Thursday, 31 October 2024

Max Downes

Jeff BOURMAN (Eastern Victoria) (10:01): It is clearly a time for eulogies. Max Downes was laid to rest earlier this week, having passed away 11 days short of his 97th birthday. A trained biologist, Max was a man of science and action. One of his earliest jobs was surveying wildlife on Heard Island in the Antarctic. From 1953 to 1958 Max was a superintendent of game management in Victoria. In that role the evidence led Max to two profound understandings. The first was that it was the threat to habitat, not recreational hunting, that posed a genuine threat to waterfowl populations. The second was that if anything was ever going to change for the better, it had to be the grassroots, not the elite, that made the change. True to form, Max married his understanding with action. The action was to introduce a game licensing system where hunters paid to conserve wildlife and apply the revenue from that system to establishing Victoria’s network of 200 state game reserves.

Later, in consultancy with the Australian Deer Association, Max turned his mind and his efforts to the management of wild deer, sambar deer in Victoria in particular. The result of Max’s efforts, the Forest Deer Project, stands as the only comprehensive, practical, evidence-based document that outlines what could be an effective approach to managing these deer for the totality of their impacts both positive and negative. It is a document that blends science with action, and it stands in stark contrast with the ideologically driven anti-hunting polices pushed by culture warriors like the Greens and their rent-seeking co-tenants at 60L. Like I said, it is rooted in facts.

In later years Max created and curated the national hunting archive, an incredible body of work that in true Max Downes fashion has a great potential as a practical management resource. Maxwell Crichton Downes is owed a debt not just by the hunters of Victoria but by all who value wild things. I extend my condolences to his family and thank them for sharing their remarkable father, grandfather and great-grandfather with the state.