Hi,
Once upon a time Queensland was too, a duck shooting state. It too, had
an advisory committee which was VERY slanted toward continuing
shooting. With some effort others with slightly different attitudes
managed to get positions on the committee (but not a majority) which
produced quite a lot of debate and even more controvisity and even some
animosity.
Eventually at the suggestion at the Birds queensland representative on
the committee a number of groups (RSPCA, Animal Lib, Qld Conservation
Soc, Birds Q and others) formed a loose alliance which worked together
to publicise the fact that duck hunting still happened in Qld. Many
people who had no idea of this joined in lobbying government on a
number of grounds and last year legislation was passed banning the
practice.
From the RSPCA came the attitude that shooting with shot guns was cruel
as many birds took some time to die and many others were injured,
B\From BQ came the suggestion that many non target birds were shot by
mistake or through ignorance of differences of species.
From another group came the suggestion that in many parts of the state
non registered shooters were killing many more birds than recognised by
the official reports.
Official reports were severely criticised as they were collated from
reports from individual shooters on their daily bag. One point of this
indicates that the shooters were either very good at identifying birds
before they pulled the trigger or were very good at mis-identifying on
the ground as not one non-target bird was reported shot over five or
six years.
I suppose the point of this ramble is to suggest that Victoria could
join the rest of civilized Australia and eliminate this practice if the
various groups spoke with one voice, printed material (posters, cards
to post to MPs, press releases under the banner of all the combined
groups and encouraged members of all groups and their friends to
agitate the government for change.
It took three years in Qld. Maybe Victorians can do it in two.
Peter
===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
===============================
|
