by sambar358 » Thu 04 Apr, 2019 9:32 am
"Only deer will be targeted"......states the PV text. It seems that PV (and the government) have different standards even for ferals......apparently it's quite OK to shoot deer from an aerial platform and stress the animals, the inevitable wounding, orphaned juveniles left to starve to death etc is part of the operation.....but when feral horse numbers are to be reduced then aerial shooting of them is not permitted on the very same grounds. Clearly shooting horses is not politically acceptable if you want to stay in government.....PV and the government need to "bite the bullet" with the feral horses and just use the most effective method available and clearly that is these NSW Parks helicopter gunships that have recently been shooting many 1000's of fallow and red deer in various areas of NSW.
Clearly the current feral horse trapping programs are a total expensive failure in regards to getting the numbers down.....time to get real and get the job done properly and handle the political fall-out later. If it's OK on animal welfare grounds to shoot deer from a helicopter than logically it is OK to do it to feral horses as well.......4 days aerial shooting on the BHP and surrounds should pretty-well sort most of them out I would think as they'd be far easier to shoot from a chopper than sambar deer.
It was interesting to note that after the 1st ANP aerial cull in October 2018 when Parks were asked by the key hunting organizations for a "cost per deer" figure on the cull Parks declined to give it despite indicating pre-cull that this would be provided. So much for full disclosure and transparency for all this which after-all is being totally funded by the Vic taxpayer either directly or via PV's budget. All we can read from this is that the cost per deer for the October cull where 120 animals were taken was far higher than the $120 per animal touted in the press......probably more like $1200 per animal when all costs were added in and not just how much it cost to keep the machine in the air per hour. No-doubt we'll get the same smoke and mirror treatment after the May cull. Cheers
s358
Last edited by
sambar358 on Thu 04 Apr, 2019 3:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.