Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests

Regional Victorians opposed to Duck Shooting has written to Mount Alexander Shire urging it to take a more proactive role in getting rid of shooting at Cairn Curran.

FOBIF, along with Bird Life Australia (Castlemaine district) and the Castlemaine Field Naturalists Club, has endorsed the letter, which is a follow up to one sent in May.

Sanctuary or hunting ground? Victoria is the only eastern state to allow the recreational shooting of birds.

Council doesn’t have the power to ban duck shooting at the reservoir—but it could put pressure on Coliban Water, which does have that power.

Recreational shooting of birds is banned in NSW, Queensland, WA and the ACT, but not in Victoria.

The substance of the letter is as follows:

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…Our petition to have bird shooting banned, and the area made a sanctuary, followed Council’s motion in March 2019 to advocate for a ban on duck shooting at Cairn Curran.

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FOBIF has given in to temptation again, and had a shot at the consultation process on Parks Victoria’s land management strategy.

Our submission concentrated on two points:

Scented Bush-pea, Loop Track, Castlemaine Diggings NHP: to look after endangered species, Parks Victoria needs more resources, not vague gestures.

1. The draft strategy is completely vague on how Parks Victoria will handle the biodiversity crisis—a crisis everyone now knows about since the Auditor General’s scathing report last month.
2. The strategy goes gaga on the matter of private commercial developments in parks. FOBIF is not opposed to tour operators working in parks: but this strategy makes such operations into ‘partnerships’ which appear to be substitutes for proper park management.

These problems can be summed up in a simple statement: Park management is under resourced. Until recently it seemed that the only people in the universe who couldn’t see this were the State Government and Parks Victoria itself. It was surprising, therefore, to see Parks’ response to the Auditor General’s report:

‘Parks Victoria agrees with the Auditor General’s characterisation of both the problems being experienced by Victorian biodiversity and the urgent need for significantly increased focus and resourcing to better address these large and real challenges.’ (FOBIF emphasis)

This is a welcome change from previous Parks’ statements, which tended to acknowledge disastrous budget cuts while making loopy claims that ‘the future is one of excellence.’

Unfortunately the strategy doesn’t face up to the under resourcing problem, preferring instead to wrap it up in woolly statements about future improvements.

The substance of FOBIF’s submission is as follows:

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We support the emphasis given in the draft to the importance of working with Traditional Owners and adapting to climate change.

We would like to offer the following more critical comments:

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One day we might see a big headline in all the Murdoch media: ‘Biodiversity: worth fighting for!’

Until then, we’ll have to be content with a small item in the mainstream media, and things like the following:

‘Victoria’s biodiversity provides the foundations of healthy ecosystems, such as clean air and water, productive soils, natural pest control, pollination and flood mitigation. Threatened species and their habitats are critical to our biodiversity.’

That’s from the Victorian Auditor General’s report Protecting Victoria’s biodiversity, released last week. You can find the 75 page document here.

It makes pretty grim reading. Practically every page contains findings like this:

‘DELWP cannot demonstrate if, or how well, it is halting further decline in Victoria’s threatened species populations.’

And

‘DELWP advised us that it cannot guarantee the protection of all threatened species given:

• current funding levels
• scientific constraints around how species respond to threats and actions to control these in the wild, particularly in a time of climate change
• the long-term lag effects on Victoria’s biodiversity of over 200 years of colonisation.’

DELWP has accepted all the auditor general’s recommendations, though it’s a bit defensive about funding. Parks Victoria’s response to the review is as follows:

‘Parks Victoria agrees with the Auditor General’s characterisation of both the problems being experienced by Victorian biodiversity and the urgent need for significantly increased focus and resourcing to better address these large and real challenges.’ (FOBIF emphasis)

Is that a political statement? Of course resourcing and focus are what matters: one without the other won’t work. Funding is a matter for governing parties. Focus comes from the culture of the organisations themselves. We know there are plenty of people inside DELWP and Parks Victoria who do have the values of nature at heart. Are there enough?

The AG’s report made a bit of a splash in the media last week. Will it have an effect? Maybe that depends on the number of people who read it, and draw the attention of their MP to it. Have a go.