GROUNDED Live - 2026: Jack Pascoe & Dave Watson - Dealing with the Ferals

Welcome to a new season of GROUNDED Live. This season features presentations recorded at GROUNDED Festival 2026, held over two memorable days on Yan Yan Gurt West Farm in Victoria, Australia. Each episode captures the ideas, stories and practical knowledge shared by the farmers, researchers, chefs, practitioners and thinkers who came together to explore healthier landscapes, healthier food systems and healthier communities.

In this conversation, fire ecologist Jack Pascoe and ecologist Dave Watson tackle one of Australia's most complex environmental challenges: feral species and their impact on our landscapes. Blending science, humour and thoughtful discussion, they explore the difficult questions surrounding invasive species, ecology and what it means to care for Country in a changing world. 

GROUNDED Festival is a cross between a farming conference and a food festival, held on a different farm each year. Every festival is unique, celebrating the people, landscapes and food of its host region through an inspiring line-up of speakers, local producers and hands-on learning.

With multiple stages running concurrently, GROUNDED brings together science and technology, ancient wisdom and fresh thinking. It provides a respectful place for lively discussion, an audience as interesting as the speakers, and an excellent menu of local food, drinks and music, all on a beautiful, regeneratively managed farm.

Each year, we record many of the presentations and make them freely available as the GROUNDED Live podcast. We hope you enjoy the conversations.

Thanks for listening, and if you enjoy this episode, we'd love to welcome you to a future GROUNDED Festival.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

G'day there, I'm Matthew Evans, and I'm the founder and curator of the Grounded Festival. And what follows is the Grounded Podcast. And this is the audio that we captured from the speakers in the tent, live on the diet unedited. And I hope you enjoy this section, which is the second section of the second diet. So kind of fool that had a lot to listen to, a lot to think about. They're not famous, but they're people who look at the wall that gets a little bit different. If they also look at it with a sense of humor, sometimes they come to what they've got to say, but they also talk about very serious topics. I've got Jack Pasco and Dave Watson. Jack, known as a forecologist, Dave is a uh famous for his work on mistletoe, but all sorts of other work um in uh in the ecological space. And they're talking about dealing with the ferals. So the things that we have brought in, or the things that have exploded in numbers that are affecting our landscapes and our uh our land more broadly. So I hope you enjoy this. This was uh this was a really interesting session that went into uh directions that I didn't expect it to go.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

I'm Jen Robinson, CEO of Sprout Tasmania, a not-for-profit that supports small to medium-scale farmers in Chassie farming for improved landscape function, as opposed to a label. And it's my pleasure to introduce our next two speakers. Jack Pascoe and Dave Watson. So Jack is an honorary strategic advisor to the Conservation Ecology Centre. Does that are you shaking your head at that, Jack? Is that uh no, well we'll say an important person. Yes, with some knowledge to share. Um and for the past 10 years has led adaptive management and applied ecological research program in the Otway region. So local. And Professor, am I allowed to call you Prof. Yeah, Prof. Dave Watson. Yeah. An ecologist committed to evidence-based strategies to boost biodiversity and leads the environmental program at the Gulbali. Do I say that? Gulbali Institute at Charles Dirt University. So we are tackling the challenge that many people in this room will be very familiar with. Feral species. Both bring hands-on experience and insight into managing ferals in complex landscapes. Today they'll be sharing practical approaches with a bit of humour thrown in, because we all need that at this time of the day in grounded day two, as well as um some of the big picture thinking around how we respond to these pressures. It's a conversation that sits right alongside regeneration because caring for country also means dealing with the things that are out of balance. Hand it over to you, gentlemen. If you'd like to start with framing your perspective on what is a feral species.

