Reserves open again as culling component of 2024 kangaroo management program ends

Motojohnno61, There is nothing wrong with killing animals if it is done humanely, legally and for sufficient reason. Look at the person called 6’5″ Blue Eyes 2003, who thinks it would be better than the head-shooting of 1,232 kangaroos in Canberra Nature Park, under veterinary supervision, for the government to admit into Namadgi, numerous individual people carrying their own firearms and ammunition, each operating alone, to kill ‘tens of thousands’ of animals, as long as those people enjoyed eating parts of the 10,000.

Actually, many people do not object to that practice. Its called hunting. Nor is there objection voiced (by you or anyone) to the shooting every year, of much larger numbers of kangaroos around Canberra, under much looser control, for sale of meat and skins, nor to the shooting and wastage of much larger numbers still, to reduce competition with livestock.

It is revealing that you protestors only object to kangaroo shooting when it is for conservation. The answer, very sadly, is that you value the lives of so-called ‘sentient individuals’ higher than the extinction of whole species of non-sentient plants and animals, and you also value the protection of those non-sentient plants and animals lower than the right of farmers and others to conduct commercial activities involving the shooting of kangaroos to sell meat and skins, or reduce competition with sheep. For many people like me, your attitude to conservation of Australian ecosystems is ‘disgusting’. So please quit lecturing about morality.

Scribbly, you have made a number of wrong assumptions in your response. I, and many other people who are opposed to the killing of kangaroos in Canberra nature reserves, are ALSO opposed to killing kangaroos for meat and skins. Why have you drawn your conclusion? You have not adequately informed yourself. Many people fighting against the killing of kangaroos in Canberra nature reserves are also involved in other battles against killing kangaroos. There are many protest groups fighting against the cruel treatment of kangaroos who are victims of hunters or farmers who blame kangaroos for competing with livestock. One obvious example is the protest against the use of kangaroo skins in football boots – there have been protests in Canberra quite recently about this. Oh, and I strongly disagree with you that there is ‘nothing wrong with killing animals if it is done humanely, legally and with sufficient reason.” Don’t you have any sense that other species have an inherent right to live on this planet, alongside humans??? I feel a bit sorry for you actually….can’t you look into the eyes of an animal and feel some kind of empathy???
And don’t claim the mass killing of kangaroos in Canberra is done under veterinary supervision….inferring to other readers that this is par for the course, night after night. You very well know it is not. If a vet attends one or even two nights of the annual kangaroo killing season in Canberra, then say that….under occasional veterinary supervision.

6’5″ Blue Eyes 2003, yes hunters are humans, but presumably you meant ‘humanely’. No, hunters do not ‘cultivate’ deer. Maybe you meant that hunters ‘cook’ them.

Read this paper about deer counting in Namadgi and trial of a, then new, ‘thermal assisted heli-shooting’ method compared to traditional ground shooting
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/emr.12569 Together with media releases stating how many were seen and shot in later years, the data make it difficult to agree with your claim.

ScribblyGum, I personally know 2 people that were directly involved with that paper. The methods used to determine Sambar deer numbers in the sections of park were somewhat less than ideal, being static cameras. The ground shooting methods were also less than ideal and not undertaken by proficient Sambar hunters. Advice from actual Sambar hunters from one of the peak hunting organisations was actually bluntly disregarded.

The whole structure of the thing was set up to deliver a desired outcome it seems. There are a lot more deer in Namadgi than suggested, especially once you include the other 2 species, Fallow and Red deer, known to inhabit the park.

Allowing people to hunt for introduced species works incredibly well in Victoria, bringing a billion or two worth of revenue every year. Considering 99% of Namadgi isn’t used at all, allowing hunting well away from camping/bushwalking and other widely used areas of the park may not be a bad thing. Even if ground shooters were less effective than thermals and helicopters, they cost nothing and actually pay for the privilege, and do make a dent in the pest population.

Ken M, Our attitudes differ fundamentally. You see the deer in the park as a resource for hunters. They may be that on a farm, but not in a nature conservation area. In Namadgi, they are a pest whose impacts should be minimised. Therefore the advice of hunters SHOULD be disregarded when it reflects that difference in perspective.

