Samantha Donovan, ABC News 26 Jul 08;
BRENDAN TREMBATH: Victoria's decision to allow the culling of black swans in the state's east is angering environmentalists. Five permits have been issued to shoot swans which have been damaging crops.
But the cull's opponents argue that the drought and environmental mismanagement are forcing the birds to search for other sources of food.
Samantha Donovan reports.
SAMANTHA DONOVAN: In Gippsland, the black swan is a prominent emblem for tourism and is also an important symbol to the local Indigenous community. But in the east of the region, famous for its lakes and protected wetlands, the swans are becoming pests.
Five permits have been issued to farmers to shoot a total of 90 swans. The Victorian Environment Department's manager of biodiversity services, Kimberley Dripps, says the department was left with no alternative.
KIMBERLEY DRIPPS: In this case the swans have moved into a young lucerne crop and they've caused so far over $60,000 worth of damage to that crop. And the farmer involved has undertaken several methods to try and move the swans on and those have unfortunately been unsuccessful.
SAMANTHA DONOVAN: But Jill Redwood from Environment East Gippsland is horrified that the swans are being culled.
JILL REDWOOD: It's an outrage that the Government has approved a massacre of our native black swans. It's in their nesting season and it's on the edge of a listed Ramsar Wetland.
And the reason the swans are moving out of the wetland into the farmers' pasture is because the lakes are dying. And these have been dying for the last two or three decades but the Government has done nothing about it, and now all the seagrass has died off, the swans are starving, and they're having to move over into farmland.
SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Jill Redwood argues that the Victorian Government has been negligent in failing to address the environmental problems facing the Gippsland lakes and wetlands.
JILL REDWOOD: They've been very busy writing lots of reports to say that the wetlands are in a very bad way but they've actually done nothing about it. And so now we've got the dead wetlands and all the problems that arise from that. The swan problem is just one of the many.
SAMANTHA DONOVAN: But Kimberley Dripps denies that the Victorian Environment Department could have been doing more to fix the swan's habitat.
KIMBERLEY DRIPPS: I think that's a very challenging question because the area that we're talking about is extremely large and there have been a run of unfortunate natural disasters that have contributed in this case.
We could expect that given the drought situation in Gippsland that there might be short-term difficulties with swans, however we'd expect that nature will in due case restore it's natural balance.
BRENDAN TREMBATH: Kimberley Dripps from the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, ending Samantha Donovan's report.
