Submission to the Select Committee on Victoria’s Native Bird Hunting Arrangements.

Submissions have now closed for the Victorian Select Committee Inquiry into recreational native bird hunting arrangements.

The Australian Deer Association made an evidence-based submission focusing on supporting a facts and data approach to game management.

The Submission highlighted the following:

♦That wetland habitat and environmental management of water is the single biggest threat to native waterbirds in Australia.

♦ Victoria has the nation’s most mature and progressive approach to administering recreational game hunting.

♦ That adaptive harvest modelling ensures that game hunting seasons are environmentally sustainable.

♦ That adaptive harvest modelling ensures that game hunting seasons are socially acceptable.

♦ That game hunting delivers significant economic benefits to Victoria, and those economic arguments about ‘substitutability’ is speculative, invalid, and useless from an evidence perspective.

♦ That game hunting in Victoria (including hunting native birds) should continue with sound regulation.

♦The current land management of Victoria’s state game reserve systems does not fully realise the significant environmental and social potential; with the appropriate resources, the Game Management Authority could achieve this.

Public hearings for the inquiry are scheduled to begin by the end of May.