Spatially Explicit Mark Recapture Analysis of data obtained as detections in large arrays of cameras, is well recognised as a solid method. Comparison between treated and untreated sites, before and after treatment, is also a solid design (where ‘treatment’ is shooting in this case). Particularly helpful is that the design is robust against inaccurate estimates of abundance, as long as the detection and analysis method is consistent on each grid.

In contrast, vague innuendo is as flimsy as fairy dust. That applies to things like who we know, and your comment that some unspecified advice from some unspecified hunter was not followed. Your claims that Namadgi contains more deer than the researchers think, is no better than the claims from animal liberationists that kangaroos are fewer than the researchers think.

If there was something wrong with the research method you need to do better than vague innuendo. And please can you give us a reference to a published scientific paper that used robust counting methods to show that hunters actually reduced a deer population somewhere, enough to reduce the impact of the pest?

https://www.gma.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/897630/Victorian-deer-harvest-Estimates-2021.pdf

About 118,900 deer taken in 2021 alone on public land, by hunters in VIC, is a fair reduction. It would be asinine to pretend otherwise.

I think you are misinterpreting several things here. The ignoring advice of an organisation of people with a combined hundreds of years experience hunting Sambar deer in particular, on how to hunt them successfuly, is actually pretty counterproductive. It attests to my suggestion that the study wanted to arrive at a predetermined outcome. The suggestion I am making is that allowing people to hunt deer in disused parts of the park is an effective way to reduce deer numbers, while making the ACT money, and should be considered as one part of a multi avenue approach to controlling deer in the park. Letting people hunt them for food certainly won’t increase the numbers like the current inaction has.

Ken M, The statistic needed is the number remaining. That report gives the number removed. Your kind of argument about numbers has been tried innumerable times by ‘industries’ like commercial whaling, the south coast fishery, and some US deer hunter groups, and is well known to professional ecologists as a recipe for disaster. For example, if Victorian hunters apply a certain effort and take a certain number of animals year after year from the same areas, the system is most likely behaving like a case of ‘sustained yield harvesting’, with no impact reduction what ever. (As a broad generalisation, a population of deer yields the greatest ‘harvest’ when it is about 90% of carrying capacity, but impact reduction requires much lower density, eg 10% of CC.) The ACT should try as hard as necessary to AVOID emulating the Victoria’s disastrous approach to deer management.

Some other corrections: 1) It is far from ‘inaction’ when Namadgi is doing annual pig baiting and annual or biannual heli-shooting of deer, pigs and goats. Look elsewhere if you seek examples of inaction. 2) No part of Namadgi is unused.

Huge swathes of Namadgi are not used. The parts with roads and walking tracks in are small a fraction of the park. Those are the parts being used. The rest has nobody in it.

And it is inaction. Dumping some 1080 around the place once a year has absolutely not put a dent in the pig numbers. Walking 50 meters off any track and knowing what you are looking for will show you that. Year on year, the pig sign gets worse and worse. Same goes for the biannual helicopter jaunt. I’m well aware of the numbers taken there, because they get published. It’s certainly not in the thousands. I know guys who were shooting as many deer out round Kybean in a night, off a ute with a spotlight, as these heli crews shoot in a week. Hell, I take more deer and pigs most years myself than these helicopter jaunts yield, and it doesn’t cost taxpayers a few hundred grand.

Do you happen to have a vested financial interest in keeping hunters out, perhaps?

No interest in denying access, but an interest in the truth, Ken M. You have again fallen into the trap of looking at numbers taken when numbers remaining are what matters. The difference in numbers shot in two different places could be simply because there are different numbers of deer in the two places. But you want to assert the difference is because the shooters in Namadgi are lazy. But you dont really know.

Your BS is getting wilder, less respectful and more desperate with each post. 1) There is published research on the pig sign which contradicts you. 2) I am one of hundreds or thousands of people who walk off track, and there are dozens of off-track Namadgi activities written about every month in social media, contradicting your claim that Namadgi is unused. 3) the careful targeting of dingoes and pigs with 1080 is not ‘Dumping some 1080 around the place once a year’.