SPEAKER_05 3:08

Um just want to acknowledge we're on unceded Eastern Ma country. Um and uh we've got a lot to learn from our first Australians. Um and people have been moving organisms around for a very long time. We think about invasive species, ferals, as a new thing. Uh, people have been moving animals around for as long as there have been people. Um, so I think there's a lot of context around here. And I think all too often in these chats, we vilified the animal. Um, and it's it's us that's the problem. We're the ones that move things around in the first place. Um, and the reason I'm sitting here uh is because I was having a chat with Sadie uh at the last grounded uh in WA, who were talking about bees, honey bees, those beautiful fuzzy wuzzy bees. And I said, I hate honey bees. And she looked at me aghast, like I'd like I'd I'd said something, something really offensive. She's like, Well, what do you mean? What can you not love about bees? I said, I love bees. Bees generally are great. Pollinators, they're they're worthy. But European honeybees, apus mellifera, that's about as popular as a turd in a punch bowl to ecologists. Um, they're introduced, they're nectar thieves, they're good for nothing. Uh, and all the chats about pollination tends to conflate the decline in pollinators with, oh, but what about honeybees? And then along comes varroa mite. Uh, and a lot of ecologists, myself included, are quite happy. I I I'm saying this publicly, quite happy that varroa mite eventually came here because it's going to knock over feral honeybees. Honeybees in hives being looked after by people, they're going to be okay. Every other place on earth has honeybees with varroamites, they'll be okay. But those wild honeybees that take over very limiting nesting hollows, so all those hollow nesting bats and birds and little critters have no place to go. The varroamite is going to take care of those honeybees, those feral honeybees, for free. So that was why. That's that's part of the reason I'm here. Um, but happy to chat further about this. But but for me, one of the take-home messages is there's no such thing as a bad species uh at all. It's all values laden. Um, it's about context and it's about impacts. And when an impact of a species, native or exotic, is diminishing habitat value for all the other things that live there, that can be a problem, and that can be a time when intervention management and you know culling uh might be needed. That'll do for me for now, sir.

SPEAKER_06 5:38

Um I'll let you have that because I'm terrible with definitions and a very ordinary scientist. So uh I didn't have a good answer to it. But I keep honey bees just so that we can establish the uh But I have the same theory. I can't wait to see my uh my hives die out because it will mean the borrow might's taking care of all the feral bees. Um but uh I enjoy honey. Yeah, so I'm I'm pretty conflicted because the local native bees down here they don't make it, Dave, so it's tricky, isn't it? Dave's here for content. I'm here for your late afternoon humour, I suspect. I guess my association with uh feral management uh has been invertebrate tests in the hot ways. And we can talk about some of those projects. They're not as funny as the B proposition, but they've been successful. Do we start with that or we move to something else that's funny? Um I I'll just speak about the ones that work, hey, because you know, we can take home lessons from the other ones. But we started um drinking one night and uh we decided that we needed to do something about feral pigs in the Otways. So there's always been a population of feral pigs on the uh the West Bylan Dam, um, but really low-level numbers. And then maybe about a decade ago, I'm pretty I was struggling with years now, but um we started to notice them creep out a bit into places we hadn't seen them before, um, and got concerned, and we had an opportunity to pitch some ideas to the feds around um an election committee. If you want things done, be a marginal seat coming into a federal election, and be shameless about making the making that opportunity do something of meaning. Um, because we did, and we thought, well, we can really pitch something here that has a go at um managing, you know, an emergent uh pest, which is the time to get them, really. Um and uh a few of us over a few cans, several heaps of them, um designed a program to deal with with pigs, which was a great framework, but entirely reliant on both getting it funded and then employing good people to do it. The drinkers weren't the good people that doing it, but we basically designed a program that looked at three prongs, and James's gonna put his hand up now because instead of bailing no, he's not. There he is, yeah. So instead of bailing me up, talk to that lad. Um But basically we wanted to understand the the pig population in the Otways, so we invested really heavily in understanding their movements, their populations across the landscape. We invested really heavily in good relationships with landowners, and it helped that we were all locals ourselves. Uh and then with the information that we learned from having collared pigs set camera um grids across the landscape, we knew where they would go, and we knew that with collared boars, they'd give up their girlfriends by moving from mob to mob to mob to mob. And then by using a thing called a hog eye camera and a basically remotely triggered uh panel trap, um we were able to be really confident through free feeding and some clever business. So we had an entire mob in a cage and we were able to I say we, I take credit for other people's work. That's how I remain employed, Dave, just so we're clear on that. Um we were able to be sure that we had every last pig in a mob, and then we would drop the cage and and remove like blinking lights out in the landscape. And and now they are really hard to find um across the footprint we originally worked. There are still pigs to the west of us, um, but we can't find them on the dam. Is that still correct, James? That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_07 9:40

There you go. Hazar. Nah, that's great example, Squire.

