Pest animals of every kind wreaking havoc for graziers
DROUGHT may be the focus for landholders this year after a season of almost no rain in some parts of the region.
While the big dry is depleting chances of stripping crops for farmers who managed to get some sown, however, the lack of rainfall isn’t the only problem facing primary producers.
Pest animals of many varieties are causing havoc amongst graziers, the management of these feral species such as foxes, cats and wild dogs the focus of a recent Wellington workshop run by Mid-macquarie Landcare in partnership with Central West Local Land Services (CWLLS), Dubbo Regional Council (DRC) and the Department of Primary Industries (DPI).
LLS biosecurity officer Jason Gavenlock says it’s a constant battle.
“Foxes, we have a lot of sheep in this area that are lambing and foxes take 10 to 20 percent of lambs so it’s very important to do your programs and specially to do it with a group program, if you just do it individually it’s not as effective as a heap of neighbours doing it together,” Mr Gavenlock said.
“In Dubbo itself we run 18 groups twice a year, so we’re doing about 36 groups with landholders, we get the landholders’ property and all the neighbours come and they all bait in one big group, that’s been very effective.
“I was talking to a landholder the other day and he said his lambing percentages have increased by 20 percent since he’s started to bait,” he said.
Mid-macquarie Landcare is hoping to spark a renewed group effort on fox baiting around Wellington but at the same time threats from pests such as cats and dogs are on the rise.
“Dogs – if someone had said three or four years ago that we’ve got dingoes or wild dogs around Dubbo you’d think that’s not right, but we’ve recently had one down near Stuart Town that was killing sheep and we got a trapper in and we caught it and the killing stopped,” Mr Gavenlock said.
“There’s one at the moment at Euchareena which is active , we’ve got two or three out towards Dunedoo which are active at the moment, one has been killing sheep out there, so it’s surprising with the use of the surveillance cameras and people now being a bit aware, we’ve done mapping courses and it makes people aware of dogs’ activities and what to look for, yep, there’s quite a few at the moment around the district,” he said.
DPI’S Troy Hogarth says illegal hunting is also causing huge problems across the region, his compliance team is working on education to harness hunters to work with landholders who have pest animal problems.
“If people are going to hunt in NSW we want them to do it the right way, do it legally and ethically and secondly for landholders who are impacted by illegal hunting, they need to make sure they report that to Crimestoppers or to DPI, let us know what’s happening so we can help them with their problems,” Mr Hogarth said.
Urban areas and the small landholdings around Dubbo and Wellington create their own animal dramas, the newly amalgamated DRC working on multiple strategies to prevent problems with domestic pets according to ranger Gavin Borham.
“There are so many grey areas and that’s why we were pleased to be involved with Mid-macquarie Landcare’s pest animal workshop, just to get some of that information out there,” Mr Borham said.
“The biggest problem we find is around the Companion Animals Act and the animal ID so the microchipping and registration of cats and dogs, but also just some of your general compliance around illegal dumping and straying stock.
“We pick up a lot of cats and dogs that aren’t microchipped and it’s a big problem because it makes it hard for us to find the owners and be able to return the animals – it ties up a lot of resources, the council’s actually got four full time rangers in Dubbo and two in Wellington and it’s a fair part of our workload,” he said.