I was all set to write a whole bunch of critical emails off today to various departments and MPs. Only problem was, once I started reading more into whats actually being proposed in this bill, the less I was convinced myself.
Just to stir the post a bit...
Mr John Barilaro wrote:Let me be clear: This bill does not promote maintaining any specific number of brumbies nor does it promote increasing the number of brumbies within the national park. It simply recognises the heritage and cultural value of brumbies and shifts the focus away from lethal population-control methods. In fact, this bill will set a framework for managing brumby populations in a humane way. It is about balance...
..The brumby population in the national park will continue to be reduced to a more sustainable number by using passive trapping and rehoming, as well as by mustering and relocation to less sensitive areas in the national park...
....The new framework of managing brumbies in the Kosciuszko National Park also will involve a number of new approaches, including brumbies found in "highly-sensitive" alpine areas of the national park being relocated by authorities; the establishment of a Wild Horse Community Advisory Panel is to advise the Minister of appropriate management approaches for the brumby; a research and monitoring program to inform future wild horse management plans; a brumby count to gain a more accurate assessment of brumby numbers and where they range; and a marketing campaign to promote rehoming and adoption of brumbies that need to be removed from the national park. Through the community advisory panel, for the first time the community will have direct involvement in shaping the management of brumbies within the national park.
Now I realize he's trying to spin his bill (and save his seat) as best as possible, but there's no denying it's still clearly very much aimed at reducing the numbers and impact of brumbies - just with different methods?
Is that
necessarily a bad thing, solely because it's not "SHOOT MURDER DEATH KILL" approach? Lots of folk are taking the 'grim but necessary' stance on the cull, but how many are actually willing to pick up a rifle and spend a solid week of their lives killing (mostly) healthy herbivores by the thousands? Very easy to forget from a distance that it's a properly grim job with its own demonstrated complications. History has shown quite clearly that even when you engage professionals to do it, there's a good chance it wont go as planned, and there's still a whole bunch of potential for suffering*. Considering how frequently their population welfare is cited as a justification for the cull, it does seem odd to try and solve it by risking a different type of suffering.
Moreover, the number of feral species that we've actually successfully eliminated with the 'just kill 'em all' approach is, to the best of my knowledge, zero. Canetoad Golf is QLD's State sport, and they're in NSW now and heading south. You can go shoot deer yourself if you're that concerned about their hooves wrecking alpine streams (which they absolutely do), and thousands of hunters do, and have done so for decades, yet the are bigger than ever. We've even had 'successful' horse and camel aerial culling in the top end (ideal conditions for such action, unlike Kosciusko) , in which subsequent studies have shown it to have dubious effect on long term population and conservation outcomes **. The population just persists and bounces back, and in a few years youre back where you started . Foxes, cats, pig, mice...it's the same story every time.
..except when it isn't. Which usually seems to be when we take a multi-faceted management approach, and implement researched control methods (like myxo or cactoblastis). Such an approach seems to be what this Bill ostensibly supports, and certainly not ignoring or prolonging the problem.
Is that really a bad thing?
*https://rspcaanimalcruelty.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/magistrate-dismisses-charges-brought-against-npws-by-the-rspca/
**https://www.dpaw.wa.gov.au/images/documents/conservation-management/pests-diseases/camel/lorna_glen_camel_survey_post_culling_2007.pdf