SPEAKER_05 9:49

Um, and I think celebrating celebrating the little victories is something that we need to do more of. Um, I think when people like us get together and get on the cans, uh, we often sort of lean on each other's shoulders uh about how it's all broken and what's the bloody point anyway. Um but but celebrating the little victories, I think, really matters. Um and uh one that springs to mind for me, so my sort of baptism of fire in the in the Fair Island animal space was um my wife, bless her cotton socks, um, pushes me to do things that I know I should do, but I really don't want to do. I'd rather sit on the couch and watch cricket. Um But there was a there was a spot coming up in the Threatened Species Committee for New South Wales. That's the that's the body that advises the state government on what species need to be uplisted or downlisted, um, and threatening processes as well, things that are causing troubles. So I put my hat in the ring, they said, yes, Professor Watson, you're on. So I joined the committee and it was tedious, tedious work. Uh going through all the details about this particular critter. It's it's going down the tubes, we need to list it. Here's the evidence, goes up to the minister, yep, done. It's now endangered, vulnerable, whatever it is. One of the things that was on our on our table was uh feral horses as a key threatening process. We'd just done deer uh as a key threatening process, so that the template was there on what what the paperwork that needed to be done. We were doing that. It was in front of the minister, and that's when John Barillaro, um the uh deputy premier from the Nationals, decided to um put the Wild Horse Heritage Act in front of the New South Wales Parliament to sanctify a feral animal within a national park. And I'm not going to use the exact wording that sprang to mind when I learned of this, uh, but I thought this is bloody bullshit. At the same time that we're going through the legitimate process, advising government, saying, okay, this is a problem, and this is we're letting you know we've done the homework. Here's all the reasons why this animal is having an effect on the rooftop of Australia. Um, there was a bill saying you can't touch them. They're special, culturally significant. Now I'm sure the Narago people have a very different opinion about what's culturally significant on their country. Um, and so I resigned. I resigned and I did it very publicly. That's back when Twitter wasn't a hotbed of Nazis and misogyny, it was like for worthy discourse. And so I shared my letter to the Minister for the Environment resigning and saying, You're all a pack of yobbos, um, and here's why I'm resigning. This is this is just not on. And that brought a lot of attention to the issue. And finally, very recently, that Rumby bill was repealed. And um, and so that's that's thanks to the hard work of the invasive species council, um, Richard Swain, a lot of people, Linda Groom, a lot of people working behind the scenes, doing a lot of the heavy lifting to keep this in the public eye, to make sure because polys are very risk averse. They don't like talking about this stuff, they don't like talking about killing things. That's that that doesn't go well with the voters. Um, but that whole process of being the public face of this uh was very informative for me because I got a lot of horsey people, self-confessed, self-described horsey people, coming out of the woodworks saying, Dave, thank you. I love horses, not in a national park. Horses are great. Wild horses don't belong in Australia. So thank you for your stand. And it made us all realize that the Brumby Advocates was a very, very small group of very, very vocal people. And they broke the rules. They'd go in and they'd they'd they'd they're they vilified for uh First Nations people, they vilified all the national parks workers, did horrible things, broke laws left, right, and center. Um, and so that was my baptism of fire into the whole feral animal world. I'm very pleased I don't work on anything to do with feral cats, because you don't want you don't want to want to annoy like crazy cat ladies on the internet, because you've got you've just got a giant target on your back then wherever you go. But so I think we need to recognize that for every group of animals that we as scientists have decided look, they're problematic for all these reasons. There's a whole group of people out there that say no, I fundamentally disagree with you, and here are my reasons. And so we need to have those chats, we need to have those chats publicly. Um, and a lot of it comes down to values. I value the high country, I value corrobury frogs, I value broadtooth rats and sphagnum bogs and feldmark, you know, flora. I also like horses. I've got two of them. They're in my back paddock, and my back paddock isn't a national park. You can have your cake and eat it too, just not in the same bloody place. It's not that hard a concept to retain at the same time. And so having those chats publicly, I think was really helpful to get that broader conversation going. The politicians didn't want to touch, but the public got informed, voted with their feet, and and and again, a little a little victory.

