What’s that Skip? KABOOM!

Disinformation said :

dynomatt74 said :

Pity they don’t have silencers…shooters have been active in the Pinnacle often starting at 3am…noisy. Or is this a 1st world complaint?

Licensed pest exterminators are permitted to use silencers on firearms that will deliver a lethal subsonic projectile to small vermin.
However, the responsible humane dispatch methods of regular culling nf larger animals requires higher muzzle velocities than can be effectively suppressed.
I highly doubt that anyone wants to go to the expense of running exotic calibers like the .500 Whisper just because someone might hear a legal shot going off.

I’m in favour of the culling taking place using nothing but Rocket-propelled grenades. Sure, it would be noisy, but something has been missing from this city since they banned fireworks.

dynomatt74 said :

Pity they don’t have silencers…shooters have been active in the Pinnacle often starting at 3am…noisy. Or is this a 1st world complaint?

Licensed pest exterminators are permitted to use silencers on firearms that will deliver a lethal subsonic projectile to small vermin.
However, the responsible humane dispatch methods of regular culling nf larger animals requires higher muzzle velocities than can be effectively suppressed.
I highly doubt that anyone wants to go to the expense of running exotic calibers like the .500 Whisper just because someone might hear a legal shot going off.

dynomatt74 said :

Pity they don’t have silencers…shooters have been active in the Pinnacle often starting at 3am…noisy. Or is this a 1st world complaint?

Similar complaints from places like Liberia, Sierra Leone or Sudan do carry slightly more weight.

Pity they don’t have silencers…shooters have been active in the Pinnacle often starting at 3am…noisy. Or is this a 1st world complaint?

I thought this is interesting and in light of this thread.

Ok it also supports my view that a lot of the protesting about the cull is all about the cute little fuzzy wuzzy animals and absolutly nothing about sound environmental management.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/drive/fluffy-ones-not-the-cutest-policy/4038134

The tapes and signs are still up on Mt Painter, despite it having been declared a lead free zone.

jrsubs said :

Ben_Dover said :

I have the solution!!

THE SIBERIAN TIGER
…

I see a predator that’s endangered that needs a new range and food source species….

And a grazing species that’s over populated and needs a predator species to reduce it’s numbers….

Sounds like a perfect match….

That sounds like a good idea… and what an amazing animal — 300kg+, 4m long! One advantage of this plan is that as introduced species go it will never do a cane toad or prickly pear, it’ll never get out of control. Because it is so visible, so large, and so terrifying, we’d always be able to keep numbers down, possibly involving the loss of a human or unintended animal or two. But I’m for it, sure would make wandering the Canberra Nature Park more interesting!

And then a bush walk would mean mandatory carrying of a 338 win magnum riffle. Down at my Uncles farm in the Victoria Alps Omeo side Ive hunted Sambar there a few times and there has always been big cat sightings around that area to but never seen one myself. Suppose to be Panthers that were let loose in WW2. Wouldn’t surprise me if they are there but not seen as even in areas like the US where they have mountain lions they are near on impossible to spot same with Leopards in Africa. The only way to spot a Leopard is with baiting.

Ben_Dover said :

I have the solution!!

THE SIBERIAN TIGER
…

I see a predator that’s endangered that needs a new range and food source species….

And a grazing species that’s over populated and needs a predator species to reduce it’s numbers….

Sounds like a perfect match….

That sounds like a good idea… and what an amazing animal — 300kg+, 4m long! One advantage of this plan is that as introduced species go it will never do a cane toad or prickly pear, it’ll never get out of control. Because it is so visible, so large, and so terrifying, we’d always be able to keep numbers down, possibly involving the loss of a human or unintended animal or two. But I’m for it, sure would make wandering the Canberra Nature Park more interesting!

I have the solution!!

THE SIBERIAN TIGER

It is estimated the wild population of Siberian tigers at around 350-450 tigers.

Almost all wild Siberian tigers live the Southeast corner of Russia in the Sikhote-Alin mountain range east of the Amur River. Their former range included northeastern China and the Korean Peninsula, and as far west as Mongolia. They are the largest of the tiger species and can grow up to 13 feet in length and weigh up to 700 lbs.

The Siberian –or Amur- tiger is considered a critically endangered species with the primary threats to its’ survival in the wild being poaching and habitat loss from intensive logging and development.

Of course there will be some whiners who will say:

“You can’t do that…. tigers aren’t native to Australia….that’s just not right….boo hoo hoo….”

I see a predator that’s endangered that needs a new range and food source species….

And a grazing species that’s over populated and needs a predator species to reduce it’s numbers….

Sounds like a perfect match….

The interesting thing about these culls is that they’re done at the recommendation of ecologists. I only know of this because I was going out with one of the ecologists who was engaged to do the study on some of the kangaroo issues around Canberra.
The amount of real information they use to discern the population density of kangaroos and their impacts on the environment was quite extensive. The history of why certain areas have now got large numbers of kangaroos is also very interesting. Something as simple as someone making a casual decision 20 plus years ago “Lets keep these ones inside the fence as pets” can lead to protests by the ignorant and emotionally led over twenty years later. Simple knowledge of the territorial range of kangaroos can make suggestions by the uniformed irrelevant.

