Australian water birds need your help

[Guest guest]

URGENT REQUEST FOR HELP

ON BEHALF OF

AUSTRALIA’S NATIVE WATERBIRDS.

 

Victorian Premier Steve Bracks and the Minister for Environment and

Conservation, Mrs Sherryl Garbutt, are about to announce whether there will

be a duck shooting season commencing in March this year.

Australia’s water birds urgently need your help.

 

Please send emails immediately to both Mr

Bracks steve.bracks and Mrs Garbutt

sherryl.garbutt requesting they cancel the season

this year, and say you won’t be voting Labour at next year’s State election

unless they do.

 

Here are the facts:

Dr Richard Kingsford, senior ornithologist with the New South Wales

National Parks & Wildlife Service, is responsible for annual, aerial

water-bird counts across the east coast of Australia. He reports that

‘game’ bird numbers are the lowest on record and for the first time has

privately called for a moratorium on duck shooting in Victoria.

Eastern Australia has been experiencing drought conditions for the last

seven years. Consequently few birds have been breeding.

Four lakes at Kerang in Victoria’s shooting heartland, have already been

artificially flooded. Birds are attracted to these wetlands from all over

Eastern Australia, including those that escaped the NSW fires. These birds

are the core breeders for the future, which will be exterminated if

shooting proceeds.

 

This year there have been reports of good numbers of the rare, threatened

and protected Freckled Duck, especially at Kerang. Based on past

experience, 80% of these birds will be at risk from illegal shooting.

Drastic cutbacks in the Department of Natural Resources and Environment

means there are very few wildlife officers to police activities on the

wetlands.

 

‘Game’ birds include eight species of native Australian waterbirds that are

protected nine months of the year. For three months they became ‘game’

birds solely because 21,000 licensed shooters (or just 0.5% of the

population of Victoria), derive enjoyment from destroying these defenseless

birds.

 

It is part of Labour Party policy to ban duck shooting, yet nothing has

been done, despite Mr Bracks being a patron of the RSPCA which campaigns

against, and strongly opposes duck shooting.

On behalf of Australia’s beautiful water birds – thank you very much.