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Proposed Tasmanian Threatened Species Strategy Submission

The Invasive Species Council welcomes the opportunity to comment on the proposed Tasmanian Threatened Species Strategy and look forward to further engagement during the next phase of the strategy development.

Invasive species remain one of the most significant threats causing extinctions and declines of Tasmanian biodiversity, as well as necessitating costly and disruptive eradication programs to protect agriculture and trade. Unfortunately, the number of detections and incursions of potentially invasive species in Tasmania are increasing from trade and tourism, and established invasive species continue to cause ecological damage.

In recognition of the threats invasive species pose to threatened flora and fauna in Tasmania, the Invasive Species Council has made 8 recommendations for the proposed Threatened Species Strategy.

Recommendations:

Recommendation 1: Set an ambitious goal of no new extinctions in Tasmania, in line with the federal government’s commitment. 

Recommendation 2: Develop and implement a dedicated Island Recovery program, focusing on feasible eradication of invasive species from priority off-shore islands, including eradicating feral cats from lungtalanana/Clark island, feral deer and cats from Bruny and King Islands, and feral pigs from Flinders Islands. 

Recommendation 3: Develop and strengthen Threat Abatement Plans and planning for Tasmania, as well as supporting and implementing relevant federal Threat Abatement Plans. As part of this, the Tasmanian Government should: 

  1. Comprehensively identify and list key threatening processes through an independent scientific process, supplemented by a public nomination process. Regularly review the list of threats to ensure it remains up to date. 
  2. List threats in a hierarchical scheme of key threatening processes and environmental threats of state significance. Establish an additional threat category – emerging threatening processes. 
  3. Design a fit-for-purpose abatement response for all listed threats, including threat abatement plans or action plans (e.g. for cross-sectoral threats), regional plans, and policy and regulatory responses. 
  4. Establish an implementation taskforce for each major threat response, with a coordinator to drive implementation of plans for the priority threats. Facilitate collaborations by governments, Traditional Owners and community and cross-sectoral stakeholders on abating major threats. 
  5. Systematically monitor and report on threat abatement progress. Introduce independent oversight of the threat abatement system. 
  6. Substantially increase public spending on threat abatement and threatened species recovery, and allocate funds based on a transparent prioritisation process. 

Recommendation 4: Identify fallow deer as a priority established invasive species for management to protect threatened species and ecosystems and take actions including: 

  1. Commence control programs on satellite populations where eradication of feral deer is clearly achievable, including the Tasman and Freycinet Peninsulas, on Bruny and King Islands, around Hobart, Launceston, and in the northwest. 
  2. Appoint six regional feral deer coordinators to work with landholders and the community to scale up feral deer control activities. 
  3. Ensure stronger enforcement of deer farming regulations to prevent reinvasion or new populations of deer. 
  4. Maintain the commitment to eradicate deer from the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area and ensure no new populations are allowed to establish. 
  5. Declare feral deer a pest species. 

Recommendation 5: Identify feral and roaming pet cats as a priority established invasive species for management to protect threatened fauna and take actions including: 

  1. Declare feral cats a pest species. 
  2. Prioritise feral cat eradications on off-shore islands, such as lungtalanana/Clark Island 
  3. Strengthen cat containment legislation, funding and policies, including through: promoting the uptake of cat prohibition zones and cat containment by local governments, 
  4. mandating prohibition zones in areas of high conservation value, 
  5. supporting community education and enforcement of cat containment policies, desexing and pet registration. 
  6. Develop and implement a comprehensive state-wide feral cat strategy that aligns with the national Threat Abatement Plan for predation by feral cats, with appropriate funding from the outset. 
  7. Appoint a state feral cat coordinator to implement the state-wide plan, support community action and education and to complement and support the work of the National Feral Cat Coordinator. 

Recommendation 6: Ban ferrets being imported to Tasmania or kept as pets to prevent establishment. 

Recommendation 7: Prepare for an effective response to High Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI). 

  1. Surveillance and data collection including reporting and investigation of all unusual and mass sickness and deaths in domestic and wild birds, and wild mammals and intensified surveillance and biosecurity measures in high-risk situations, e.g. where seabirds and mammals interact. 
  2. Employ a cross-sectoral One Health approach for communication and coordination of preparedness and response to HPAI. 

Recommendation 8: Continue to support the eradication of fire ants and commit to Tasmania’s full share of funding for the National Fire Ant Eradication Program 

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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]