Local Pest Plans More Proactive

OLD school local bush knowledge combined with new science and technology is how the new pest plan for the Hunter has been described by Richard Ali, senior bio-security officer from Hunter Local Land Services.

The new approach which uses a more localised response to pest animals has been developed and implemented with local landholders and farmers are encouraged to review the plan and continue to be proactive with pest management in their area.

“There is some momentum and people see there are a few really good local wins and while there is a long way to go, but we are headed the right way,” said Mr Ali.

“There are a lot of really stressed people at the moment with the drought and if we can alleviate some of the pest issues there is quite a lot of resources and funding to take advantage of at the moment,” he said.

“One farmer told me how he was spending up to a couple of grand a week or more feeding feral pigs, so we need to hear that to act in a timely way, there are a lot of people behind the plan in the local area working together really well and we want to keep doing that,” he said.

“Don’t sit on it report it so that we can help,” Richard Ali said.

The plans are tailored to areas and driven by community groups and with nil-tenure land access agreements are in place across all landowners including national and state parks, mining offset country, crown estate and private landowners.

“The wild dog management plans are the most advanced developed at a local level and we’ve got one for the Upper Hunter, the western Upper Hunter which covers Merriwa and Cassilis area and central for Singleton area and those three plans are really specific they drill down into the action of who, what, when and how and it’s driven by already set up community associations,” he said.

“In Scone we’ll develop local management plans for those species and what we will do.

“In Murrurundi we are focused on deer because they are impacting heavily on pastures and drought feeding systems up there.

“We don’t have the barriers we used to between landowners and parks and government, I think we are all in it together now.

“If we win or fail we can all look at each other and know we made the decision together instead of the government up the front leading it and no one agrees, everything is agreed outcomes and it’s as simplified as possible.

“For example we did a lot of research with older folk around Scone and over a lot of cup of teas we tapped into the really old knowledge that’s out there and with dogs the issues people were dealing with back in the early days are the same now, the areas they travel, the habits and the cycles we’ve learnt quite a lot from and the combination for us is that old school local knowledge with science and new technology, we combine both and give people the tools to use,” he said.

“We are also trialling the use of Feral Scan, such as Wild Dog Scan and for tech savvy landowners they can take out their mobile devices and with a few simple presses of buttons can report wild dogs citings and upload photos and that comes directly to us and with that we’ve been able to track movements of notorious dogs,” Richard Ali said.

Contact local bio-security officers:

• Matt Kennedy: 0428 686 178
• Richard Ali: 0429 722 944
• Jonathan Randle: 0429 342 995