SPEAKER_06 14:55

Yeah, and that I mean these things take conviction. So Richard Swain that David mentioned Radgery Feller and a cultural brother of mine, and he's a uh an ex. I think he's trying to retire from river guiding, so he he takes people up and down the the snowy, mainly down, actually, if I think about it. Yeah. Choose your words, Pasco. Um but you know, he he took us to a lot of places on the on the snowy where the impact, and you know, we we probably have to start thinking about this in the alt ways in terms of the density of deer we have um building and building um with seemingly no ceiling to their populations. Um where and you know, brother's pretty good at interpreting landscapes, and you can see the erosion on these slopes on the on the banks of the snowy, and you can tell how much of the soil's gone because you can see where the old soil mark used to be on all the trees. And so you've got exposed roots. Um ironically, you see a hell of a lot of cultural heritage, what I would think of as cultural heritage, not fucking brumbies. But um, it's showing where the old people lived, and it's showing you ancient cultural heritage because the soil's been swept away. And so it it it's hard to sort of measure the impact of this on biodiversity, but in particular the impact of what that's sweeping away from a cultural heritage perspective, and and so I know how important it was to brother Coomer, we call him, he lives in Kuma always has, that that win had for a whole lot of his old people, but also for himself personally, watching that whole system struggle for so long. And look at it's no silver bullet, they've still got to go. Um, and and that that's in train, but um yeah, it it's an interesting thing. I I wonder with so many of the I think with vertebrate pests in particular, but there are a hell of a lot of vertebrate pest programs around, and it it's probably worth talking too about the fact that so many of them are ineffective and without sensible goals in mind, the goal becomes the killing. Which actually we don't value killing, do we as a society? I mean that's insane. So what are the things that we're thinking about when we go, we've got to we've got to go and shoot some deer tonight? I tell you what I'm thinking about when I'm shooting deer, venison. But there's also a hell of a lot of money invested in just killing them because for some reason that's going to you know that um the uh the underpants gnomes in South Park, you know, step one, steal underpants, step two, step three profit. Like there's that bit that's missing, right? In in our in our planning. Um that was a strange analogy to but what is it? Why are we kill why are we killing um why are we killing these things and are we actually measuring the thing that we care about on the other end? And we so often miss that opportunity, and because you're a professor, you'll have something profound to say about it.

SPEAKER_07 18:01

I'm just a doctor. Alright, challenge accepted.

SPEAKER_05 18:06

So I think um I'm kind of reticent to bring up these two words in in in as as a as a pair, but there's there's a term that's emerged in the last probably 10 years called compassionate conservation. Um and so it's been led by a very small number of very vocal vegans that say, hey, killing anything is bad. Full stop no qualifiers. Killing anything for food, killing anything for any reason is bad. And it's really challenged me and many other ecologists to say, okay, I violently disagree with that, but I guess I need to formulate a more coherent argument about why I think, in some contexts, lethal control is justifiable and necessary. And I think what it comes down to, as I said at the start with my introductory remarks, it's not about the critter itself. It's not about a camel, it's not about a horse, it's not about a deer, it's about the context and it's about the impacts. And there's many introduced animals in Australia. If you read the early literature, the acclimatization societies, holy moly, I don't know what those dudes were smoking, but it was they had a really different worldview. They saw Australia as a blank canvas. And let's just bring all the cool stuff from various corners of the country, all the birds that Shakespeare mentioned as a start, and drop them off.

SPEAKER_07 19:30

Let's let's get them going.

