WILD DOGS
May 24, 2010
Mr CHESTER (Gippsland) (4.18 pm) — I rise to congratulate the Victorian state opposition on the policy position it adopted earlier this month in proposing $4 million over four years—if it is successful in government—to reintroduce a fox and wild dog bounty in Victoria. The impact of foxes and wild dogs on the Australian economy cannot be overestimated. In fact, I have read reports indicating that foxes alone cost $228 million per year in combined environmental and agricultural impacts and in control costs. I have seen estimates of the impact of wild dogs at $66 million a year in costs to agriculture in Australia. I note the presence in the chamber of the member for Eden-Monaro, and I know he is well aware in his own electorate of the impact that wild dogs have on our agricultural pursuits.
The economic costs can be measured. The environmental impacts of their feasting on our native fauna are very difficult to measure—particularly when undertaken by foxes on smaller native species and by wild dogs. But the social impacts are ones that concern me greatly in East Gippsland—the impact on mental health and the stress on families from our landholders going out into the paddocks in the morning and not knowing what is going to confront them. It is really beyond the capacity of our farmers to deal with this kind of stress on an almost daily basis when wild dogs are about.
In Australia we have the Australian Pest Animals Strategy, which notes in its executive summary:
6. Pest animal management requires coordination among all levels of government in partnership with industry, land and water managers and the community, regardless of land tenure.
And also:
11. The benefits of management should exceed the costs of implementing control.
12. As part of an integrated pest animal management program, commercial harvesting may offset management costs.
I would argue, to some extent at least, that commercial harvesting in terms of putting a value on the scalps of wild dogs and foxes is one way of putting some pressure on the population. It would in fact be a form of commercial harvesting of these species. I urge the federal government to at least consider the Victorian opposition’s views in this matter, take a closer look at what happens if the Victorian opposition gets to implement its policy over a four year period and look at the merits of perhaps a national bounty on top of the existing baiting, fencing and other control measures which are in place in many states across the nation.
I believe this is a practical measure which would give community groups, land owners and registered shooting organisations a responsible role in practical land management. East Gippsland, as I said, like the seat of Eden-Monaro, is one of the worst affected areas in our nation in terms of the impact of these species. Bonang grazier and Monaro farmer Robert Belcher says wild dogs are decimating his income as they kill the sheep on his farm adjacent to the national park boundaries.
Mr Belcher late last year said:
“We have wild dogs totally out of control in national parks and I thought national parks were all about protecting Australia’s native wildlife and every time I open up a wild dog that we have caught he is chock-a-block full of either sheep and echidnas, and echidnas are native wildlife.”
It just raises the point that there is a lot more at stake than the impact on our agricultural producers.
(Time expired)