The Biodiversity Council says it’s calling on the state government to abandon proposed amendments to Game and Feral Animal Legislation under a new Conservation Hunting Bill 2025.
The council, set up by researchers from eleven universities, says the proposed changes risk serious harm to the environment, communities, local economies, and public safety.
They’ve made a submission to a parliamentary inquiry saying there isn’t any evidence to support the Bill’s central claim that recreational hunting is an effective way to control invasive species or to deliver improved conservation outcomes.
The submission also says bounty schemes have been shown to be ineffective, costly and open to fraud with some studies finding they can worsen feral animal problems.
The Biodiversity Council is calling for what it says are sustained, professional programs combining methods such as aerial- and ground-based culling, targeted poison baiting, and
trapping, saying they’re scientifically proven as the best way to achieve population reductions.
Concerns over ‘right to hunt’ and new authority
Key concerns raised by the council include what they say is the bill stablishing a ‘right to hunt’ by giving hunting precedence over other land management priorities.
Another is the bill’s proposed replacement of a skills-based Game and Pest Management Advisory Board with a Conservation Hunting Authority the council says would be ‘dominated by hunting interests’.
The council also says the bill would force public land managers to consider hunting access when making land management decisions.
They say this would ‘undermine cross-tenure, evidence-based invasive species programs’.
‘This legislation risks putting the interests of hunters ahead of conservation, community safety and cultural values,’ Biodiversity Council Policy and Innovation Lead Lis
Ashby said in a media statement.
Another council member, Euan Ritchie from Deakin University, was quoted saying the proposed Conservation Hunting
Authority’ would be a ‘major step backwards for science-based and effective pest management’.
Hunting ‘nowhere near’ enough to manage pests
‘At times, hunters do help conservation,’ Mr Ritchie said, ‘as part of very targeted, intensive programs, which are coordinated and directed by conservation managers in specific situations’.
Mr Ritchie said coordinated opportunities for hunters were already occurring, and wouldn’t be improved by the bill.
‘Recreational hunters killing a few animals here and there, from time to time, is nowhere near the sort of effort required to
meaningfully reduce populations, and keep them low, to deliver discernible benefits for native wildlife and habitats,’ Mr Ritchie said.
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