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Sydney, 16 May 2008 Help ensure a decision by the Queensland Minister for Sustainability and Climate Change to stop issuing licences to fruit growers to shoot flying foxes places strong pressure on the NSW Minister to do the same. QLD Minister Andrew McNamara said he reached his decision after receiving advice from the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee that shooting flying foxes is inhumane. He stated that netting is the only reliable way for fruit growers to protect their crops. The NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change issues licences for approximately 1000 threatened grey headed flying foxes to be killed a year even though they were listed as a threatened species in 2001. The system is poorly regulated and the number killed routinely exceeds the numbers specified in the licences. The cruelty suffered is unacceptable. A high percentage of the animals are not killed outright and are left to die slow painful deaths hanging in the trees. As the fruit season coincides with the flying fox breeding season, a significant proportion of shot flying foxes are carrying young. That this continues today is indefensible when alternative methods of crop protection are available and considering that as far back as 1929 renowned biologist Francis Ratcliffe advised the NSW Department of Agriculture that shooting flying foxes is ‘ineffective’. Action: Please write to The Hon. Verity Firth, Minister for Climate Change and Environment, Level 31 Governor Macquarie Tower, 1 Farrer Place, Sydney NSW 2000, fax (02) 9228 4131 or email office@firth.minister.nsw.gov.au
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