The 2022 Victorian recreational duck shooting season started with a whimper and ended the same way on Monday June 13.
This year the Coalition Against Duck Shooting rescuers covered many wetlands but mainly focused on protecting native waterbirds at Lake Bael Bael, a Ramsar wetland of International Importance that retained a high number of so-called ‘game’ species throughout the season.
Campaign spokesperson, Craig Davey, today said: “The final weekend of the duck shooting season was extremely quiet with very few shooters and very few birds shot. Due to our presence the Lake Bael Bael birds were protected during the closing long weekend, and throughout the whole season.
“However, as usual, we witnessed shooters flouting the law by shooting threatened and protected species at the opening of the season as well as allegedly shooting above the bag limit and burying shot birds at Lake Murphy, leaving wounded birds to die slowly on the wetlands and failing to kill wounded birds. And as shooter numbers were so low, a motor boat was used to speed up and down the wetland for more than an hour. This is a tactic often used when not enough shooters are on the wetland to keep birds up in the air – and to stop birds from landing on the water out of shotgun range,” Davey said. See video: https://vimeo.com/719345248
“Due to the low numbers of active duck shooters again this year, the public needs to ask why the Victorian government spends millions of taxpayer dollars to prop up this violent and cruel activity, especially when duck shooter numbers make up only 0.2 per cent of Victorians. Duck shooting belongs in the past.
“The threats to all bird species posed by climate change is an additional reason to stop this unpopular activity,” concluded Davey.
