Save the environment or keep yourself in a job

I have just returned from a fact finding trip to a national park in Victoria’s north-west. This park has many feral animal pests like rabbits, foxes, pigs, goats and has a large problem with kangaroos. This park spends hundreds of thousand of dollars over the years to combat these pests.


The control method for the kangaroo is to use a professional contractor who could shoot as many as three thousand kangaroos (or more). There is no control culling practice, first in first shot although they will shoot the out of pouch joeys first then its mother. For every kangaroo shot, the park ranger must inspect it to see if it’s dead, for female kangaroos the ranger must inspect it for a joey in its pouch, if they find a joey that has no fur it is dispatched with a knife or if it has fur then it’s blasted with a bolt gun to kill it.


Parks Victoria (government organisation who is suppose to look after all our parks and its flora and fauna) is one of the biggest killers of pure dingoes in Victoria, when asked why don’t you return Victoria’s apex predator back into the park to control these pests we received a barrage of bullshit replies.


Conclusion that Parks Victoria doesn’t want to get rid of or control the number of pests in this park ( and probably other parks) but give employment to contractors or give organisations a chance to quench their thirst for blood.


If this department was for reel and wanted to look after the environment they would reintroduce the apex predator back into the park.


While on the subject of bagging the department I also heard lots about the use of 1080 poison with oats. The use of oats is the only way you can use 1080 to control rabbits in Victoria, the government spurts out that native animals are safe from this poison, this is only part true, the animals with the greatest tolerance from this poison are in South Western Australia which grows the plants that contains 1080 in its environment, everywhere else the animals are vulnerable.


This source of information has come from park rangers, farmers and conservationist that when they lay out the poison oats the following days they pick up dead birds from the oats trail, farmers wont use it for the fear of killing their sheep.


The problem is this department is entrenched with the wrong ideals and doesn’t put the environment first. Enough on bagging this department for one day I might be working there….NOT!!