I heard on the radio this morning that the Victoria Government has issued a permit to a farmer to shoot 100 Black Swans that are allegedly ravaging his Lucerne crop, due to the drying up of local lakes and loss of the Black Swans natural feeding habitat!

If this is the action that we have to take to solve a natural wildlife problem, then maybe we should be thinking about shooting all those people who are losing their homes due to interest rate increases, those that cannot afford the ever-increasing rental costs and those that are now homeless and dependent upon charitable organizations for support!....(not to mention corrupt politicians, businessmen and policemen!)

You think that this sounds silly?....Well it is really no different than this idiotic move to shoot Black Swans!

We now have a system in place whereby a starving species can invade a farmers crop for survival, he can then go ahead and shoot a hundred of the them,...( who is officially counting the "cull"? )... but if a human being climbs into our house, with evil intent at night, while we are sleeping, we are NOT allowed to defend ourselves with a gun!....Note the subtle difference?

IF he's got a permit to shoot 100, then chances are he'll accountable for those 100. 1 over and I'm sure he'll be facing prosecution if caught, hence, the permit.

If you get dingoes running through farms killing sheep you'll get the same outcome as your swans. There's no difference. Are these swans endangered, or over-populated, or somewhere in the middle?.

What's your REAL problem with them being shot, cause they're pretty or something?. What do you think your house was built on?. Animals had to die for you to be homed.

I don't condone it, but welcome to the real world.

One should start a thread on the evil side of farmers. Ive worked on farms and the whole issue to the farmer is one of dollars first and Creation second.
On one farm they drowned the pups they didnt want because they were too lazy to find them homes and it would have cost them a dollar to feed the little pups while they might have looked.

There always needs to be a Royal Commission into farmers. They have foul habits when it comes to the environment.
Many farms are garbage tips. They allow filth and chemicals to run into water supplies. They leave dead animals out in the open.
And federal governments tolerate them.

No wonder Judgment is coming (ask the committed christians).
Mankind is killing and filthing up everything.

'Thou shalt not judge lest ye be judged', eh Gibo?.

Good effort in mass generalisation and dumping everyone who owns land into one little bite sized morsel of chronic hypocrisy.

Are you ever in a good mood StG?
You seem to grump all over the place. Maybe you need to get saved by The lord?

Dear Cuphandle,

What a sad situation this is.

The following website:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/26/2315339.htm

tells the full story.

Its happening in the Gippsland Lakes and Wetlands region of
Victoria.

In Gippsland the black swans are a prominent emblem of
tourism and as the article tells us they are also an
important symbol to the local Indigenous Community.

However they apparently are becoming a pest by moving out
of the wetlands area into farming pastures and destroying
the crops. So far the swans have caused around $60,000
worth of damage to young lucerne crops.

5 permits have been issued to shoot 90 swans.

The reason the swans are moving out of the wetlands
is because the lakes are dying. Its the swans
nesting season and the farming properties are on the
edge of the listed Wetlands.

Farmers have tried to get the swans to move on - but
nothing has worked.

We can only hope that this is a temporary situation
and that it will be rectified soon.
The State need to do something about the lakes
and wetlands. It would be a pity to continue simply
culling these beautiful birds.

Born and bred proud Christian Gibo. I just don't practice hypocrisy.

You haven't seen me grumpy yet mate. You'll know I'm grumpy because it's usually followed by a banning. ;o)

Nothing wrong with being proud of what you believe....I believe I've believed it longer than you buddy, I just don't have time for people who SPRUIK their stuff. It annoys me. I'm human, and fallible, and know it. I don't pretend I'm better than others because of something going on in my head and soul.

What I believe is between me and God. It's got nothing to do with anyone else.

Anyway, back to the swans...

Well,well,well, very little has changed, but i do admire the spirit.( smile)
Its seem the world does not get the idea that we humans are the invaders and not the wildlife, but once mankind has destroyed the food chain, only then the crashing reality of our billions will come to light.

So! now the swans! I wonder what is next? I also wonder if anyone is seeing that we are shooting ourselves in the head.

In a smaller world this would not happen.

Just a thought.

And hello to all.

EVO

I share your concerns Cuphandle.

There have been a lot of similar problems in north Queensland with flying foxes in lychee orchards, and becoming a public nuisance with their colonisation of a park in the middle of Charters Towers.

