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Miscellaneous Publication 30/2005

By Andrew P. Woolnough, Garry S. Gray, Tim J. Lowe, Winifred E. Kirkpatrick, Ken Rose and Gary R. Martin

September 2005

Please note that this file has been saved with images at a low resolution for the convenience of retrieval over the Internet and for ease of downloading has been divided into four parts.

Table of Contents

1. Executive Summary
2. Recommendations [Part 1 : 581 kb PDF file]
3. Introduction
4. Methods
5. Survey results and discussion
   • Pest animals - statewide responses [Part 2 : 1.7 mb PDF file]
   • Pest animals - rangeland only responses [Part 3 : 1.76 mb PDF file]
6. General discussion [Part 4 : 1.3 mb PDF file]
7. Acknowledgements [Part 1 (cont.): 581 kb PDF file]
8. References
9. Appendix 1. List of Participants
10. Appendix 2. Example of questionnaires
11. Appendix3. Awareness and extension
12. Appendix 4. Media releases
13. Appendix 5. Scientific communications

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Executive summary

Data on the distribution and abundance of selected pest animals were obtained for the state of Western Australia. We used institutional knowledge from the Department of Agriculture (DAWA) and the Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM) to acquire this important information.

A two-part survey process was used to capture knowledge in 104 face-to-face interviews. The first part of the survey was a questionnaire designed to capture local-area information about pest animals. The second part of the survey, a mapping exercise, was designed to capture information about the distribution and abundance of specific pest animals. The key to the mapping exercise was a set of clear abundance definitions. These nationally recognised definitions enable clear local, regional, state and national comparability of data.

The state was arbitrarily divided into two regions, the agricultural region and the pastoral region. The pest animals considered in the survey differed between the two regions, with all animals being selected on their exotic disease risk. For the agricultural region, pest animals considered included feral pigs, feral deer, feral goats and wild dogs. In the pastoral region, feral donkeys, feral camels, feral horses and feral livestock were also included, in addition to the other four. Overabundant species, such as rabbits, foxes and feral cats were not included in the mapping exercise because of their widespread distribution, particularly in the agricultural region but were included in the questionnaire. Data were collected between November 2002 and November 2003 and therefore only represent a snapshot of the distribution and abundance of pest animals during this period.

Spatial data describing the distribution and abundance of pest animals were collected on a property basis, using underlying data from the DAWAs Client Resource Information System (CRIS). In all, details on pest animal distribution and abundance were recorded for over 40,000 parcels of land across most land tenures. Land tenures included privately owned properties in the agricultural region greater than 10 ha in size, unallocated crown land, reserves managed by the CALM, other government estates and pastoral leases.

The questionnaire part of the survey captured information and experiences of staff from both agencies about pest animal management. Some key outcomes of the questionnaire included:

• Foxes were rated as having the highest triple bottom line impact in the agricultural region. In the pastoral region, DAWA respondents rated wild dogs as having the highest economic and social impacts, and feral cats as having the greatest impact on the environment. Feral cats were also ranked highest by staff from CALM for their impacts on the environment and social values.
• Feral pigs and feral cats were the key species thought to be increasing their distribution and abundance over the previous five years in the agricultural region. DAWA respondents also suggested that there were major increases in the distribution and abundance of foxes, emus and kangaroos in the agricultural region. In the pastoral region, respondents from both agencies perceived an increase in the distribution and abundance of wild dogs over the past five years. This was matched with a perceived increase in efforts to control wild dogs.
• The key impacts of herbivorous/omnivorous pest animals were generally perceived to be damage to native vegetation, pastures and crops, which then compound issues of soil erosion and damage to watercourses. For carnivorous pests, the key impacts were perceived to be predation of livestock and native animals.
• There appeared to be differences (local, regional and between agencies) in what techniques were used to control pest animals and their perceived effectiveness. Having a list of standard operating procedures for the control of pest animals may be required. However, these would need to be specific to the Western Australian conditions and legislation, and be supported with solid research evidence.
• There is scope to improve the knowledge of staff from both agencies about exotic disease preparedness, including what role staff may play in an emergency animal disease.

The mapping exercise proved to be a cost-effective means of describing the distribution and abundance of pest animals in Western Australia. Important features of the data include comparability across scales (local, region, state and national) and the ability to identify areas of high disease risk or areas in need of applied pest animal management. However, these data may not be suitable to determine animal abundance at the scale of an individual property, without additional ground-truthing. Furthermore, because the data relies on the existing knowledge of agency staff, there may be some temporal variability associated with that knowledge. That is, the distribution and abundance of pest animals is always changing, and therefore captured data represent only a single point in time. Another issue that we encountered was how to report the data. Because the data were associated with property boundaries, we needed to deconstruct the data into 10 km2 grid cells because of privacy constraints. The process of deconstruction eliminated any privacy issues while retaining the integrity of the underlying data. Despite a few minor shortcomings which may be overcome with future refinement of the technique, this approach adds significant value to the institutional knowledge of both agencies about the distribution and abundance of pest animals in Western Australia.

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Page created: 21 November 2005