SPEAKER_05 19:32

Um, and when you start to unpack all the different things that were introduced into Australia, most of them didn't make it, and a lot of the things that did make it have no impact at all. Tree sparrows, goldfinches, greenfinches, song thrushes. There's all these bull bulls, there's all these wacky birds from all these different corners of the world that are just hanging on here, they're not really having much of an effect. Birdwatchers get excited when they show up on their patch, but they're not they're not having a noticeable effect on the locals. Whereas starlings, common miners, they're bad guys. They're hollow nesters. Hollows are rare. Hollows are getting rarer. The big trees that you need to grow a hollow that all sorts of native critters depend on are getting rarer in the landscape. And they're getting filled up by not just honey bees, but by these, these interlopers. And so I think it's it's it's not as simple as saying it's not from here, therefore it's got to go. I think that's you're on shaky ground, philosophically as well as ecologically. But but but really, I think what I took away from a lot of the the debate around compassionate conservation is impact. What are the impacts? What do we care about? What do I value and what do we need to champion? And therefore, that's a justifiable case to put to a minister, to put to a federal government, to put to a local uh management authority, to say we need to do something about the deer in this catchment because the tree ferns are suffering, because the exacerpus thickets are getting smashed, because the rivers are getting are getting muddied up. But there's so many ambiguities when you get into this. And talking about Richard Swain, talking about the snowy, talking about the riverbanks makes me think about trout. Trout's an introduced species as much as a fox is an introduced species. The same government that has a bounty system to say, hey, bring in your scalp of a fox and we'll give you 10 bucks, good on you, bring us another one. It's the same government that pays fisheries officers to put thousands upon thousands upon thousands of fingerlings of feral brown trout and rainbow trout into rivers that eat endangered species, that eat galaxids, that eat rare spiny crayfish. It's like this is this is this is a ridiculous state of affairs. How can how can these two things be perpetrated by the same government at the same time? It makes no sense. And it's because of values. Because there isn't in Australia the culture. Of fox hunting, but there certainly is the culture of trout fishing. And if it's valued by Kmart shoppers, then a minister cares about it. If it's not, don't care. So I think when you're having your own internal chats, when you're having a yeah a few cans and unpacking your thoughts about this, really think about the values that you bring to this. Um because they're they're they're they're relevant, they've got a cultural lens, they've got an experiential lens, but it's all about context as well.

SPEAKER_07 22:31

So it's it's strictly stuff.

SPEAKER_06 22:38

And then uh I guess once we've made a decision that we have a problem, we want to do something, this is where I think the compassion comes into it, that we need to think about the best way to do them humanely and where we can make sure it's effective and useful. Because we can kill things, we know that we can kill all sorts of things in all sorts of ways. But what we really need to understand is if we have a problem, can we resolve it by killing these things? And can we do it in a humane and ethical way? And and we need to really evaluate that because we we put toxic baits out for feral predators all the time, and we've had some wonderful successes doing that for native species in some parts of the country, but it doesn't work everywhere in all contexts. So, in the Otways, for instance, we have really high rainfall and we have bait degradation really quickly, so those baits aren't as available to uh the foxes that we want to be taking them as as as long as they could be, and those foxes aren't as food limited as their compatriots in the semi-arid zone, where they are looking much more hungrily for sources of food. Because those of you who live in the Otways know that there will always be bush rats. For every one of us, there are many millions of them. In fact, we almost never can catch potteroos in our traps in the wet forests because they're always occupied by really fat bush rats. By the way, to handle bush rats, what you do is you stick your hand into a trap and they latch on and you just redraw it. None of my students have yet accepted that as a good method. But it's really about understanding, and we come back to it time and time again, why are we doing this thing and how are we measuring that we're actually doing it well? Um and can we improve the method? I wasn't expecting you to talk about trout, but it's a good one because people are very often unaware of the fact that trout are feral. And so I'm glad you mentioned it. Yeah. We should do this more often, Dave, really. Two good looking fellows later.

SPEAKER_05 24:49

Settle down. Um just to pick up on the welfare issue. I think that's that's a topic that um I think is is ripe for discussion because it's often brought brought to the to the fore by the advocates for feral cats, feral horses. It's like, but you know, it's cruel, it's cruel, it's cruel to to to kill them. It's it's it's it's a slow death, it's a whatever. It's I can't argue that it's crueler to leave a mob of horses up in the high country starving to death, they have no teeth, that have crappy feet, that are starving through the winter. I'd say a high velocity bullet to the back of the skull is a far more humane way to go than a long, slow perishing. Um, and so let's have that chat about welfare. Um, and there's I think it also it drives ingenuity. And um, a hero of mine in Australian ecology, uh, John Reid, um, based out of South Australia in Adelaide. He and his wife Catherine Mosby are the brains behind Arid Recovery, just near Roxby Downs, an amazing predator-proof, the first predator-proof exclosure in Australia. Build a fence, get rid of the cats and foxes, put some bilbies around, and just sit back and watch them frolic. Amazing place. But John is the fellow who realized that you could use the behavior of feral cats against them. They do this one thing, this one thing that no other mammals in Australia do. They groom, they lick their paws and they groom themselves. And he is a clever fellow, he's a tinkerer, and he he worked out a way of having uh a machine with a whole series of little uh light beams that if a mallefowl walks in front of it, nothing happens. If a sheep walks in front of it, nothing happens. If a bilby walks in front of it, or a human or a cow, nothing happens. And if a cat walks in front of it, a little jet of gel full of 1080 bait gets squirted onto their fur, and they're like, What was that?

