Indicator: Controlling pest animals

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What the results tell us for Tumut

Pest animals on freehold agricultural lands and Travelling Stock Reserves in Tumut Shire are controlled by Gundagai Rural Lands Protection Board under a Vertebrate Pest Plan (1999). The objectives of this plan are to minimise the impact of vertebrate pest species by eradicating rabbits (rangers really expect to achieve control), minimising stock losses due to wild dogs, and suppressing feral pig numbers to reduce damage to farming lands.

Control programs managed by the Rural Lands Protection Board can involve all landholders in an affected area. Community groups, such as Landcare, are also involved in group fox baiting programs.

National Parks and Wildlife Service and State Forests control pest animals species under separate management plans.

Control programs and techniques, and associated changes in animal populations include:

Deer

no control program is presently in place.

Feral goats

rangers provide advice and information upon request, and populations have not changed in the last three years.

Feral pigs

rangers encourage group control activities with landholders, maintain close links with State Forests, lend out traps to landholders, conduct farm visits, provide advice and facilitate educational activities, including field days. Populations are static.

Foxes

rangers provide advice and information upon request.

Rabbits

control activities involve poisoning, using 1080 and harbour destruction, with monitoring on private lands by Rural Lands Protection Board rangers, resulting in a population and density reduction of approximately 30% over the last five years.

Wild dogs

rangers coordinate group baiting in the Goobragandra Valley, maintain close links with National Parks and Wildlife Service, and offer advice to landholders and monitor and report on the number of sheep killed and attacked. Reports of wild dogs attacks on livestock have dramatically declined from 200-300 sheep killed/year five years ago, to losses of only 40 sheep in 1999.

About the data

Information was obtained from the following Rural Lands Protection Board

Gundagai RLP Board - Ranger - Ben McDonell (02) 6944 1588

Description: What does 'controlling pest animals' measure?

Which data are collected?

• proportion of total affected area actually treated by community groups, individuals and government
• change in relative abundance and distribution as a result of implementation of controls/plans

Why do we report this indicator?

There are a number of mechanisms for controlling pest animals and their impacts on the environment - including agricultural areas, and native ecosystems. These include:

• legislative (e.g. controls on the importing, keeping, selling and release of non-native animals)
• biological (e.g. releasing calcivirus to control rabbit populations)
• community action to remove pest species (e.g. culling)
• education
• monitoring.

The proportion of infested ecosystems treated is an indicator of the response by the community to the need to protect our native ecosystems and species from the pressure of pest animals. In many instances, it also reflects the community's desire to reduce losses that are inflicted on primary production by these pest species.

It is very difficult to eradicate a pest animal once it has become established in an area. For that reason, most control programs focus on preventing any further increase in numbers and in minimising the amount of harm inflicted by pest animal populations on native ecosystems and species, rather than on total eradication.

There is a consensus that any control programs designed for conservation of threatened or endangered species are best undertaken within the framework of a recovery plan.

In this Report the focus has been on controlling vertebrate pests. Unfortunately data about controlling invertebrate pests were not available for this Report.