Did the rangers prosecute you sometime for illegal pig hunting, or rudely reject your job application? Certainly you are making me feel sympathy with anyone who would disregard every word out of the mouth of pig hunters or deer hunters.

I honestly don’t care what the “published research” says. It’s inaccurate if it is saying the pig issue in Namadgi is being reduced. I have access to country from basically in line with Booth all the way to Bredbo that makes up the entire Eastern side of the Clear Range, then Shannons Flat all the way round to Yaouk that backs directly onto the park. Every farmer along there complains about the ever growing number of pigs and deer coming out of the park. I also travel through the park every other weekend and get out for a look. The pig and deer rubs and wallows get worse and worse every year. Shooting a couple of hundred of each every year isn’t putting a dent in them. At all.

You can continue to pretend that the whole park is used all you like, but we both know that’s not even close to accurate. Well, unless of course you have keys to the locked gates, which I suspect you do. 🙂

Scribbly, you’re being a bit cute about it, but you are no better than you’re accusing other party here on insults.

And if you’re saying there’s no reduction in population by hunting, well, you’re also saying there ought be more hunting.

Anyway, feral deer aren’t exactly the thread topic, related in that where natural predators don’t exist humans do need to step in (and not be wasteful about an animal dying, respect it by at least using its death), so… Trade asininities less? And while it goes that I’ve adjudged one party a shade more asinine, for balance it applies to the both of ya

Ken M:

“Please, explain to us how the research is flawed. Start with letting us know what your research credentials are.”

Also Ken M:

“I honestly don’t care what the “published research” says”

LOL, at least Ken is consistent in his inconsistency.

It’s actually amusing, because the last person who attempted to argue this with me and seemed to have as much information turned out to be a parks employee who ran guided hunts for money in the park, and was worried the suggestion might get attention and put a dent in his side gig. 🤣

Aaand our local luddite chewy has chimed in to pretend all “research” is done in good faith by parties with no vested interests. 🤣

Hmm, I don’t think you know what the word Luddite means Ken, nor could you point out anything like what youve claimed in your comment.

But of course your anecdotal reports say more than real evidence ever could Ken.

“Trust me bro, I go out there all the time and I’ve talked to every farmer saying the exact same thing.”

QED.

@chewy14
LMAO … I’ve seen you called a lot of things on here, chewy14, and even directed a few at you myself, but labelling you a “luddite” is definitely a first.

Well, unfortunately chewy, they won’t publish the far more apt term I’d have liked to use.

Luddite works here though. Being averse to or afraid of new information that comes from sources you don’t like fits loosely within the definition.

I understand that it might be frightening to you to hear this because your world view appears to be defined by what other people tell you, but “published research” is found to be wrong every day. No, really, dvery day. That’s how science progresses, little fella. If we didn’t question “published research” we would still believe the earth was flat and thunder was god being angry.

No Ken,
That isn’t the definition
of the word, loosely or otherwise champ.

And whilst I have no problem with new information, I do have a problem with information that is unverifiable and purely anecdotal in nature. Such information having limited value, scientific or otherwise.

But you are right on one point, research is found to be wrong or erroneous regularly. Unfortunately for you though, it isn’t corrected by what your mate Steve tells you out on his farm.

But regardless, my original comment was just laughing at how ironic your statements are, chipping someone about their research credentials for something you agree with, whilst discounting other research out of hand because you don’t like findings that don’t fit within your personal experiences.

Talking about bias and vested interests, did you even contemplate your own? Or the farmers and hunters you talk to…….

My direct observation over a couple of decades and that of other land owners in the area is not “anecdotal evidence”, chewy. Direct observation by people is frequently cited as evidence in scientific publications. I could happily back up my claims with hundreds of time and date stamped photos of the ever growing pig and deer damage. Running jobs for the boys programs to go for joy flights and shoot a few hundred deer and pigs every year just flat out isn’t cutting it, and suggesting any other approach to assist falls on deaf ears.

The property owners that have to put up with the feral pest breeding sanctuary next door are tired of the excuses and mismanagement.

