Media Notice Tuesday, 15 March 22
The Coalition Against Duck Shooting has condemned the Game Management Authority (GMA) for sanctioning a 90-day duck shooting season, especially as Victoria's waterbird numbers are dangerously low.
The GMA's role is to attend to the needs and wishes of Victoria's duck shooters, who make-up only 0.2 per cent of all Victorians. This is not altogether surprising as the Chair of the GMA board is himself a long-time duck shooter.
Duck shooting is all about violence and cruelty to sentient native waterbirds, yet to our knowledge the GMA Regulator has never prosecuted a single duck shooter for cruelty offences, even when supplied with graphic cruelty footage taken by rescuers. https://www.facebook.com/CADSDuckRescue/videos/2004486379861092/
https://youtu.be/CAa1-7awR4Y Former game species, the Hardhead and Australasian (blue-wing) Shoveler, have now been listed as threatened and will be protected from the shooters' guns. Unfortunately, native waterbirds are only given protection when they reach dangerously low numbers, yet the pressure from climate change and continued shooting will result in other native species going the same way.
Once again, while the government spends millions of taxpayers' dollars on duck shooters, the responsibility for looking after Australia's native waterbirds continues to fall to concerned volunteer members of the public.
The Coalition Against Duck Shooting volunteer rescuers will again be joined on the wetlands by Wildlife Victoria, with its mobile veterinary clinic and staffed by volunteer veterinarians who will do their utmost to ease the pain and suffering of wounded native waterbirds.
We thank all of the volunteer rescuers who will again risk their lives to stop the violence and cruelty that camo-wearing duck shooters will enthusiastically inflict on Australia's defenceless, precious and sentient native waterbirds, just for the enjoyment of shooting a flying target. The rescue team will concentrate its efforts on wetlands in the Kerang region from Wednesday through to the Sunday.
