Perspective on duck shooting
Let’s get some perspective on the duck shooting comments from Trent Leen of Geelong Field & Game (Independent, ‘Call to end duck hunt’, January 13, 2023).
Professor Richard Kingsford of UNSW has conducted aerial surveys across eastern Australia for 40 years. His results show serious, sustained decline for the duck species that are shot in Victoria. Two species are now on Victoria’s threatened list.
Shooters love to claim Kingsford thinks duck shooting has no effect on sustainability. That view was based on last-century studies before climate change really hit. But in 2015 Kingsford said: “When you’re down at the bottom of the trough, which is where ducks are…if you have a duck shooting season you are really only going to be shooting adults which will reduce the capacity of the population to bounce back.” His latest survey in Oct-Nov 2022 shows that game duck abundance is even lower now than in 2015, despite the record rains we’ve had lately.
As for the conservation work done by Geelong Field & Game, they recently won a taxpayer grant to build 300 duck nesting boxes at a cost of $160 each. Do these boxes have vogue interiors, or are we paying Field & Game for its altruism? Will they continue building nesting boxes when duck shooting is finally banned, or is this really about producing gun fodder?
Em Wilkinson, Wattle Park
End duck hunting
Matt Hewson’s front page story in the Geelong Independent on Tuesday January 13 (‘Call to end duck hunt’) sums up the concern that most members of the public have about blood sports and their impact on our treasured Victorian wildlife.
The most recent Animal Welfare Victoria Act has established that animals are sentient (they have feelings that can be impacted by positive and negative experiences), and agrees that they should have rights that protect them unnecessary harm.
Trent Leen wants to argue the point that it’s habitat loss, not being shot from the sky, that is most risky for the birds.
To argue for the environment whilst supporting those that kill ducks, seriously limits the credibility of his argument.
I suggest that we give up finding excuses that prolong an unwanted duck season, and work together to leave these creatures in peace.
Annie Cranby
No funding for No vote
Since 1906 Australia has had 44 referendums. In each case the federal government of the day has put the question/questions and provided the electorate with pros and cons summations. From that process eight single amendments have been made to the Constitution.
Sometime between August and November The Indigenous Voice To Parliament referendum will be put forward by the Albanese government.
An array of Albanese government taxpayer funded appointees-ambassadors advocating the Yes Vote will then be up and about. Nothing wrong with healthy debate. Yet there’s a problem. No taxpayer funded parity representation for the No Vote.
Things are crook in Tallarook!
Richard Worland, Manifold Heights
Show me the money
If Senator Sarah Henderson thinks the state government should keep Epworth Hospital’s maternity ward open she owes it to her constituents to tell us where the money is coming from.
Epworth hospital is a private business. Is the senator suggesting that money should be diverted from the public University Hospital to prop up Epworth?
What did the senator do while she was a member of the party in government? Why wasn’t she ahead of this issue?
Kevin V Russell, Geelong