SPEAKER_07 26:48

And they die.

SPEAKER_05 26:51

Zero bycatch, super targeted, ethically pretty bloody good, and now there's these things called Felixes are dotted around Australia. You can set them up, they're solar powered, and they can kill 30, 40 cats without any human intervention at all. They take photos of everything that walks past them. So you get great data on who's in your neighborhood, what were the what was the also what was the could have been in that area? Um and the reason why feral cats are such a problem, much more so than um than foxes, is because they've got another thing. They're not just groomers, they've got one other attribute that no other native Australian animal has. They've got sheathed claws. And that matters from a microbial point of view. If you've ever been scratched by a cat, you know this. It turns nasty every single time. It's because if you're a bacteria, a warm, dark, moist environment is what you crave. And that's that's around the claws of a cat when they're all tucked up pottering around. But one little scratch of a cat to an antykinus, that's a dead antikinus. And so we know now that for every antikinus, for every dun art, for every bearded dragon, for every little gecko that a cat actually manages to catch and kill and eat, there's 30, 40, 50 that just got a scratch, they got away, and they died a slow, painful death of infection. So if you can knock off feral cats in an area, you see an immediate effect on biodiversity. Because it's not just the ones that weren't being eaten, it's all those ones that weren't being infected. So there's, and we have the tools to do this. Um, but again, we need to educate our politicians because there's some politicians out there from some parties that champion animal welfare that think keeping pets is unethical. And they in Victoria have have said Felixes can't be used. It's it's it's unethical. It's it's it's how dare you! And so we need the populace to be aware of this, to continue to push the envelope about this stuff. We have the skills, we have the tools, we have the know-how. Australia and New Zealand are world leaders in this stuff because we've had to be. Um, we can do this, but I think the welfare angle is something that we're often challenged with, and I'm very happy to have that chat because we can take the higher ground quite easily.

SPEAKER_07 29:07

Yep. Yeah, it's right here.

SPEAKER_06 29:10

So I reckon to some uh I guess we've sort of been in the territory of some clear cuts in terms of feralness. You know, we've got the foxes and the cats and the deer and the brumbies, we're calling that clear cut. I think there's probably an argument that we have native species that that go feral to a degree. I think that's what I spend a lot of my time dealing with is ecosystems that are out of balance with uh plants that are uh out of sync with the fire regime. Um we have uh native species that have been naturalized in places that they weren't originally. I think for you know the Otways, a really good example is um Potosperum undulatum or sweet potosterum, which is establishing everywhere. Um, and it's creating, it's hybridizing the local tosperum bicolour. Um so there's concern that that would actually you know take the place of another species. And I think when we're talking feral, we need to also be considering that ecosystems with entirely native species from the same place uh can be out of balance, and that's often a fire. But we also have a landscape right across uh you know, the forest at a state of the eastern seaboard and the western seaboard, where we've got forests that have basically had uh a history of 200 years of clear fell logging. And as we've slowly uh enfolded some of these sections of forest into the public estate, we have largely walked away from them. And we've allowed them, in my thinking, to largely grow in a feral way. And there are ethical decisions and discussions that we need to be having about how we manage those landscapes because a lot of people who don't understand the complexity of the things that we're talking about would see us as fighting or combating native species that have gone feral, um, which I think is an interesting discussion that often becomes quite polarized. And I'm thinking of discussions like we're having in Victoria, um, a little bit in New South Wales about things like ecological thinning, where we have matchstick forests, very high density stems of recovering fiery skips land, it's silver top ash. Here we have very high density stands of blue gum and and messmate. Um having conversations like that and being open to trying to manage the feralness that in by walking away we have created to a degree.

