Farmers, greenies divided over ‘dirty’ bounty deal
Sebastian Tan |
A premier has been accused of talking “out of his arse” after backing a “novel” solution to tackle feral cat, pig and goat populations.
NSW Premier Chris Minns on Tuesday threw his weight behind feral animal bounties, saying the state has to do better to control the pest populations.
Invasive species are the highest-impact contributors to extinctions, directly endangering 70 per cent of threatened wildlife and ecosystems in NSW.
“It’s about time we start thinking about novel ways of reducing the feral goat, the feral pig, the feral cat population, which has really taken over a lot of parks,” Mr Minns told Triple M Coffs Coast radio on Tuesday.
“We should be open to bounties and other things, because we’ve got a lot of recreational shooters out there that are actually getting rid of a lot of the pests roaming across our native vegetation.”
But the Invasive Species Council accused the Labor government of trying to appease the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, a keen supporter of reintroducing bounties.
Labor wanted more support in parliament’s upper house, and backing bounties would help sway other votes, the council’s chief executive Jack Gough said.
Governments in Western Australia and Queensland had already concluded bounties do not work, he added.
“This is a dirty deal with the Shooters – Chris Minns is talking out of his arse,” Mr Gough told AAP.
Bounty hunting kills between two and ten per cent of the population, the federal bureau of rural sciences says.
But to achieve population suppression, at least 70 per cent of the feral pig population and 57 per cent of cat populations have to be killed annually, research suggests.
“The advice from the environment department … is that this will do nothing,” Mr Gough said.
But NSW Farmers president Xavier Martin said feral animals are devastating farmland and proving a danger to people.
A wild boar knocked him off his motorcycle, he said.
“They (farmers) are seeing the existing tools – mainly being baiting and trapping and aerial culling – are not controlling sufficient numbers,” Mr Martin told AAP.
“Over my career, I’ve had to control feral pests, foxes and rabbits, and in my career, pigs have emerged as a major and growing problem doing extraordinary damage.”
NSW Shooters and Fishers leader Robert Borsak has been advocating for a $2 million state bounty scheme, and says it will play a part in lowering numbers.
“They will never be eradicated, and you also have to accept that all the endeavours of government in past years have been only partially successful, if anything,” he told AAP.
“It’s just another string on the bow which has been totally ignored.”
Bounty programs run in some Queensland councils which target dingoes, feral pigs and wild dogs.
In Victoria, about 80,000 foxes were killed under a fox bounty scheme in 2022, which has been ongoing for 14 years.
AAP
