Victorian Agriculture Minister, Peter Walsh, claims hunting is the state’s second biggest tourism money earner and he wants spend nearly $18 million to lure more hunters from interstate and overseas.
While I’m not against the idea of hunting per se, I’m concerned about justifying hunting as a conservation tool.
Shooting fast-breeding feral animals such as rabbits and foxes is unlikely to have much impact on overall numbers — they reproduce far too quickly.
The evidence for successful ‘conservation hunting’ is fairly weak.
Applied ecology and conservation research group 