Wallaby death

Lindy Stacker, Binna Burra

After moving to this beautiful area less than a year ago, I find I am once again gutted by the number of wildlife deaths on the roads. One of the major reasons I left Sydney’s northern beaches was to escape the wildlife carnage I saw and had to deal with on a daily basis as a wildlife carer. I haven’t managed to escape this sadness and reduce my compassion fatigue.

This morning as I exited my driveway, I discovered a beautiful dead swamp wallaby, a local resident that we had witnessed down at the bottom of our quiet street by the creek on many occasions. He is (was) the only wallaby we had ever seen there and we viewed him as our friend.

I was gutted to witness this tragedy and through many tears dragged him off the road. Our place is a sanctuary for all wildlife and to experience this right outside our property was simply heartbreaking.

I never thought I would say this, but I agree with councillor Alan Hunter (LNP) that more wildlife signs need to be erected.

However, as some wise soul pointed out, it is the Nationals (LNP) who lobbied our state government (probably didn’t have to try too hard) to scrap previous native vegetation laws that protected over 100,000 native animals each year, allowing farmers to clearfell essentially wherever they please.

I went to a meeting last week organised by the Nature Conservation Council who outlined in detail that within a three-year period an 800 per cent increase of wildlife deaths has occurred. Furthermore, only nine per cent of NSW’s original forested habitat survives and guess where that is? Within the national parks that the LNP have tried endlessly to have corporatised.

These folks are environmental vandals and in a just world they would be legislatively scrapped and not our precious threatened wildlife or the limited legislation that is supposed to protect them. Unfortunately wallabies don’t vote but their friends do.

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