NSW Parks and Wildlife Service: from brickbats to bouquets

There was a collective sigh of relief when NSW Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) recently gave the go ahead for baiting with 1080 in some National Parks and announced that baiting would be considered for others on a case-by-case basis.

This follows results from aerial baiting trials that measured the impact of the poison on spotted-tail quoll populations in northern NSW in the first year, and northern and southern sites during a second year of trials, as well as considering recent research from Queensland.

Quoll fatalities were lower than predicted but did occur.

It is a credit to NPWS that it weighted up not only the risk of baiting, but also the benefits to quolls and other native animals.

The Steering Committee overseeing the trials agreed that aerial baiting should be part of an integrated approach that employs a range of techniques, including ground baiting, trapping, shooting and exclusion fencing.

The same week I was faxed through the summary of the quoll research findings, I read that Park managers plan to conduct more burn-offs in Brindabella National Park to reduce the threat of bushfires.

It was in January 2003 that a lightning strike in this park went on to caused one of several fires that devastated Canberra.

Following the Canberra fires, NPWS was roundly criticised for inadequate controlled burning.

Now it plans to conduct more burn-offs, and perhaps this is good reason for us all to breathe a second collective sigh of relief.

The "hands off leave it to nature" approach that has dominated over recent decades can be traced to the writings of the early English romantic poets.

Influenced by them, US President Theodore Roosevelt commented in 1903 "Leave it as it is.  The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it".

It is interesting to contrast this view with the aboriginal view.

In the US and Australia there is a growing realisation that people have always been a part of the landscape and that the beauty of a seemingly wild place may be an artifact of careful management by earlier inhabitants -- Indians or Aboriginals.

The renewed commitment to burning and baiting from the NPWS is indeed good news for the environment -- a bouquet from me to the park managers.

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