BirdLife Australia remains deeply concerned with the South Australian Government’s ongoing support for unsustainable recreational native bird shooting.
Australian waterbirds are already on the brink. Recreational shooting adds an unnecessary pressure to waterbird populations. According to the Eastern Australian Waterbird Survey, five out of eight game species continued to show significant long-term declines over the last forty years across eastern Australia.
The impacts extend beyond the birds that are hunted. Disturbance of wetlands can disrupt critical Brolga flocking, destroy breeding sites for spoonbills and herons, and depletes the energy of migratory shorebirds forced to flee instead of preparing for epic journeys.
The imminent arrival of H5 bird flu means that Australia needs to bolster waterbird populations, not decimate them with recreational shooting.
Recreational native bird shooting in South Australia must end in order to protect threatened species and restore native waterbird populations to healthy levels in Australia.
BirdLife Australia urges the Malinauskas Government to ban recreational bird shooting once and for all.
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