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No cheep answers

By Casey Neill
YARRA Ranges councillors have shelved plans for electronic bird deterrent controls, and returned to the drawing board.
They were divided at their 26 October meeting when considering the local law, but the majority voted to investigate the issue further and review proposals next year.
In May 2008 the council decided to amend the Scaregun Control Law 2002 to restrict electronic devices which emit sounds mimicking bird distress calls to scare them from crops.
The proposal that came before council last week said the devices must be inaudible between sunset and 7am, produce noise for no more than 35 per cent of the period in between, and could not mimic owl sounds.
It also said farmers must integrate their use with other bird management and banned devices within 500 metres of Yellingbo Nature Conservation Reserve.
But Billanook Ward councillor Tim Heenan said both residents and farmers were unhappy with the proposal, and recommended that councillors defer a decision for more investigation.
“We need to consider all of everything holistically when we’re introducing local laws,” he said.
Macclesfield fruit farmer Andrew Fischer has been growing berries in the region for more than 20 years.
He said netting was effective but had a limited life and was costly and difficult to replace.
“One of our last remaining methods which we have not yet tried is electronic bird deterrents, which we hope will help save crops,” he said.
Mr Fischer said the devices could be set up to only target problem birds – in his case, Indian miners and starlings.
“We’ve tried all conventional and unconventional means of keeping birds out,” he said.
“When you lose fruit year after year after year, you just can’t keep going.”
Powerful Owl researcher and Mount Evelyn Environment Protection and Progress Association’s Clare Worsnop urged councillors to reject the proposed law and ban the devices until further research was completed.
“I believe that there is only one thing worse than no law and that is a bad law, a law that does not take into consideration the needs of all affected species – human, flora, fauna or farmer,” she said.
Ms Worsnop said exclusion zones throughout the shire should protect native fauna, including the Powerful Owl.
“There are believed to be less than 200 breeding pairs left,” she said.
“If they were giant pandas in China, the whole world would be up in arms to try to protect them.”
The Powerful Owl has the most sensitive hearing of any bird species, able to hear a pin drop from 40 metres away.
Lyster Ward’s Cr Samantha Dunn said current exclusion zones did not go far enough.

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