>From Crikey today:
Crikey naturalist Lionel Elmore writes:
A little more than a week ago 40 Black Swans were shot adjacent to a
wetland near Bairnsdale, Victoria. The permit for the shooting was
issued by the local office of the Department of Sustainability and
Environment (DSE) to "protect" farm crops from damage.
Swans can damage crops and make pasture unpalatable to stock -- but
these events are rare and swans are not hard to deter. A researcher
from the Werribee Sewerage farm, now working for the DSE in Melbourne,
found some years ago that playing recorded alarm calls and using
"flapping wing" scarers worked well. Dogs tied up in the affected
paddock is said by locals to have the same deterrent affect -- Black
Swans are cumbersome and vulnerable on land.
The scene of the authorised cull was a wetland fed by the Mitchell
River, a stream that in turn feeds into the complex Lakes Entrance
system, a lakes system suffering from water diversions to top up
Melbourne's supply and the ongoing discharge of ash and silt from the
rivers that feed it after the 2007 fires. The seagrasses and other
species that Black Swans relied on for food are now in short supply
and swans have begun appearing in farmers paddocks, feeding on Lucerne
crops and the like.
The East Gippsland Region of DSE is the principle land and wildlife
manager for the region. Conservation minded people living in the bush
surrounded by land managed by the department can feel vulnerable.
However, when locals found out that the swan shoot had happened and
confirmed that permits had been issued by the local DSE they contacted
the Melbourne-based ABC program Stateline.
The journalist they spoke to wanted the bodies of the shot swans to
make a story -- a hard ask at best. In an effort to get the story up
the locals provided the program with a contact who knew of the
shooters employed by the landowner.
To their shock and surprise Stateline then asked the local if a
Stateline crew could get involved in the next shoot, and find out
where and when it was so they could film it.
The DSE managers obviously do not care about the wildlife they are
charged to protect and made no effort to find an alternative to
shooting the swans -- they did not even speak to people in their own
department. Similarly for Stateline, the fate of the Black Swans and
mismanagement by DSE is of no concern compared to the opportunity to
film yet more Black Swans being shot.
Any story appearing on the ABC would likely end the issuing of permits
to farmers to shoot swans, but in the meantime Stateline producers are
in the extraordinary position of having an apparent vested interest in
the continuation of the Black Swan shoot.
--
Evan Beaver
Lapstone, Blue Mountains, NSW
lat=-33.77, lon=150.64
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