NSW rice farmers have been devastated by a plague of ducks that were allowed to thrive under mismanagement by the state’s National Parks and Wildlife Service, according to Shooters and Fishers Party MLC Robert Borsak.
“The current NPWS-imposed controls have resulted in the loss tens of millions of dollars of the rice harvest,” Borsak said, adding that poor duck management by NPWS would result in a “population crash when conditions change”.
Farmer say it is now too late to re-sow crops that were destroyed by the ducks, which boomed following the end of the drought in 2010.
Under the NSW duck mitigation program, farmers were permitted to control ducks only over rice crops, which meant they could not begin to control the swelling population before ducks swarmed onto rice fields, nor could they impose controls along creeks and other areas where ducks could retreat when not on the crops.
Mr Borsak, along with a growing number of farmers, wants to see a more flexible and adaptive approach to the duck problem.
The Shooters and Fishers Party also wants a return to an official duck hunting season in NSW.
“Since the ban on duck shooting, NPWS has done no research on the duck population and, much like the mismanagement of national parks, duck protection rather than adaptive management will also see the duck population crash when conditions change,” Mr Borsak said.
“Much as NPWS are bad neighbours to have next to your property, so they are bad duck population controllers, as for them doing nothing is the protection not conservation paradigm.”
The current rules in NSW discourage people from getting a permit to shoot ducks, with no structured series of licensing sessions.
Ducks may only be shot under the mitigation program, which means there is no culture of duck hunting and therefore few people ready to take part when they are needed to protect crops.
The majority of shooters come from Victoria, where there is an established annual duck season and about 25,000 licence holders.
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