SPEAKER_05 31:40

Um look, I think we've laid the groundwork. Is there anything else you wanted to say? Because I'm very keen to to to hear from you. I don't want this to be uh, you know, sermon from on high. You happy?

SPEAKER_00 31:53

All right, I think we'll go to some questions. Raise your hand.

SPEAKER_08 32:02

Kind of two things I was thinking about. Um, so um in regards to 1080, absolutely, you know, all about, you know, we've got to control the ferals. But I'm just wondering, especially if we're coming from a compassionate standpoint, I just don't think there's anything compassionate about 1080. It's a pretty grisly way to die. Is there any um investment, has there any been any other options in regards to baits and poisons that are a bit more quick acting or or or or something? I think I would was thought your um idea of the the specific targeting of the cats, that's amazing. But still, I don't know, like I think yeah, they need to go, but I do think like, is there something a bit and also because I think the other issue with um 1080, please correct me if I'm wrong, it does travel up the food chain. So if like a a Gowanna eats a a cat, or you know, obviously cat or Gowannas can eat the bait as well, but if a Gowanna eats a dead cat, you know, that can, as far as I'm aware. Um, and then the other one, sorry, is where's the room for um we've got to eat the ferals, right? Is there a government uh can we campaign the government somewhere because it's like this is like you know, the problem is a solution? There's an amazing amount of food in the wild deer and high quality food. I've heard that we trans we um export wild pig to Germany because they can't eat their wild pig. And it's like, as far as I'm aware, we've got 8 million domesticated wild pigs and 30 plus million feral pigs. So, yeah, two questions either or. Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 33:37

Okay, I'll dive into 1080. Um, thank you. So, for those of you unaware, so 1080 sodium fluoroacetate, um, it's it's a chemical in a genus of pea that's native to Australia, gastrolobium peas. They're cool, they've got like a leaf like a barbed wire. Um, and so the reason why 1080 is the is the is the toxin of choice is because Australian native animals have a far, far, far higher tolerance for 1080 than non-Australian animals. So you give the same dose to a mouse, a rat, a goanna, a cat, a fox, a bilby. Only the introduced mammals will get knocked over. How they die, I hear you. Suboptimal. But that's what policymakers call the least worst option. There isn't an alternative. It does f it does degrade in the sun, so it doesn't last for very long. As as as as Jack reminded us, uh, with rain, it goes away. Um, New Zealand, it's it's a very hot topic in New Zealand. So 1080 is used also in New Zealand a lot, and they've got their lofty, like predator-free, I think, 2050 goal, um, or 2030. Um, and they've got all sorts of issues with with invasive species similar to us, um, but in much more, much, much smaller, much, much smaller area. Um, and they've there's some parts of New Zealand where the community has said we don't want an A debating here at all. And so there's other ways um of knocking off um rats and and brushtail possums in Australia. Uh, the previous panel was saying the one thing we need is more funding. It sounds trite, um, but you know, CSRO has been cut by successive governments, including bloody labor governments, which I really struggle to understand. Um, that's the kind of investment, that's the kind of organization that has the capacity to tackle that and say, okay, hear you, I hear what you're saying, I share those concerns, let's come up with something better. That's gonna take work. That work involves clever people. Those clever people don't work for free. And so we're gonna need to fund that. And I'd be perfectly happy for my taxes to pay for that rather than sending armored personnel carriers around the world. That's just me. Um, but I think we need to, we need to prioritize that sort of stuff. In terms of food, did you want to have a crack at that? Ferals for food?

