Invasive Species Council and NSW Shooters Party debate hunting in national parks
ABC 702 Sydney, 17/08/2009 3.16pm
Richard Glover: Roy Smith is with us from the New South Wales Shooters Party. As I say, this is partly an interesting issue in itself but it’s also something that looks like it’s going to absolutely put New South Wales politics into stalemate when they return, when Parliament returns with the Upper House basically deadlocked unless the Government can get the Shooters Party to bend on this or the Shooters Party change their view on it but at the moment it’s very much a deadlock.
Roy Smith is my guest. Carol Booth is the policy officer at the Invasive Species Council and she also joins us here on Drive. Carol, good afternoon.
Carol Booth: Hi, Richard.
Richard Glover: Now, Roy has argued that this is an environmental, not necessity but it’s going to be very good for the parks to have this assistance in getting rid of feral animals. Would you agree with that?
Carol Booth: No, I think he’s being very coy about what they actually want with national parks and if they’re going to roll out what they’ve got in state forests then I think we can definitely say it’s not about feral animal control and it’s not going to contribute to conservation.
Richard Glover: What’s happened in State Forests, from your point of view?
Carol Booth: Well, we’ve got a large number of hunters across up to now two million hectares of state forests, allegedly contributing to feral animal control but if you look at their performance there’s no way they are contributing to feral animal control.
Australia’s chief feral animal scientist has said using recreational hunters for feral animal control was like using a water pistol to try and put out the Black Saturday bushfires. And this is what you see. So unfortunately feral animal control is very challenging and it can’t be achieved simply sending out recreational hunters ad hoc to shoot a few feral animals.
Richard Glover: Okay, I mean, I guess they would agree you can’t solve the whole problem overnight but if they remove a few feral pigs here and there, isn’t that an advantage?
Carol Booth: No, no, unless you do it properly it’s futile. The reason it’s futile is feral animal biology. Feral animals are fecund and mobile and if you kill a few feral animals they’re simply replaced by those that otherwise would not have survived. There’s this notion of a doomed surplus with most feral animals which means that most of them don’t survive. Let’s take rabbits. More than half of the feral animals killed by hunters in state forests are rabbits and 90 to 99 per cent of rabbits don’t survive their first year. So they killed last year something like 4000 rabbits across something like one and a half million hectares of state forest. You know, it’s a minuscule proportion of the rabbit population and all they’ve done by killing those few rabbits is allow more resources for the doomed surplus of rabbits, a few more of whom would survive to replace those killed.
Richard Glover: They breed up to fill the available food supplies.
Carol Booth: Well, that’s right, but yes, those who would otherwise die, they may survive, so it makes no difference to the population unless you do it properly and feral animal control using recreational hunters in state forests breaches all of New South Wales’ standards for feral animal control programs because we’ve learnt through, you know, a long history of failed programs that you can’t achieve feral animal control unless you do it properly.
Richard Glover: When you say properly, what does that involve?
Carol Booth: Well, the New South Wales guidelines, they require that you determine what your goal is with the program, you come up with the targets, you use effective methods and ground shooting, particularly during the day, is not regarded as a very effective method of control. You monitor to see that you’re achieving your outcomes. None of this is being done.
Richard Glover: But the real idea is to choose a small area and try to absolutely get rid of the population almost entirely, is it?
Carol Booth: No, not necessarily because, you know, with feral animals being so mobile, if you just do control in a small area then it’s pointless because you’d get neighbouring…
Richard Glover: Okay, so I still quite understand how even the best program can work then if you right that even a small population immediately breeds back up to the usual level.
Carol Booth: Well, you’ve got to take out enough of them to reduce the population. So, for example, biologists estimated that you need to kill 65 per cent of fox populations annually to achieve reduction. This was a Victorian figure, because they had a fox bounty down there, where they were paying hunters for every fox they killed. And hunters down there killed something 170,000 foxes and the biologists assessed the outcome and decided it wasn’t successful because even with that huge number they weren’t killing enough. So the comparison that has recently been made is with pigs. There was a very successful pig control operation in north-west New South Wales recently where they killed something like 8000 pigs over a period of eight months and this compares to only about 1000 pigs killed by recreational hunters in state forests last year.
Richard Glover: Okay, so you’re really saying it’s either useless or next to useless. It must have a bigger - there must be another downside, otherwise you’d just be neutral about it. What’s the other downside?
