Peter Salleras is a great spokesman for cassowaries and the local environment -
is past president of enviro-group C4 (Community for Coastal and Cassowary
Conservation). Most farmers don't mind the cassowaries - it's mostly the
"deleted expletives" who cannot read the speed-limit signs and so consider that
these do not apply to them that are the problem.
<')////==<
________________________________
From: Sonja Ross <>
To:
Sent: Thu, 21 July, 2011 11:52:12
Subject: Co-operation
I hope this doesn't breech copyright, but news items on Yahoo are there one
minute and gone the next!
The following appeared there for a few minutes this morning, and I thought it
was a good example of co-operation and realistic thinking on this farmer's part.
The endangered cassowary population of north and far north Queensland is
continuing to rely on volunteers and farmers for food after Cyclone Yasi.
Mission Beach fruit grower Peter Salleras has a Government-installed feed
station on his farm that is supporting a mother bird and her two chicks.
The cassowaries would normally forage on forest fruit but most of that has been
destroyed.
Mr Salleras says without the feeding station it is likely the birds on his
property would struggle to survive.
"It's probably a good move that they're not using fruit that they'll become a
pest with once our fruit starts to come back on," he said.
"There's grapes and rockmelons cut up and apples and I understand it's fruit
shop and supermarket waste.
"It certainly looks pretty good quality a fair bit of it but it's obviously
doing the job because there's not much native fruit in their droppings at the
moment."
Mr Salleras's own fruit crop is still recovering but one soursop from his
tropical fruit orchard got away.
"I saw a fruit that was half eaten quite high up a tree and I thought the
flying
foxes had come back and found it first," he said.
"Actually I looked at the ground and there was a big patch of where the mulch
had been well and truly shifted away from the cassowary jumping up and down, so
it could reach it and yes it was clear what the culprit was."
Sonja Ross
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