved into live capture.''
Mr Pearse said the deer farming industry peaked at over 5000 farms and 2million farmed deer 15 years ago but had consolidated on about 2000 active farmers and just under a million deer.
The decline in numbers was partly due to changing land use, Mr Pearse said, but there was also a succession issue. Children were ''not all picking up Dad's passion for deer''.
The plaque is outside the headquarters of the Alpine Deer Group, founded by Sir Tim Wallis, which Mr Pearse said was ''quite pivotal'' to the start of the industry.
It will be unveiled by Barbara Kane, of Te Anau, whose husband Jim died in a helicopter crash, due to a mechanical fault, in Fiordland in 1989.
