Re: Collecting dead birds

[Syd Curtis <>]

For many years Queensland had a fairly straight-forward Fauna Conservation Act, which made provision for any person to take into care, sick or injured fauna provided they reported having  done so to a fauna officer within a short time - 48 hours maybe - and then complied with any directions given by the fauna officer.  As all police officers were, ex officio, fauna officers, this was a reasonably practicable approach.  (I think one could argue quite persuasively that a road-kill was injured.)

However for some years now, Queensland has had a Nature Conservation Act which replaced the fauna and national parks legislation.  As passed in 1992 it ran to 127 pages and made provision for additional regulations.  The general "Nature Conservation Regulation 1994" was 201 pages; the specific "Nature Conservation (Wildlife) Regulation 1994", a further 132 pages.

That is 127+201+132 = 460 pages - a fine glorification of bureaucracy - and somewhere in there, there might be provisions relating to road-kills and museums.  I'm not about to read it to find out.

(Davis Geering's "A little quirky", is a rather too kind!)

But from a practical point of view, I suggest that if, in Queensland, a person did collect a road-kill and at the first opportunity reported by phone to the nearest Parks and Wildlife office (or any police officer if no P & W Office is reasonably close)  then the person is extremely unlikely to be prosecuted.  

And if any wildlife officer can spare time from trying to understand that turgid mass of legalese that they are expected to implement, I'm sure they will have more important things to do than run random checks of motorists to see if they have any dead birds.

Syd Curtis
__________________________________________
> From: 
> Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 14:46:01 +1000
> To: 
> Subject: [BIRDING-AUS] Re: Collecting dead birds

> Terry wrote "I seem to recollect that in Queensland it is an offence to even collect a
> feather lying on the ground without a permit, let alone a roadkill." 
>
> And so it is in all states.  However, refer to the earlier posting from Laurie, there are circumstances where the collection of dead specimens for the specific purpose of lodging them with a museum is permissible.  Queensland is, however, a little quirky when it comes to laws relating to wildlife (dead or otherwise). 
>
> Cheers 
>
> David Geering