Feral, destructive animals on land and in the air are just two of the major environmental and societal impacts being tackled head on by Wheatbelt Natural Resource Management (NRM), with wider Wheatbelt community involvement crucial for forward planning and management.
The group oversees the management of natural resources of the Avon River Basin region and recently had its tender renewed to become the region's Federal Government preferred NRM supplier.
Program manager project services Felicity Gilbert said Wheatbelt NRM was actively seeking funding for projects via the Federal government's national landcare program, philanthropists, grant programs and the WA Government.
She said their organisation was busy with many projects, including the Red Card for Rabbits and Foxes program and the Wheatbelt corella project, with community members asked to participate in a survey for each.
The Red Card program survey has now closed, but the corella survey remains open until the end of the year.
"The Red Card program survey was developed to help us to understand the level of importance that regional communities and other stakeholders place on the program," Ms Gilbert said.
She said the survey was open to all members of the general public and she was pleased the take-up was high.
"We had well over 250 survey responses, so it's very very clear that people are engaged," Ms Gilbert said.
"The support for the program is overwhelming and is interesting because you've got different stakeholders approaching it from different directions.
"You have the sporting shooters association, their members really appreciate the opportunity to be able to shoot for a good cause, there's all the environmental benefits, the agricultural production benefits and then there's the mental health benefits."
Ms Gilbert said the survey responses proved participants in the Red Card program, who are predominantly men, enjoyed the social interaction and the opportunity to get together with their peers.
"It is interesting to see how highly the respondents of the survey recognised the mental health benefits, the social health benefits and the community networking benefits of the program.
"It's good to see that coming through in the survey."
The results will now form the basis of a report.
"We now have to write a report for the State government on the cost benefit analysis of the Red Card program and make recommendations about whether it's something that should be funded by the State going forward," Ms Gilbert said.
"The events are run by local co-ordinators who volunteer their time, but we need a resource to run our website and the Facebook page, which is our primary communication tool to let all the stakeholders know when events are coming up, and also to communicate the results.
"It's not an expensive program, but when we haven't had resourcing it quickly affects the number of shoots that actually happen, which as a whole significantly affects the enthusiasm of the volunteers to get behind the program and organise the events."
Corellas
"The issue of corellas in the Wheatbelt needs to be brought to everyone's attention, it is getting worse and worse every year and is a significant problem," that's the plea from Ms Gilbert for residents to assist them with the Wheatbelt NRM-led corella project.
Ms Gilbert said 12 Wheatbelt councils and the CBH Group have provided funding to engage the Northam-based group to develop a co-ordinated control strategy for the birds across all the shires.
Currently there are three species of corella active in Wheatbelt areas.
"Two of the species are native to WA, but not to the Wheatbelt," Ms Gilbert said
"They are self introduced, meaning because of the local grain industry they moved from their original habitat to the Wheatbelt.
"The third species that's causing a problem is the Eastern States' long-billed corella, which people brought over as pets, then released into the wild.
"They are taking over as well, and although they are all native Australian species, they are not technically native to the region and now they are in plague proportions."
Public sightings and reports of damage are the main reasons for the online survey which is open to all Wheatbelt residents.
"The shires are pulling their hair out, these birds are costing them a fortune," Ms Gilbert said.
"They are extremely destructive, they destroy turf on sporting and recreation facilities, it doesn't matter whether it is real or artificial, they dig it up and tear it to pieces.
"They take out light globes, one shire has told us they've had the light globes at the local bowling club taken out 10 times, that's costing thousands of dollars."
While the cost of damage being caused to public amenities adds up for local governments, the birds are also causing headaches for CBH.
"The corellas are impacting production, these birds are stealing grain and fouling grain stores," Ms Gilbert said.
"It is grain that has created the problem, the costs to CBH are extraordinary which is why they are also contributing to this project.
"It's cost prohibitive for them to store grain in fully sealed storage facilities so they rely on tarpaulins, and the birds just get through the tarps."
Ms Gilbert said the flocks of birds, which were often numbered in the hundreds, possibly the thousands, are also seriously impacting the environment.
"Environmentally they do unbelievable damage," she said.
"They've been known to forcibly remove black cockatoo chicks from nests, dump them on the ground so they can move into the nest themselves.
"Rare and endangered species are competing for spaces with these birds who are a lot more aggressive, they outcompete black cockatoos in every way.
"They are also decimating our native vegetation, they decide to land on a certain tree as it comes into flower and they shred it.
"Remnant vegetation is also precious in the Wheatbelt and these birds are destroying it."
The mission of preparing a management strategy is far from easy according to Ms Gilbert, who said a previously committed report from a WA university focused mostly on scaring the birds.
"It is a very difficult task," she said.
"There are very few strategies available to control these birds, the previous report focuses mostly on frightening them off, but all that is doing is moving the problem."
Ms Gilbert believes many Wheatbelt shires have attempted this method, along with the only two legal means to cull the corellas - shoot them or 'club' them.
"You have to catch them in order to club them so that really isn't an option," she said.
"And shooting them in populated areas is dangerous and risky."
Ms Gilbert said a third method was currently in a lengthy approval process, calling for better collaboration in terms of departmental co-ordination as the situation is getting unmanageable.
"There is another potential solution," Ms Gilbert said.
"There is a drug called alpha-chloralose which has been approved for use in pigeons in WA, it stuns them and puts them to sleep.
"If this drug is approved for use on corellas, the drug can be put in grain for them to eat, then they can be collected and destroyed.
"This method means you don't have issues with non-target species, if another species eats the grain, they will wake up without any ill-effects."
The corella survey can be completed multiple times by residents as the group expands its data on the bird's widespread impacts.
"We are trying to get a better handle on how the birds are affecting people, is their sleep being affected, their livelihoods, their businesses, tourism?" Ms Gilbert said.
"We are trying to understand the real impact, while we do know what the birds are doing, we don't have any empirical data on the cost associated with those impacts."
Belinda Morrissy
Farm Weekly journo, researching ag related stories relevant to our readership, with a strong focus on grains. Proud West Aussie, sad West Coast supporter!
Farm Weekly journo, researching ag related stories relevant to our readership, with a strong focus on grains. Proud West Aussie, sad West Coast supporter!
