Two hundred wombats on South Australia's Yorke Peninsula will be culled after protests from a local farmer
Two hundred wombats on the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia will be culled. A farmer has, in fact, obtained permission to kill animals guilty of destroying his crop and work tools. The culling will take place near Point Pearce, on Aboriginal-owned farmland. In vain environmental groups and Aboriginal communities attempted to stop the killing, but the Indigenous Lands Trust (ILT) received a permit to move forward.
For some time, the South Australian Department of Environment and Water has declared that it receives cyclically reports and requests to cull wombats and other animals that farmers say destroy crops and more. And unfortunately in the end, the permit was granted, after yet another complaint from a farmer in the area who often does justice by himself, taking up his rifle and shooting at these animals.
“The decision to approve an authorization takes into account the abundance of species, the nature of the impact caused by the species, human safety and economic implications. We apply strict codes of conduct and animal welfare regulations, ”explains the Department.
So, after having withstood the Australian fires with difficulty, the wombats will now be exterminated. Across the plan, he will kill 200. Aboriginal elder Quenten Agius of Ngadjuri, a member of the Indigenous Lands Trust, expresses serious concern about the killing.
"I understand that farmers have had problems, but wombats are animals that have always existed, they are part of evolution," he explains, also arguing that the killing is driven only by economic interests. “We could create an area dedicated only to wombats to keep the colonies,” she adds.
A University of Adelaide wildlife researcher Mike Swinbourne says wombat populations on the Yorke Peninsula are among the most endangered.
“Most of the colonies are very small and isolated from each other, so there are no real connections between them. There are probably between 600 and 800 wombats all over the Yorke Peninsula, so if you get 200 of them, you're talking about 30% of the entire population, which is just too much. "
Fonti: Adelaide now, ABC, 7News
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