Media Release December 9, 2024
FOI highlights questionable quail shoot
Duck numbers crash in NSW
Taxpayer-funded hunting regulator says no consultation will occur before Victorian native bird hunting
Media Release- Regional Victorians Opposed to Duck Shooting inc.(RVOTDS)
The taxpayer-funded Victorian hunting regulator has confirmed it will no longer run pre-season consultation with stakeholders before it makes its recommendation to Ministers about bird hunting arrangements on vast swathes of public area.
Instead it will rely on a contentious computer model to inform its decisions. Criticisms of the model include that it ignores social/economic impacts on community or threatened species, involves high error margins / coefficients of variation (CV) and is based on recent “counts” of birds at a small percentage of the state, extrapolated up to an overall estimate using many assumptions.
RVOTDS is calling on Minister Dimopoulos to ensure appropriate consultation with affected regional communities, and consideration of the FFG Act’s precautionary principle. Before any further bird hunting takes place, the public have a right to see this new model’s independent peer-review, as well as safety risk assessments and cost benefit analysis.
Duck concerns:
The latest NSW count this year saw duck numbers had crashed. The total across 8 game species was less than half (43%) of the previous year. Pacific Black dropped to less than a third of the previous estimate. Pink-eared ducks (permitted to be shot on rice fields – with lead ammunition - even though they don’t even eat rice) were just one-eighth (13%) of the previous estimate. No Blue-winged Shovelers were found at all. Source: NSW DPI Annual Waterfowl Quota Reports 2023/24 p 17, 2024/25 p 15/16
Quail concerns:
There are only two recent estimates of Victoria’s Stubble quail populations (a third had too high an error margin to be useful). The estimates show a significant 20% decline in a single year.
A presentation deck from a “Quail Forum” hosted by the regulator in 2020, shows little is known about the bird’s biology or threats. Further, that hunting seasons coincide with their breeding periods and this should be avoided.
The regulator has never recommended any modifications to quail shooting seasons.
Quotes by Regional Victorians Opposed to Duck Shooting inc
“Not only has the Allan govt ignored its own Parliamentary Inquiry’s key recommendation to ban recreational native duck and quail hunting, the state is going backwards. Stakeholder consultation has disappeared.”
“By cutting stakeholder consultation, the regulator is saying it isn’t interested in impacts of hunting on regional communities or threatened species, when the GMA Act suggests it ought be.”
“Significant sums of taxpayer dollars are being spent on trying to ensure hunting is “sustainable”, so it’s disappointing the process is not better than it is.”
“With the poor state of our biodiversity, bird populations in decline and a deadly new strain of H5N1 on our doorsteps threatening many species including ducks, now is not the time to be experimenting with a new model.”
“We have no faith GMA will ever recommend any modification to quail shooting under any circumstances. This is why transparency and stakeholder engagement is critical. BirdLife for one, should absolutely be involved.”