Be Part of the Solution campaign

Welcome to the first issue of Australian Shooter for 2010. We hope you had a safe and enjoyable Christmas and New Year. To kick off this year, and indeed the start of this new decade, SSAA National is hitting the ground and running with a public campaign to highlight our position that hunting is a legitimate and sensible tool in the management of introduced species. The theme of our campaign is ‘Be Part of the Solution’. The campaign aims to extend our reach beyond our membership base in a visual way via a large billboard in the face of politicians and the general public in the arrivals lounge at Canberra Airport, as well as 10 other very public locations across Melbourne’s CBD. There is no doubt that we may cause controversy, but whether we receive good or bad publicity, we are ready and eager to respond.

The rationale behind our Be Part of the Solution campaign is based on the simple fact that there is no one single answer to managing the impacts of introduced species on native animals on private and public lands across our country. SSAA National agrees with the common view that we must use all of the management tools available to address our wildlife management issues. Any effective management regime must use all the tools in the toolbox to achieve the best results. Selective shooting, in conjunction with a mix of other control methods, will enhance the efforts to manage introduced species.

As you are probably aware, the majority of SSAA members participate in some form of hunting. Hunters voluntarily put in their own time, money and resources into managing species such as rabbits, foxes, feral cats, goats, dogs and pigs. All of these species cause significant levels of environmental and economic damage across Australia. We all know and recognise the impacts of introduced species, but unfortunately, a large number of the city-based public are unaware of the real costs of introduced species. Studies are now estimating the economic impacts of introduced species alone to be in excess of $740 million per year.

Our billboard campaign uses images of a fox with native prey in its mouth. The fox is one of the most destructive introduced species in Australia and has been linked to the extinction of many small native animals. Canberra Airport knocked back our first billboard creation, which we believe was due to its graphic imagery - the image of a fox carrying a galah in its mouth may be quite graphic and disturbing to some, but it’s certainly reality out there in the environment. This reality is something that we as hunters appreciate and deal with constantly when we are out in the field and the destruction simply cannot be ignored. Our dedication to protecting the environment is one of the reasons that compel us to be part of the solution to wildlife management issues.

We hope that in creating such a visual campaign that the wider non-hunting and non-sports-shooting public will come to understand and respect these home truths about foxes and the many other species out there that need our management.