For the people who like to temper their decisions with actual information, it would be extremely hard to disagree with the decisions made once you’re in possession of the information available.

For the people who are lead by their emotional response to things, no amount of data is going to change this.

If I was in a position of authority where I had to deal with people who can’t be reasoned with, I’d simply choose to ignore them because they’re unlikely to be won over. If you paid them any attention, you’d encourage them to kick up more of an objection because they think they’re being considered. Once they lost out, they’d complain more that they were ignored.

I doubt EvanJames is still reading this, but for anyone else quoting the report he quoted as ‘research that opposes culling’ can I point out that:

a) it is a legal and moral document, not a scientific one, and
b) what it actually concludes is that:

Quote
a. The law and policy that allows for and regulates
the killing of kangaroos needs to provide clear
justification for that killing through a proper
consideration of the reasons for and against
control.
b. There are quantitative means of identifying damage
to individual properties and these should be
required for a cull/harvest licence on a case by
case basis.
c. Auditing and monitoring should be conducted of
any killing to ensure that damage mitigation specific
objectives are achieved.
d. Density trigger points should be introduced for
each species within all zones and be applicable to
both commercial and non-commercial shooting.
End quote

The Canberra cull meets all of these requirements! So the document supports the activity.

jrsubs said :

. Roos are not “in a natural balance blah blah …”, they populate out of control when given free access to water (from the dams that humans installed) until they eat themselves and everybody else out of house and home. Go and read something about the breeding cycle and general ecology of kangaroos.

There it is.

Lots of people assume that because kangaroos are native fauna they are somehow “natural”. But as I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve witnessed vast populations of roos in central west NSW that seemed entirely unnatural to me, and that was mainly during the awful drought of the early 1980’s. hands up all Rioters who remember *that* drought.

When supplied with abundant water from farm dams (ie unnatural sources) along with food from improved pasture they will breed in unnatural quantities which results in unnatural effects upon the environment.

They’re not destructive bloody introduced vermin like pigs, goats, foxes, cats and dogs, but when their numbers are out of balance with their environment, culling is a reasonable solution.

EvanJames said :

Some science to refute the reasons trotted out in support of the cull:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/thinkk_production/resources/13/2597_UTS_policy_report.pdf

And some opinion which summarises the main points:

http://candobetter.net/node/2484

Good grief EvanJames – can you read? That report is not ‘research’ if by that you imply science, it’s “An analysis of the law and policy governing the killing of kangaroos” (that’s in the title). It doesn’t do or analyse a single bit of scientific research. Really people should not be allowed to comment on this issue unless they actually do some ‘research’ of their own. I’ve read a couple of the papers that the ACT commissioned on the subject and the results are pretty unequivocal. There’s NO conspiracy, the ACT Government doesn’t ‘hate kangaroos’, the shooters haven’t conned the government into giving them something to do for fun, no-one enjoys the whole business, and it’s not even for the primary purpose of saving motorists. The purpose, which you’d find out if you read any of the actual documentation, is to save other species that are being lost due to overgrazing and habitat destruction by over-abundant kangaroos. Roos are not “in a natural balance blah blah …”, they populate out of control when given free access to water (from the dams that humans installed) until they eat themselves and everybody else out of house and home. Go and read something about the breeding cycle and general ecology of kangaroos. DO something, anything, but spare us uninformed emotional claptrap. Better still, go and get a degree in some scientific ecological/environmental area and I GUARANTEE you that you’ll then understand, and change your mind. In the meantime, how about showing is all that research that disagrees with the cull? Any?

If anyone wants to read The Kangaroo Management Plan, which is balanced and sensible, it is here:

http://www.tams.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/186378/Kangaroo_Management_Plan_complete_for_web.pdf

This reminds me of this scene from Crocodile Dundee (the original)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRL5ly72mdc
Skip to 5 minutes 30 seconds. Sorry,I could not find a shorter version.

Using EvanJames “scientific findings” showing that the real reason for the cull is to prevent damage to shiny cars, then a natural hypothesis to derive from this would be that the majority of opponents to the cull would be Canberra based Panelbeaters and Smash Repairers?

Katietonia said :

Wow.. that picture is a little too “war crimes” for me.

Does anyone know what they are doing in that picture? Bit late to be measuring the hole isn’t it?

Wow.. that picture is a little too “war crimes” for me.

Mr Evil said :

I’m going to propose that a memorial be established to commemorate all the Kangaroos that have died in the ACT since self-Government was established 23 years ago.

Is anyone willing to support my proposal, and do you think I can get Andrew Barr onboard?

Barr will probably only be interested in the gay skippies that have died from AIDS.

p1 said :

Baldy said :

And as for the second link, citing a webpage that also calls for the sterlisation of humans isn’t going to get anybody on your side, and hardly shows a rational mind when talking about this subject.

Actually, I support this, so long as I decide who gets sterilised. I think the easy way would be by postcode.

This one’s easy: they should sterilise everybody who is on welfare and do them, their unborn children, and the rest of us a favour.

Ditto with foreign aid. If they can’t take care of themselves, and we can’t just cull them like we do Kangaroos, then what they need is sterilisation.