This week’s launch of the North Coast Regional Strategic Pest Animal Management Plan will see a more strategic approach to managing pests on the North Coast.
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The plan outlines how government, industry and the community can work together and share the responsibility to eradicate, contain or manage pest animals in terrestrial and freshwater aquatic environments across the region.
The economic impact of wild rabbits, carp, pigs, foxes, dogs, goats and introduced birds has been estimated at $170 million in NSW.
The North Coast’s climate and diverse environment support a variety of primary production systems and high conservation areas which are vulnerable to the presence of pest animals.
Managing the impact of pest animals not only has positive outcomes for primary industries, but also for the natural environment and local communities within the region.
Dean Chamberlain, Team Leader Invasive Species, said this will support regional bio-security.
“The plan supports regional implementation of the NSW Bio-security Act 2015 and it identifies regional priorities for pest animal management.
“An important feature of the new strategic approach is to outline how government agencies, community groups and individual landholders will share responsibility and work together across land tenures to prevent, eradicate, contain and manage the impacts of pest animals.
“Pest animals pay little regard to property boundaries therefore effective control requires us to work together.
“All community members have a general bio-security duty to prevent, minimise or eliminate any bio-security risk.
“The general bio-security duty is a principle that can be used by the community, landholders, government and industry to encourage or in some cases enforce best practice behaviours to achieve effective pest animal management,” Dean said.
The overall purpose of the Regional Strategic Pest Animal Management Plan is to guide how local communities work together to protect the environment, community and economy from the negative impacts of pest animals and support positive outcomes for biosecurity and healthy environments.
The priority pest animals identified by the North Coast Plan include the ‘Alert Species’ which are those not known to be present in an area and which represent a significant threat, the species that are present in isolated populations (feral goat, wild horses); the more widespread pests (feral cat, fox, rabbit and wild dog) and those with discrete but significant patchy populations (cane toad, wild deer, Indian myna, and feral pig).
The North Coast Regional Strategic Pest Animal Management Plan is available on the Local Land Services website https://www.lls.nsw.gov.au/pestplan
