Animal welfare campaigners have slammed the Victorian Government’s decision to approve a duck hunting season for 2021.
A shortened season for Victoria was announced on Saturday and included changes to shooting start times, daily bag limits and hunted species in recognition of lower-than-average bird numbers and breeding.
Regional Victorians Opposed to Duck Shooting said the decision to allow a hunting season to go ahead highlighted a deficiency in the democratic process.
Spokesperson Kerrie Allen said professional polls continued to show a majority of Victorians – particularly regional – wanted duck shooting banned.
“They’re being ignored same as RSPCA, scientists, independent economists, even the Labor party itself, which voted in November 2019 for a review,” Ms Allen said.
“No social/economic impact studies have been done on anyone other than a small number of shooters. Residents’ and councils’ requests for exclusion zones have been dismissed.”
Ms Allen said little if any data on the impacts on protected species had been collated since the Game Management Authority began.
“Previous governments reported hundreds of protected and threatened species found dead during duck seasons – 972 in a single year – just at a few waterways that were monitored,” she said.
“GMA’s so-called restrictions are moot when shooting is allowed at so many waterways even the army couldn’t monitor them.
“If this government cares at all about public safety, regional communities or biodiversity, it must cease duck and quail shooting until proper due diligence is done.
“At the very least in the interim, we call on the Minister for Agriculture Mary-Anne Thomas to immediately restrict the shooting to areas that are signposted, monitored, not within earshot of family homes and to bird shooters who have passed a recent – within the last 12 months – waterfowl identification test.”
