Native birds being blasted from the skies is not sport, and it’s not the Tasmanian way of life. The Primary Industries Minister has claimed these fictions in Parliament, and now Mr Barnett is joined by the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party.
Despite bans on duck shooting in New South Wales, Queensland, and Western Australia, this cruel, outdated activity is still permitted in Tasmania – and it’s even celebrated by the Liberals.
Gun shots will begin echoing across waterways in early March, and ‘non-target’ as well as ‘target’ birds will be wounded and die a painful, slow death. This is the brutal truth behind the Liberal, Labor, and Shooters Fishers and Farmers’ unity ticket on duck shooting.
The true numbers killed each season are never known, as many birds perish beyond the reach of people keeping count. Waterbirds in eastern Australia have been documented by scientists for years as being in significant decline due to the mainland drought and climate-induced bushfires.
As the climate warms and with so many pressures on wetlands, ducks migrating to Tasmania to breed should be protected as much in non-drought years as drought ones. Instead, those birds become live targets in Tasmania.
Lutruwita/Tasmania should be a sanctuary for wildlife. We need to follow the lead of other states and ban the inhumane and unsustainable shooting of wild ducks. It’s long overdue.
Every year ducks that have been protected on the mainland migrate down to Tassie only to be slaughtered in their tens of thousands.
Other states have banned unsustainable duck shooting and it’s time we cut it out.
The Greens support the RSPCA and animal welfare activists taking a stand against this cruel and pointless annual slaughter.
The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party says the campaign against duck hunting is ‘disproportionate and inappropriate’, but the only thing disproportionate and inappropriate going on here is the way this Party weaponises the campaign at election time.
