E&OE….
Topics: Threatened Species Strategy
STUART BOCKING:
Minister Hunt, good afternoon.
GREG HUNT:
G'day. It's a pleasure to be with you and I'm actually fortunate to be at Werribee Zoo as we speak.
STUART BOCKING:
Fantastic. So what does it mean – when an animal is listed as threatened, what exactly does that mean? Where have their numbers come to?
GREG HUNT:
What it means is that whilst there are sufficient numbers now, there is a reasonable risk that what you might call threatening processes – it could be things like feral cats, loss of habitat, it could be disease – could bring it to an endangered status.
And so what you'd call early intervention, and what we want to do is get in there with eight more mammals and eight more birds.
So the big threats in Australia are things such as the loss of vegetation, in particular the feral cats – there are, on the best advice we've got, up to 20 million feral cats in Australia.
And I've previously said they're sort of like whirling tsunamis of death. They just wreak havoc on our birdlife, our reptiles, and in particular our small mammals.
So these are things we've got to address directly.
STUART BOCKING:
It's a real problem. What sort of animal specifically then are we talking about here?
GREG HUNT:
So we're dealing with 20 mammals and 20 birds, and we're adding eight today in each of those categories – the Gilbert's potoroo, the black-footed wallaby, the eastern quoll, the woylie, the mahogany glider, and then in terms of the birds, the cassowary, the very famous swift parrot, the malleefowl, the eastern curlew, the red-tailed black cockatoo – they're examples.
STUART BOCKING:
Yeah, right.
GREG HUNT:
So each of these are doing okay, but there are threats. We can make a big, big difference.
A classic project that's underway here at Werribee is, there's the Maremma dogs, these are the dogs featured in the kids' movie Oddball – protecting penguins near Warrnambool.
STUART BOCKING:
Yes, yes.
GREG HUNT:
They're protecting bandicoots here at Werribee Zoo, and it's just a fabulous story of how these dogs are taking care of the bandicoots by – whether it's foxes, whether it's feral cats – scaring off and providing warnings, and they do a really good job of it.
STUART BOCKING:
So how much training is involved for something like that?
GREG HUNT:
Look, there's a lot of training – people who are experts work with the dogs.
They make sure that they'll protect, not damage, the bandicoots, but they have a sixth sense where they understand the vulnerable, and they take on the sort of bullies, as it were.
STUART BOCKING:
And so they've had this program at Werribee Zoo where they are training these dogs, and they've been very successful in warding off what would otherwise be predators for something like those eastern-barred bandicoots.
GREG HUNT:
That's exactly right. And it's the same kind of thing that's been happening just off Warrnambool, where there's a little island, and the Maremmas were introduced when the penguins got down to just a handful, and helped get rid of the foxes, and penguin numbers have increased.
It was celebrated in the Shane Jacobson movie Oddball.
In fact I took – I was lucky enough to see the Maremmas in action a little while ago, I went out on a sort of freezing morning in the middle of winter, we waded through the water and then onto the island and then saw it celebrated in the film – and take my kids to see the film and say this is real, this isn't just a fictional story, this is actually what's happened.
And so there are great Australian stories against a background of real challenge.
But all up we've allocated about $130 million to threatened species protection but the number one thing we've got to do is to frankly bring down the number of feral cats around the country.
STUART BOCKING:
Yeah with that I mean I just wonder we hear of them all over the place and how seasoned they so quickly become once they are fending for themselves in the wild.
What do we do about this feral cat problem?
GREG HUNT:
So there's trapping and euthanasia now that's going on. The Threatened Species Commissioner Gregory Andrews is leading a team that will reduce the numbers by two million by 2020 but then keep going beyond that.
And in particular there are two baits, Curiosity and Eradicat, which are humane which put the animals to sleep and which are selective – so in other words, they're not attractive baits for other animals.
And then we're creating a place called an island sanctuary, in terms of areas that have been fenced off, where the cats have been cleared out and then you'll have – could be numbats, mala, mountain pygmy possums, bilbies which are all being encouraged and bred in those safe havens.
STUART BOCKING:
Yeah someone asked as well why bats are protected saying that many of them are out of proportion.
GREG HUNT:
Look, in some parts of the country the bats are protected and in other areas there are very healthy numbers.
Where I've been asked to provide what you might call move-along provisions in favour of local populations incurring health issues, I have always put the health of the human population at the forefront.
STUART BOCKING:
Yeah so it's very important – in a situation like this with these animals once they're then added to the threatened list, what sort of guarantee, what prospect does it give us that they won't end up on an endangered list?
GREG HUNT:
Honestly, you can't give a guarantee.
But let's take for example the Gilbert's potoroo – so putting this on mobilises about $1.7 million in funding in their areas towards feral cats eradication and another $128,000 through the National Environment Science Programme to actually help directly breed and recover the Gilbert's potoroo.
So that's the sort of thing that we're doing for each of these animals that's on the shortlist.
STUART BOCKING:
Well very important, well look, appreciate all that, enjoy the rest of your time at Werribee Zoo and thank you.
GREG HUNT:
It's a pleasure, take care.
(ENDS)