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Glyphosate: A Chemical to Understand

The use of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and many other weed-killers, is very controversial. However, it is also the main herbicide used on crops in Australia and the main herbicide used against weeds invading our native ecosystems.

Author of the best-selling book Feral Future Tim Low was commissioned to write this report, Glyphosate: A Chemical to Understand, in an attempt to reconcile the conflicting findings, and to consider the outcomes if Australia bans glyphosate.

Background

The use of glyphosate is a challenging but important issue for government agencies, councils and the people who use glyphosate products to keep environmental weeds under control, including thousands of Bushcare and Landcare volunteers across Australia.

In 2015 the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) determined that glyphosate was a probable carcinogen. Several countries (but not Australia) have since announced bans on glyphosate. In three American court cases, juries have awarded massive damages to people who blamed it for their cancer.

These events are very concerning. But government agencies have responded in divergent ways to the IARC report.

The European Food Safety Authority announced that glyphosate ‘is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans’ (European Food Safety Authority 2015). Similar conclusions have been reached by regulatory authorities in Australia, the US, Canada, Japan and New Zealand (Connolly et al. 2018).

Organisations representing Australian farmers – the National Farmers’ Federation, Agforce, Victorian Farmers Federation, WAFarmers – have strongly rejected the IARC finding.

Aside from cancer concerns, it is controversial for its link to genetically modified crops, such as the GM corn grown widely in the US. Many GM crops have been designed to survive glyphosate so that they can be sprayed to kill associated weeds.

The Invasive Species Council has produced this report in an attempt to reconcile the conflicting findings, and to consider the outcomes if Australia bans glyphosate. The views expressed in the report are those of its author, Tim Low, not those of the council.

The first two sections consider why agencies have reached divergent or apparently divergent conclusions. The third asks what it means for glyphosate to be a carcinogen, and the fourth explores what a world without it might look like.

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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]