South East Local Land Services Biosecurity Officer Evelyn Osborne is inviting the South Coast community to help protect native wildlife by participating in the 2019 South Coast Predator Poo Patrol.
“The Poo Patrol is a great way for the community to get a better understanding of the native wildlife in their surrounds and the risks posed to them by pest animals” Evelyn said.
“We had a really good response to the campaign last year, with 25 land managers getting involved and 59 samples analysed”.
Foxes and wild dogs are a risk to native wildlife, producers and communities both as predators, competitors and carriers of disease.
“By analysing the samples that our land managers collected we were able to determine that both foxes and wild dogs were preying mostly on native wildlife including; long-nosed bandicoots, ringtail possums, wombats, swamp wallabies, sugar gliders and the threatened eastern pygmy possum”.
The Predator Poo Patrol is coordinated as part of the South Coast Feral Fighters program.
“Biosecurity is a shared responsibility and coordinated group control is the most effective way to manage pest animals.
“We encourage all land managers to get involved with the Feral Fighters program, we run regular training sessions at the Berry office and can have a chat with anyone interested in participating” Evelyn said.
The Predator Poo Patrol will run from Monday 19 August until Friday 13 September. Samples collected in this time will be sent away for analysis and the results will be presented at a workshop in Berry on 25 October.
The next Feral Fighters training session will be held at the Berry Local Land Services office on Thursday 12 September.
