Combating Invasive Species: Priorities for the Next Tasmanian Government

Tasmania is a remarkable island state with native animals and plants found nowhere else on earth, some of the most spectacular protected areas in Australia, and highly valued agriculture, forestry, and tourism sectors.

But the future health of our state’s environment, agriculture, and economy is under threat from highly damaging invasive species.

Tasmania is in an extinction crisis. Having evolved in isolation from the rest of the world, our mega-diverse island is highly susceptible to the impact of invasive animals, weeds, and pathogens that can kill, outcompete, or overwhelm native wildlife and ecosystems.

  • Weeds like Spanish heath and gorse smother our native plants
  • Feral and roaming pet cats hunt and kill our birds and small mammals
  • Trees are stripped bare, streams eroded and new vegetation is trampled by feral deer, which are spreading at an alarming rate. 
  • New threats like fire ants could cause a wave of extinctions if they make it here.

Invasive species also reduce farming production, prevent natural regeneration of bushland, and are an increasing threat to human lives on our roads. They cost Tasmania hundreds of millions of dollars each year in lost agricultural production and increased insurance and management costs.  

We face a crisis and current measures and resources in Tasmania are insufficient to halt and mitigate the impact of established invasive species and prevent the arrival and spread of new invasive species. 

The good news is that, as an island, Tasmania also has a natural advantage. Islands offer a massive opportunity for eradicating and preventing the reintroduction of invasive animals, weeds, and pathogens. This can be a winning strategy to future-proof biodiversity, revive world heritage areas and national parks and ensure our agriculture is a clean, green thriving sector. 

With investment and commitment, Tasmania could become a wildlife revival success story, free of the worst invasive species. That’s why we are calling on the next Tasmanian government to protect our environment, economy, and community from invasive species. 

Invasive Species Priorities

  1. Set an ambitious goal of no new extinctions in Tasmania and commit to regular statutory State of Environment reporting to parliament.
  1. Take action to reduce the impacts and spread of feral deer, including removing legal protection, and eradicating them from the World Heritage Area, the Tasman and Freycinet Peninsulas, Bruny and King Islands, around Hobart, Launceston, and the northwest. 
  1. Improve the management of cats to protect wildlife, including mandating pet cat containment and developing a comprehensive, funded state-wide feral cat strategy.
  1. Declare feral goats as pests, eradicate feral pigs, and phase out ferrets as pets.
  1. Develop and fund a dedicated ​​island eradication and recovery program with at least $10 million over four years.
  1. Increase funding for the Weeds Action Fund to $20 million over the next 4 years. 
  1. Increase First Nations leadership and employment in invasive species management, including supporting the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre’s Lungtalanana Cultural Restoration Project for cat eradication.
  1. Establish Biosecurity Tasmania as a separate, independent agency and create a dedicated Environmental Biosecurity Office within it.

You can find our detailed roadmap for protecting the state from the ongoing devastation and extinction at the QR code below. 
With a state election on March 23rd, we have an opportunity to tell the next government that we want Tasmania to be a state where our native species can thrive.

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Save the Snowies

The NSW government is one step away from allowing aerial control of feral horses in Kosciuszko National Park. This is huge news and a crucial step for our threatened native wildlife and the fragile alpine ecosystems they call home.

Dear Project Team,

[YOUR PERSONALISED MESSAGE WILL APPEAR HERE.] 

I support the amendment to the Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan to allow our incredible National Parks staff to use aerial shooting as one method to rapidly reduce feral horse numbers. I want to see feral horse numbers urgently reduced in order to save the national park and our native wildlife that live there.

The current approach is not solving the problem. Feral horse numbers have rapidly increased in Kosciuszko National Park to around 18,000, a 30% jump in just the past 2 years. With the population so high, thousands of feral horses need to be removed annually to reduce numbers and stop our National Park becoming a horse paddock. Aerial shooting, undertaken humanely and safely by professionals using standard protocols, is the only way this can happen.

The government’s own management plan for feral horses states that ‘if undertaken in accordance with best practice, aerial shooting can have the lowest negative animal welfare impacts of all lethal control methods’.

This humane and effective practice is already used across Australia to manage hundreds of thousands of feral animals like horses, deer, pigs, and goats.

Trapping and rehoming of feral horses has been used in Kosciuszko National Park for well over a decade but has consistently failed to reduce the population, has delayed meaningful action and is expensive. There are too many feral horses in the Alps and not enough demand for rehoming for it to be relied upon for the reduction of the population.

Fertility control as a management tool is only effective for a small, geographically isolated, and accessible population of feral horses where the management outcome sought is to maintain the population at its current size. It is not a viable option to reduce the large and growing feral horse population in the vast and rugged terrain of Kosciuszko National Park.

Feral horses are trashing and trampling our sensitive alpine ecosystems and streams, causing the decline and extinction of native animals. The federal government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee has stated that feral horses ‘may be the crucial factor that causes final extinction’ for 12 alpine species.

I recognise the sad reality that urgent and humane measures are necessary to urgently remove the horses or they will destroy the Snowies and the native wildlife that call the mountains home. I support a healthy national park where native species like the Corroboree Frog and Mountain Pygmy Possum can thrive.

Kind regards,
[Your name]
[Your email address]
[Your postcode]


Dear Project Team,

[YOUR PERSONALISED MESSAGE WILL APPEAR HERE.] 

I support the amendment to the Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan to allow our incredible National Parks staff to use aerial shooting as one method to rapidly reduce feral horse numbers. I want to see feral horse numbers urgently reduced in order to save the national park and our native wildlife that live there.

The current approach is not solving the problem. Feral horse numbers have rapidly increased in Kosciuszko National Park to around 18,000, a 30% jump in just the past 2 years. With the population so high, thousands of feral horses need to be removed annually to reduce numbers and stop our National Park becoming a horse paddock. Aerial shooting, undertaken humanely and safely by professionals using standard protocols, is the only way this can happen.

The government’s own management plan for feral horses states that ‘if undertaken in accordance with best practice, aerial shooting can have the lowest negative animal welfare impacts of all lethal control methods’.

This humane and effective practice is already used across Australia to manage hundreds of thousands of feral animals like horses, deer, pigs, and goats.

Trapping and rehoming of feral horses has been used in Kosciuszko National Park for well over a decade but has consistently failed to reduce the population, has delayed meaningful action and is expensive. There are too many feral horses in the Alps and not enough demand for rehoming for it to be relied upon for the reduction of the population.

Fertility control as a management tool is only effective for a small, geographically isolated, and accessible population of feral horses where the management outcome sought is to maintain the population at its current size. It is not a viable option to reduce the large and growing feral horse population in the vast and rugged terrain of Kosciuszko National Park.

Feral horses are trashing and trampling our sensitive alpine ecosystems and streams, causing the decline and extinction of native animals. The federal government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee has stated that feral horses ‘may be the crucial factor that causes final extinction’ for 12 alpine species.

I recognise the sad reality that urgent and humane measures are necessary to urgently remove the horses or they will destroy the Snowies and the native wildlife that call the mountains home. I support a healthy national park where native species like the Corroboree Frog and Mountain Pygmy Possum can thrive.

Kind regards,
[Your name]
[Your email address]
[Your postcode]