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Mutawintji N.P + Feral Goats

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Subject: Mutawintji N.P + Feral Goats
From: "Plimer, Andrew (Sen A. Hurley)" <>
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 15:59:10 +1000
Hi All,

A big thank you to all those who passed on information (at short notice)
re: Mutawintji NP and Sturt NP.

Due to time restraints I could only get to Mutawintji and unfortunately,
high winds made birding difficult. This resulted in a embarrassingly
small species list with Hall's Babbler the only target species making
it......

A stunning part of the world though and I'll be sure to return - that is
if the feral goats don't destroy all of the habitat before hand. I saw
about 5O in the 2 hour Mutawintji Canyon walk and regular sightings in
other spots, too. The canyon itself is littered with droppings and also
slowly rotting carcasses which have been washed down stream from when
the canyon last flooded - the smell of the latter took away a little bit
of the ambience!

In an attempt to reduce competition for the Yellow-footed Rock Wallaby
(sorry, not directly bird related but obviously goats dramatically
affect bird habitat, too) NSW Parks appears to have a program of
mustering juvenile goats below a certain weight in order to sell them in
the overseas market, while those who don't make the weigh in are
destroyed. Numbers of YFRW are said to be increasing but I would like to
see some comparative data to areas such as Arkaroola where culling is
outright, no matter how potentially profitable the juveniles may be. I
believe YFRW numbers have increased significantly in this part of the
Flinders Ranges and would be interested to hear people's thoughts on
this.

Cheers,
Andrew.
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