CHARLES WOOLEY
Tou My Xiong’s conviction in a Hobart court last week for killing an endangered wedge-tailed eagle shocked many of us. There are only about 1400 Tasmanian wedge-tails and their numbers are declining. So Xiong’s twisted reason for killing the magnificent creature was all the more alarming and infuriating. “I just wanted to kill something,” he told the court.
We know how he feels.
Another thing Mr Xiong might have been killing is time, of which he apparently has plenty. The court was told the 33-year-old Goodwood father of five was unemployed. We can only hope he doesn’t use some of that time teaching the kids to shoot. But if he does, first he needs a gun licence, which he did not possess. The court heard Xiong was on a camping trip with relatives on a Levendale property where he borrowed a .22 calibre rifle and “wandered off looking for rabbits and wallabies to shoot.”. If any among this ‘hunting party’ had a modicum of commonsense they would have known that a .22 is unlikely to stop a wallaby. If they had shot one, the animal would have most likely run off into the bush to suffer a slow and painful death.
Still wouldn’t it be a greater worry had that party been out in the bush with the appropriate more powerful weapon?
Are you, like me, now wondering how any of this can happen?
Before you fall over yourself in a Sinophobe fit, Xiong’s Chinese name neither confers cultural blame nor does it confer any mitigating cultural misunderstanding. In court he represented himself and he declared his guilt in the most down to earth Tasmanian manner. Although he was clearly of Chinese appearance, in his manner and speech he was dinky-di. As an observer in the court later told me, “This bloke was 100 per cent Aussie bogan.”
Just as well perhaps as Xiong’s trial came at something of a low point in the SinoAustralian relationship. The recent
Minutes expose on the Crown Casino has revealed how some Chinese high-rolling gamblers enjoy shooting the blazes out of all manner of Australian wildlife. On a cattle station 100km north-east of Melbourne, Chinese clients were invited to “become a crack-shot hunting god,” (as translated from
a Chinese language website). They were promised, among other targets, the shooting of “wild rabbits, foxes, wombats (and) wild ducks.”
Presumably it’s a relaxing break from the pressures of gambling.
In China animal welfare is not a mainstream concern but neither would Tasmania always be the best place for anyone to learn by example about respect for wildlife. While hunting is a legitimate, skilful and time-honoured Tasmanian tradition there are increasingly too many homegrown examples of inexperience, cruelty and stupidity.
Recently one of the worst ‘hunting’ outrages resulted in the euthanising of two wallabies shot by arrows, one of them in the face. Environment Minister Peter Gutwein who is no greenie-vegan-bleeding-heartleftie called it out in the strongest terms. “This is a very unfortunate and distressing example of people behaving in idiotic and quite frankly disgusting ways,” Mr Gutwein raged. He pointed out that the government had recently increased the penalty for such crimes to $50,000. As Chinese interests purchase large tracts of rural Tasmania (like Cambria Green) for tourism developments, the minister should seek to ensure that if and where hunting is on offer our laws must be obeyed.
Shooting swans at Swansea is not an option.
Tou My Xiong should consider himself lucky he got off so lightly. Magistrate Reg Marron said the crime was “monumentally stupid” but Xiong, perhaps because he had so guilelessly admitted the offence, was fined only $2000.
Outside the court Tasmania’s foremost wildlife warrior Greg Irons from Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary expressed his disappointment.
“I really hoped this would be a landmark case ... I’m so deflated,” he told this paper (Mercury, August 1, 2019) “The fine will not even cover the money spent by the taxpayer on the investigation.”
Tasmanian law provides for fines of up to $16,000 for killing a wedge-tail but realistically, with the offender jobless and with five kids what would the chances be of recovering the money? Generally penalties in Tasmania for wildlife crimes are light compared with mainland states and overseas. In the US you can get a $5000 fine or a year in jail for killing a bald eagle. Do it a second time and they throw away the key. In northern Norway you can get 10 years for shooting a polar bear even if it’s threatening you. Back home in Tasmania Mr Xiong should be grateful he is not in the land of his ancestors where killing a panda is punishable by jail and where there are now calls to institute capital punishment for the crime.
It does look as if in the Tasmanian court the man who shot the eagle has been thrashed with a feather. Perhaps work orders at The Bonorong sanctuary would have been more appropriate than a small fine. Perhaps Tou My Xiong should now volunteer to do that because working with the tireless Greg Irons he would become aware of the sheer scale of the horrors so often thoughtlessly inflicted on our native animals. Up close he might even come to appreciate Tasmanian wildlife rather than wantonly kill it. The idiots who cruelly shot the wallabies with a bow and arrow might also benefit from an eye-opening stint in Bonorong’s animal hospital.
So far in this sorry story there is little redemption apart from one moment of poetic justice when the eagle inflicted a more salutary punishment than the court. When Xiong approached to inspect his prone trophy, the bird rose in its death throes and slashed his forearm with its talons.
We can only hope he keeps the scar and learns his lesson.