Carol Booth: Well, yeah, that’s the problem. It’s not just a neutral issue, so there are problems with some maverick hunters shift feral animals around in order to create hunting opportunities and this has been particularly a problem with pigs and deer. More than half the deer populations in eastern Australia are thought to be due to illegal shifting around by hunters.
Richard Glover: So, what, you’d shift some pigs into an area where there previously weren’t any in order to give yourself hunting opportunities in the future?
Carol Booth: That’s right, yeah, and in fact the federal threat abatement plan for feral pigs nominates this illegal shifting of pigs as a major problem for control of pigs and you talk to professional pig controllers and often recreational hunters are the bane of their life because (a) their shooting makes pigs wary and more difficult to control and often they’re shifted or pig traps have been vandalised so there is a major problem for pig control.
Richard Glover: Is it also a problem with native animals? Roy Smith said that absolutely isn’t a problem but do you think it is?
Carol Booth: Look, we don’t have any figures on that. I mean, he talks about how successful the program is and how rigorous the regime is but it’s a nonsense. You don’t have to go through any skills tests to get a hunting licence. It’s, you know, there’s an open book test or, you know it’s - so you get all sorts of people who can get a licence. Some…
Richard Glover: But the process, to be fair to him, the process for a licence is a quite lengthy one.
Carol Booth: Sorry?
Richard Glover: The process for licence is quite a lengthy one these days and it does require some knowledge.
Carol Booth: But it doesn’t require any skills tests or anything that says that you’re going to be effective at feral animal control.
Richard Glover: All right. Carol Booth is with us, so is Roy Smith from the New South Wales Shooters Party. Carol, at the moment we’re talking about Roy wants this extension of the current policy to national parks. You sound as if even the status quo at the moment, which is that they’re allowed to shoot in state parks, in state forests, you find pretty unacceptable.
Carol Booth: Yeah. It’s not contributing to feral animal control and so the rationale for it is false.
Richard Glover: Let me bring back Roy Smith and give him a bit of a right of reply on some of these things. Roy, what about this idea of shooters moving feral animal populations around and actually making the situation worse?
Roy Smith: Well, that - if that does occur then it’s a criminal - it’s a criminal behaviour and those people should be prosecuted wherever possible. We’re talking about regime involving responsible, recreational hunters who are prepared to volunteer their services - I’m not saying they don’t enjoy their time. We do enjoy being out in the bush and hunting and if we can utilise those services to control feral animals in national parks, as we do now in state forests, we should do so.
Richard Glover: What about Carol’s point that just a potshot here and there really doesn’t do anything once you understand the biology of feral animals?
Roy Smith: Richard, I wish you could speak to some of the private landowners, farmers that own land adjoining national parks. On private property these people actually do use hunting to control feral animals on their property. The problem is that because of the lack of feral animal control in national parks, these feral animals are harboured in national park land and so people trying to control them on their own private property, private farms, are always behind the eight ball because the National Parks can’t do its job.
Richard Glover: Okay, let me ask you finally, we’ve talked about the issue a little bit, about the politics of it. Can’t there be some sort of compromise so that the Upper House doesn’t get entirely jammed? Would you consider something like this issue that’s been put to you of, yes, having some hunting but under supervision?
Roy Smith: Richard, as you would know, the art of politics is the art of compromise and negotiation. This bill will come before the Parliament in September and we’re confident, actually, that the Government will see the merit in this bill and if there are some aspects of it, minor aspects of it, I would think, that the Government can’t agree with, well, we’ll negotiate around them.
Richard Glover: Thank you very much, Roy, thanks for your time.
Roy Smith: Thank you, Richard.
Richard Glover: And Carol Booth from the Invasive Species Council, Carol, thank you very much for your time as well.
Carol Booth: You’re welcome, Richard.
Richard Glover: Just some responses on the SMS. Your shooter guest is talking through his hat, says Don. I’ve been in the Penrose State Forest with bullets floating around and there was no warning signs. It was scary, says Don. Daniel though says: your guest - Carol, he’s talking about - still never said what she thinks a proper feral control program is. Methinks opponents are just scared of unfamiliar things such as shooting.
Alan says professional shooters are one thing, feral animals need control, but recreational hunting, killing as fun and entertainment, that worries me as an idea and Salette says the same, killing should not be fun. Penny says, Richard, what a dreadful man, of Roy. I can hear him salivating on the trigger. God help us, says Penny. So there’s some of the responses on the SMS.
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