Thursday, April 21, 2011

Dog Trapping to Start Soon...

Shiny and new - the dog traps all ready to start removing dangerous ferals from member properties.
Land for Wildlife's threat mitigation project for the Black-footed Rock Wallaby is set to start on four properties over the next few weeks. Funded by a Territory NRM Local Action Grant, the project is primarily aimed at removing feral dogs from potential wallaby habitat in the hope that the little wallabies can spread out and have one less predator to worry about.

We have some great habitat lined up for the trapping project, so we're hoping to be removing problem dogs and seeing more wallabies on members' properties in the future. In other projects of a similar nature elsewhere in Australia, marsupial populations have increased significantly in the wake of feral predator removal so we are tentatively optimistic that our project might have a similar outcome.

Any dogs caught will be processed through the standard ASTC dog trapping program and will be turned in to the RSPCA kennel to await an owner or be put down.

The plan is for three weeks of intensive trapping and monitoring on the selected properties. After this the traps can remain in the control of the property owners if there is a continued threat of feral dogs moving into the area. Then the traps will be available for loan in much the same way as our dove trap loan scheme. If there are member properties out there in need of dog trapping and the traps are sitting here unused then they will be available for loan.

We'll let you know how the project is going after the first three weeks of trapping.

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