But after a protracted battle, farmers were prevented from shooting them http://theland.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/horticulture/general/flying-fox-cull-ban-to-shoot-orchardists-in-the-foot/771493.aspx ...and the colony remains in the middle of Charters Towers several years after it became a major issue http://www.ginfo.pl/more/367878,no,culling,of,charters,towers,flying,foxes,,wells.html

So there are ways of living with wildlife that take a fancy to humanised landscapes and crops…without trying to eradicate them.

Permits to kill wildlife, such as is the case with black swans on this occasion, are just ridiculous. If a small number are killed, more will come, all else remaining the same. A cull isn’t the answer unless farmers are going to be allowed to kill all that arrive in the relevant fields.

Without knowing the intimate details, I’d say to the EPA that a licence to cull 90 swans is absurd! Five separate permits to cull an average of 18 swans each! This sounds very much like appeasement of the complainant farmers without the core of the issue being addressed.

Ludwig.
The flying fox issue has a biological solution.
The FF prefer native fruit if available. One smart farmer grew native fruit trees as a border around his crops and in one year reduced his problem of bat damage by as much as 40%

An apple orchard in SA fenced and bred up a mixture of native animals i.e. bandicoots, numbats etc. and trees. This strategy reduced pest damage and chemical spraying.

The answers are there but the problem is often the farmer and his farming techniques. Farmers tend to think of issues in terms of absolutes rather than the nuances of the environment. In many cases they feel trapped by culture and finance.

I have an idea all the people who dont like those birds being shot should chip in $50 per week too feed them! Then the farmer wont have to pay out of his pocket to feed the birds! And he wont have to shoot them! So everybody will be happy

If you dont agree to this it proves that you are not interested in solving the problem which obviously the farmer takes very seriously and are merely full of empty talk and windbaging which is typical in hypocrites .

I am sure the good people who run OLO would be happy to help organize a fund by all you do gooders out there to help save these flying rats.

Put your money where your mouth is or shutup and let the farmer get on with running his farm

I suggest that the farmer has exaggerated a bit. A few swans wont break his budget. Maybe he just likes to blast with his gun. Many farmers look for opportunities to bring out the gun and blast Gods Creation. John Howard did right to remove many of the guns.
Pity Defence wasnt bright enough to compensate for the loss by putting an equivalent number back in their Defence cupboard.

Cuphandle, you noted that:

[but if a human being climbs into our house, with evil intent at night, while we are sleeping, we are NOT allowed to defend ourselves with a gun!....Note the subtle difference?]

Recently a new law was enacted by Israel's Knesset (parliament), called the "Dromi law", that de-criminalize residents and farm-owners that shoot a burglar. See details in http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1214132676067&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

Interestingly, this law covers only human burglers, probably based on the assumption that they can differentiate between good and evil. Shooting protected animals (that threaten only property, but not lives) would still be considered a criminal offence.

As usual, Ludwig's on the money here: this licence to kill/cull is simply a sop to farmers who have a real problem that, while it's not directly of their making, is not going to be solved by slaughtering swans,

I think that Gibo's rant here is even more appalling than usual - he's now painting farmers in general as "evil", along with the vast majority of our society that he regards as depraved. Unlike Gibo, I not only live and work with farmers, but I also know that they are generally not very evil and, while typically trigger-happy with respect to pest management, are generally open to alternative solutions if these are both viable and properly explained.

The real problem here is the destruction of the Gippsland Lakes. Whether or not a few lucerne farmers are having a hard time is very small bickies compared to that ecological disaster.

Interesting! Lets do the maths on this!

EVO

Cuphandle, farmers are not walking talking charities - they ARE there to earn a living. What's the bet that you are one of those people who whines when farmers receive assistance for natural disasters....

Why on earth dont we just let the swans starve - that's what would be happening if humans were not growing crops for them to feed on. Its perfectly natural, even if its not very nice.

I'll be the first to agree that a cull is not effective unless well planned and there are strategies to deal with continuing numbers. However as any farmer who uses roo shooters knows, once a population of animals gets used to shooting, little effort goes into keeping them away - scare guns will normally do the trick for a while. This is the methodology used by rice farmers (bloody annoying when trying to sleep at night with scare guns going off all the time). Every now and then it needs to be supplemented with the real thing to reintroduce the effectiveness.