Dear Peter,
on 1 August Peter Madvig wrote;
> Thankyou for that. Now, who in their RIGHT mind would want to release
these creatures.........developers??!! The mind boggles. Downright criminal,
or is it ignorance?
>And I gather not all that much you can do about it. Tis a sad story. Thanks
for the info, Peter <
Not developers, but some deluded "shooter groups" it appears. The same kind
of people who put foxes in Tassie - so they could later shoot them, it
seems! The previous wild pig introduction to French Island (about 5 years
ago) cost $1000s, and hundreds of hours of hard work to get rid of them!!
But it is not true to say, "not all that much you can do about it." Both
foxes and pigs CAN be removed from the island, but it is costly, and
requires a lot of hard work in the bush by skilled and dedicated people.
Right now the two French Island rangers are flat out trying to locate the
fox/es. Both by spotlighting at night, and bait stations and sandpads by
day!
This was their report on 30 July;
"Sandplots: Up until the rain of this week we had 20 sandpads along tracks
on the west coast and into the Heifer Swamp area. We also have 20 sandpads
along Causeway and Ridge tracks to check there also.
Bait Stations: I had sixteen bait stations running in the Heifer Swamp
area and along the West coast beach. In addition to this I have rabbit
carcasses buried in sand mould around the Park to act as indicators. I also
have several goat carcasses that have been set up with sandpads to get
tracks.
The weather over the last 1 1/2 weeks as you know has been awful. I have
had trouble maintaining sandpads due to runoff and the wet sand. In addition
the bait stations around the Heifer are very wet and had been pulled in
until the weather inproves hopefully at the end of the week."
However, it is obvious that two people alone cannot find and remove a Fox
in a 10,000 ha National Park! The Victorian Government needs a bit of
"pressure" put on them to take this matter seriously! Feel free to write a
letter to the Victorian Minister for Sustainability and the Environment!!
thanks for your interest, Chris Chandler (French Island)
P.S. In addition to the other special birds I mentioned on the island
because of it's "Fox-free" status, I forgot to mention the only Fairy Tern
colony in Western Port.
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
www.shc.melb.catholic.edu.au/home/birding/index.html
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message
"unsubscribe birding-aus" (no quotes, no Subject line)
to
|
