G'day everyone,
A friend notified me of an article the Sydney Morning Herald ran yesterday
regarding poaching @ Long Reef. Link to article: http://bit.ly/j9OMgl
The article talks about protecting marine life like the Eastern Water Dragon
(I haven't ever seen one at Longy), and the poaching of sea urchins,
shellfish, cunjevoi, sea snails.
It recognizes that poaching of marine life is a problem at places like Long
Reef, but fails to say whether any additional measures will be taken other
then the voluntary work done by Shannon Leckie who plans to video tape
poachers in the act and then refer them onto the police.
The article unfortunately doesn't mention anything about the bird life that
the reef supports. Which is a pity as birds like the Sooty Oystercatchers
eat the limpets, cunjevoi and Sea Urchins, and Ruddy Turnstones eat only
certain types of Limpets. A study was done by Ricki Coughlan on this a few
years ago
Nearly every weekend you can go to the reef and see someone picking shells,
periwinkles, urchins etc off the reef. I've spoken to some people on some
occasions that this is illegal to do, and nearly everyone has responded by
putting them back. The odd person feels it's their right to take what they
want, even though there are signs up asking people not to do so. It seems
though that most people just don't read the huge big sign near the carpark @
Brownwater asking them not to take things from the reef.
I've had a chat to council rangers before about this and about people
walking their dogs out on the reef. They are aware of what happens but they
feel they don't have the man power to properly address this issue.
Which is sad, because the reef is such a fantastic place for people to see
marine wildlife and birdlife, up close. More needs to be done to look after
this precious resource before its picked clean.
Regards,
Mark
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
http://birding-aus.org
===============================
|
