P.PSH.1038-Adoption of Best Practice Vertebrate Pest Control in Northern Queensland

Summary

The Project supported primary producers in the adoption of best practice vertebrate pest control with an emphasis on wild dog management, through the provision of a Wild Dog/ Vertebrate Pest Coordinator for the Northern Queensland area; with additional funds used to support the delivery of extension, adoption and capacity building activities across the broader Project areas of Central-western and South-western Queensland.

The Project allowed for three (3) Wild Dog Coordinators, based in North/ North-west, Central-west and South-west Queensland regions to assist all livestock producers and key stakeholders to work together in implementing a nil tenure approach and improve the adoption of best practice vertebrate pest control to reduce the impact of wild dog predation on all livestock industries, in accordance with the Queensland Wild Dog Management Strategy and National Wild Dog Action Plan.

Objectives

The Project supported livestock producers in the adoption of best practice vertebrate pest control with an emphasis on wild dog management, through the provision of a Wild Dog/Vertebrate Pest Coordinator for the Northern Queensland area. Additional funds were used to support the delivery of extension, adoption and capacity building activities across the Project’s broader areas of Central-western and South-western Queensland.

Specifically, the Project included the following objectives:

1. Facilitate and establish eleven (11) Wild Dog Committees across North and North-west Queensland.
2. Provide ongoing support to the existing Wild Dog Committees in Central-west (7) and South-west (6) Queensland regions.
3. The Central-west and South-west Queensland Coordinators to assist cluster groups and individuals with wild dog management plans.
4. Ongoing collection and collation of the Wild Dog Impact Data Collection System (WDIDCS) across all three Project areas.
5. Measuring the effectiveness of Project activities in terms of reducing the impact of wild dogs by using WDIDCS data collected.

Benefits to industry

The Coordinator(s) provided a conduit to feed information from the grass-roots producer up, through Vertebrate Pest Committees and capacity building events through to forums such as the Queensland Dog Offensive Group (QDOG), Queensland State Government’s Agriculture Minister’s Advisory Group on matters relating to control and management of wild dogs, allowing the landholders’ voice to be heard at the state level.

The Wild Dog Coordinators also played a key role in supporting the strategic planning of the exclusion, cluster fence work that has been funded through various rounds of grant funding through the Queensland and Commonwealth Governments. The CNW was a member of the assessment committee established to assess applications for funding support for exclusion fencing for the Central-west Queensland region which has eventuated in more than 25,000 kilometres of exclusion fencing being erected, potentially protecting 8 million Dry Sheep Equivalents from wild dog protection and adding a further biosecurity barrier to protect landholders from animal disease. Coordinators provided support, technical knowledge and a regional focus to this process, working closely with wild dog committees on a day-to-day basis.

Future research

Establishment of Producer Demonstration Sites with an element of data collection on negative impacts to livestock and benefits of wild dog management will assist in demonstrating to producers that control needs to be multi-faceted and can reduce the effects of predation on calves and damage to young cattle. Such data presented from demonstration sites would increase uptake of more integrated control, and therefore reduce negative impacts.

A limiting factor to the adoption of the CPE is the inability of producers to access the chemical safety and handling training that is required under Queensland Legislation to purchase the toxin capsules, a schedule 7 chemical.

Ongoing training needs for producers include completion of the national competencies AHCCHM304 – Transport and store chemicals, and AHCCHM307 - Prepare and apply chemicals to control pest, weeds and diseases.