Media Release Wednesday, 13 March 2019
The main rescue team and the Coalition Against Duck Shooting’s mobile veterinary clinic will focus their efforts on Victoria’s internationally recognised Ramsar Wetlands in the state’s northwest, the Kerang Lakes, on the opening of the 2019 duck shooting season on Saturday, 16 March.
“With record heat, drought and bushfires in Victoria, and dangerously low waterbird numbers across eastern Australia, it is unbelievable and irresponsible that a duck shooting season has been called,” Campaign Director Laurie Levy said today.
The Coalition Against Duck Shooting has formed its own enforcement team this year, due to the failure of Victoria’s Game Management Authority (GMA) to prosecute duck shooters for numerous cruelty offences and the illegal shooting of threatened and protected species, Levy said.
As stated last year in the government-commissioned, independent Pegasus Report, the GMA is unwilling, as well as incapable of enforcing the law, Levy said. “This is hardly surprisingly, when the GMA has a serious conflict of interest, with senior board members and officials who are duck shooters themselves.”
“Our new rescuer enforcement team will obtain better forensic evidence, videos and photographs to force the GMA to prosecute the many cases of illegal shooting and cruelty that always occur on Victoria’s wetlands during every duck shooting season. Spent shotgun cartridges can now be forensically tested to match specific shotguns.”
While the GMA compliance officers are forced to stand meekly on shore under Occupational Health and Safety Regulations, our uninsured rescue team will be out on the water with the shooters, Levy said. “Duck shooters are considered so dangerous that even on shore, GMA officers will only approach duck shooters if accompanied by armed police officers. The Victorian Government also recognises that at least one in every four birds shot is left wounded, but refuses to provide any urgent veterinary treatment. Once again, this will fall to concerned volunteer rescuers who ferry the victims to the on-site veterinary team.
On the final day of the 2018 duck shooting season, rescuers obtained vital video evidence of shooters using an airboat to flush birds up into the guns at Cundare Pool, near Cressy in southwest Victoria. This resulted in the GMA seizing the airboat, which remains confiscated, and charges being laid against seven shooters who will have their day in the Magistrates’ Court, Levy said.
The Victorian Government and shooters’ groups seem unconcerned by current warnings from the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) that duck shooters and their families face serious health risks from eating birds contaminated by PFAS (per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances), including cancer, Levy said. The EPA has also warned farmers of “potentially elevated risks” from human consumption of contaminated livestock and produce.
The latest testing near the East Sale RAAF base in Gippsland shows “an elevated risk” to human health pfrom consuming ducks (or fish) from the Heart Morass and other Gippsland wetlands. Birds with PFAS contamination have also been found on Hospital Swamp, near Geelong, confirming that contaminated birds can fly to any of Victoria’s wetlands across the state, so shooters have no way of knowing which birds are toxic. Could the PFAS problem be the birds’ ultimate revenge on duck shooters?” Levy concluded.