Ken M – can’t agree with you more. I own property in one of the areas you mentioned and can confirm that pigs and deer coming onto my property from the Nanadgi has exploded in numbers in recent years. I can also confirm that most of the Nanadgi is unused, I see less than 2 “tourists” a month coming down my way. I also have 2 mates who both hunt and have been contracted to perform helicopter culling of deer, horses, dogs, and pigs across Vic, ACT, and NSW. They do the helicopter culling for the money but openly admit that it’s a far less humane method than ground hunting. Ground hunting they can confirm all their kills and use the meat, but it takes longer; in the heli they just keep shooting until they think it’s dead. Not to mention leaving the body behind feeds other pests like dogs and foxes.

Those ACT people whom you insult, Reg James, have already reduced the populations of those non-natives. And in other parts of the ACT they pioneered cutting edge methods for controlling feral goats, feral pigs, and deer species. For example, Namadgi has run one of the best feral pig programs in the world, for decades, according to independent research. A more recent example is their thermal-assisted heli-shooting, evaluated in its first year in this research paper here https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/emr.12569 . There have been media releases giving statistics from subsequent years. They show declining numbers shot with similar search effort.

And if you can be bothered to dig deep into the kangaroos part of the web page http://www.environment.act.gov before writing your next comment about these ‘idiots’ ‘who should be sanctioned and sacked’ you will eventually find about 5 to 10 published research papers showing that reducing kangaroos is now necessary in urban reserves, to protect habitat of various grassland fauna, like striped legless lizards. That is partly why the program has huge community support especially from community groups like the Herpetological Society, Field Naturalists, Parkcare Groups, etc. ‘Now’ because the top predators, i.e. dingoes, and also aboriginal hunting, were both ended in these areas by white-man hunting, which itself was ended after WW2. The program has been reviewed several times. For example, look for RiotACT coverage about the latest and most detailed review, by Prof Sarah Legge, this year or late last year I think. But easier to find is this 2021 analysis https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/emr.12443

Can’t say I’ve noticed many wild camels or water buffalo around Canberra. Not sure about wild pigs but I’m happy for them to be shot too. We can try to control only the pests we have.

I take it from your rationale that you fully support culling of feral horses in alpine areas. Would you like to confirm that?

It still leaves me wondering why you are so extraordinarily selective about the native species you wish to preserve. Have you no idea of the significance of grasses, insects, lizards, small mammals, birds and other dependent grazers and predators to the ecosystem? No-one is proposing to exterminate kangaroos so what is your point?

How many camels and water buffalo are in the ACT?

People do concentrate on camels, buffalo and pigs. Pretending otherwise is a lie.

Feral pigs are a massive problem around Bombala. They travel from the coast over several years and they are infected with ticks and intestinal worms. The damage they are doing to pastures and water courses is immense.

Maybe slow down at night then they won’t be a problem ya think

‘run out of kangaroos’ eh Julie Lidner? And ‘total neglect’? Since the culling began about a decade and a half ago, every year we have been told by protestors like you, that it will drive kangaroos extinct, and that no kangaroos are left in one or other of the reserves. And most years also that culled areas have been turned into housing. Now you add the suggestion that the huge amount of weed control carried out by parkcare volunteers, contractors, and Parks and Cons staff, does not happen. And all the other work done in these areas. For every one of these ‘stories’ you should hide your faces in embarrassment. But you are shameless.

No it’s not.

Compared to what? Maybe to you stroking a pet cat, Harley Quin? But no it is not, not in reality. There are scientific ways of looking at animal suffering. The process of using night vision and thermal cameras to approach kangaroos in the dark then shoot them in the head with bullets travelling much faster than sound does not involve as much suffering as most other things done with wildlife, even including the shooting of foxes, cats, pigs, deer, goats, etc, which also can be done to meet normal expectations about humaneness.

Because of your comment I suspect you neither have studied animal welfare, nor actually care. I suspect you are attempting to use animal welfare as a way of attacking the cull, because you object to it on some other grounds, e.g. because you would rather see ‘non-sentient’ reptiles and plants go extinct than ‘sentient’ kangaroos culled. But you dont actually know enough about animal welfare and kangaroo culling to be credible.

Yes it is!