The Shooters and Fishers Party is calling on all NSW hunters to approach their local MPs and Department of Primary Industries Minister Katrina Hogkinson to appeal for the Game Council Division to be restored within the DPI.
SFP NSW MLC Robert Brown said today that the only way to ensure that NSW State Forest hunting will be allowed to continue in the same way it has successfully for eight years is to ensure that the former Game Council team is reunited within the department.
He said that amendments to the Game and Feral Animal Control Act would be going through Parliament soon and part of the process is to have the Game Council Division established. That would ensure Ms Hodgkinson’s guarantee that State Forest hunting would return at the end of November.
However, there is a chance that the former Game Council staff would be split up and hunting on public land would be controlled by a public service department.
“The message we want to get to the government through NSW hunters is that if you allow the DPI to disperse the former Game Council personnel in amongst their standard bureaucratic public service structure, it will fail, and if that happens the state’s 200,000 shooters will blame you,” Mr Brown said.
“The only possible way to have the Game Council Division operate in its control of state forest hunting as efficiently as it did for eight years before it was scrapped by O’Farrell, is to reunite the team.
“It’s the model that works in Tasmania and Victoria with their Game Management Units and that’s what NSW hunters need to be aware of and tell their local Members of Parliament with letters, phone calls and meetings.
“We hope that NSW hunters will also pass that message on to Minister Hodgkinson and put the government on notice that we want hunting in state forests back just the way it was.”
In the meantime, the State Forests Corporation is carrying out a risk assessment as the last process before the legislation under the Game and Feral Animal Control Act that would allow the resumption of hunting in state forests is considered.
Mr Brown said he hoped that would happen as soon as next week and urged NSW hunters to approach their MPs and Ms Hodgkinson as soon as possible.
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