http://thebigsmoke.com.au/2014/10/16/firearms-right-hands-right-reasons/
"While public safety must be the priority, the fact is guns can be a necessary tool of the trade for people in regional and rural NSW. Farmers who see their stock attacked by wild dogs or foxes, or who have their fences and crops destroyed by wild pigs or goats, often have a demonstrable need for firearms in order to control these animals. Equally, those farmers who raise livestock will, from time to time, need access to firearms to euthanise seriously injured or distressed stock."
I am not sure how many Farms NSW Greens Members have been on or how long they may have spent on the farms. However my experience is that the Farmer has quite a lot to do apart from roam around his property shooting feral pests.
Assuming the farmer is undertaking the regular baiting programs, which can of course be scheduled into the work cycle.
As a side note: Recent CSIRO published study said as many as 69% of all foxes will survive a baiting program. Given that to control foxes you need to cull about 65% of the population each year, baiting will, still leave a farmer significantly short of effective control number.
Pest control is not a matter of just putting "shoot all the feral goat/pigs/foxes/dogs today" in your diary and going and getting it done.
The best advice available is that you need to run multiple coordinated and the opportunistic controls regularly & frequently.
With most of the farmers I know working from sun up to after dark most days, the idea that they have time to be running fox drives, driving around paddocks to find and shoot mobs of pigs or goats on a high frequency is ridiculous.
This is where utilizing recreation hunter/shooter plays a role on many farms.
Every recreational hunter on a property/in a forest increases the chance of pest animal encountering a control method (ie shooting). Not only that but they represent extra eye and ears on the property to report back on feral animal movements and sighting. I do not see anything in the anti hunting propaganda and publications that recognises or acknowledges this reality.
All I see is that the Anti Hunting Activists seeking to dumb down the debate so that the only element allowed to be discussed is "Are YOU FOR or AGAINST "killing as a past time".
If the same approach was applied to the professional pest controller is "killing for profit" or even "Killing for fun & profit"
So back to #GREENS premise that it is "only reasonable that property owners should have access to the tools required to control these (pest) populations".
Recreational Hunters are one of the control methods that should be available to farmers.
In a co-ordinated and planned control program Baiting, Traping & Shooting should all be employed to ensure maximum chance of success.
To require that the entire "Shooting" component must be done by Farmer or Paid Worker when there are thousands of volunteers ready to do the work (& already doing the work) is an unnecessary and unproductive burden to place on the Agricultural Sector, let alone the Public Purse (in the case of State Forest and National Parks)
As I have written else where, I do not see a lot of evidence based policy being set out in the above article. I certainly don't see a lot of evidence of a working knowledge of farming in Australia.
What I do see is a determined attempt to stop people from hunting.
What I do see is a deliberate and deceiptful attempt to dumb down discussion so that Greens can WIN and ideological point irrespective of the costs of the fight.
REF:
(1) Effects of coordinated poison-baiting programs on survival and abundance in two red fox populations http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/WR13202.htm
(2) Required Annual Population reduction to achieve halt in growth
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| Source: http://invasives.org.au/files/2014/02/fs_rechunt_NSWvfacts.pdf |