SPEAKER_06 36:02

Can, unless you that was a good answer. Um I hear you. I mean, uh I don't eat red meat other than venison now because I live in the Otways. It seems like such an unusual thing to need to do. So I agree with you. Um, but I'd see it slightly differently. I'd see the the feral protein that lives in the country as an opportunity to reduce uh some of the other meat that we consume and the extraordinary amount of land that goes towards it. Highly popular thing to say at an agriculture conference. But I'm not here to make friends or anywhere. But there's an inherent issue with making uh uh a commercial enterprise out of what should be uh an eradication or a control proposition on uh program, and I'm sure you've leapt to it. As soon as there is a commercial element to it, there is a vested interest in that species maintaining there. Now, I have no issue with it at all in in any way, shape, or form, like genuine. We've worked quite a lot with local uh uh venison harvesters in the Otways as they're starting to uh, particularly around fallow deer, um basically um making a commercial go of it, creating their own uh products and value adding. I think that's wonderful. Do I think it's a way of uh reducing the impact of deer across the landscape? Maybe to a degree, but to do that, it really needs to scale up to manage numbers. So that's driven by demand. So we actually need to be ensuring that we are actually uh eating these products and they're expensive because of the way that they're harvested, wild harvested. And I also don't think, you know, at the at the top of what we want to be doing with feral animals, you know, there's there's manage numbers, there's sort of maintain at a lower level, there's eradication. If we consider eradication where we have the opportunity to do it, the absolute paramount, then no, I don't think commercial enterprise is the way to go, because it would get in the way of the most targeted vertebrate pest control. So I don't want to get into too much strife, but for instance, where we have ongoing management of deer, for instance, in a landscape such as the Otways, which is extremely forested, uh, where you're ground shooting uh a herding deer species, you might get four or five deer a night or something, even more. I mean, they're good operators, don't get me wrong. The impact on such a highly abundant species is almost negligible. What you kind of want to be doing is waiting for opportunities like landscape scale bushfires where the canopy opens up and then investing all your money at that point. Now that's not a commercial operation, exactly. So that's not a commercial operation because you don't make money out of the venison when you're operating like that. Um, so that's my answer. And business models like this have been invested across the country, things like buffalo camels, and we often come up against these types of issues, but no issue in eating feral animals because yeah, to me and bees, you know.

SPEAKER_07 39:09

I'm really I'm conflicted.

SPEAKER_01 39:14

Yeah, hello. I'm from a company called Oceans to Earth, and we're um part of the Bigger circular economy. So we take over 600 tons of marine waste that would otherwise go into landfill and we convert that into biofertilizer um at a commercial scale. Um we're now sort of doing projects um similar in Tasmania, the semenoid industry. Um in your view, what's stopping us from the management of the carp population, some 300 million uh 300 million carp sort of floating through the Murray-Darling basin, and 28 million uh uh pigs um being converted into a nutrient source for Australian agriculture?

SPEAKER_05 39:59

Yeah, great question. Um so big fan of Charlie Carp. I'll put it on my veggies. So I I I I get it. Um so carp is a fascinating one because we've we've got the magic bullet in our hands. There's the there's the the the virus. Uh, and how many more parliamentary inquiries do we need? So I'm lucky that I'm I'm at a university with a lot of aquatic ecologists, a lot of river and fish people uh in my building. Um and so we've had a lot of carp chats. Uh and uh the science is is is three quarters of the way there, uh, and we're never gonna be able to definitively say um this is what's gonna happen until we release it. And there's no real way to know what this virus is gonna do to food webs when you take out something that's like 70% of the biomass of living things in a river and kill it, what's that gonna do to water quality? What's that gonna do to turtles? What's that gonna do to water skiers and the Yarrawanga tourism, you know, economy? Um, and it gets back to the risk aversion of our police. If you can't give them an ironclad, this is what's gonna happen, here's the economic model, bang, bang, bang, five years' time, clean water, happy water skiers, they will never sign off on it. We've seen that. So I think um as a scientist, I embrace uncertainty. We get that. We're very comfortable saying I don't know. We're very comfortable with what we don't know. Polys get all wobbly when you say I don't know, because it's like, well, if you don't know, then I'm not gonna sign off on it. Um, the broader question about using fertile animals for nutrient sources, I think Jack answered that quite nicely with the with the to me, it's the same issue as as using it for meat. It's a scaling thing. Um and for for human consumption, obviously there's different standards that apply as for as opposed to fertilizer. And I know that pet food is actually held often to a higher standard uh of food quality than than human consumption. So I think great that you're doing a thing with with oceanic waste, great that you're asking questions about using terrestrial things like carp, like pigs. There's got to be ways to take that unwanted high nutrient material and use it for good, relocate it to farms where those nutrients are gonna turn into stuff that we buy, stuff that we want to eat. So all power to you. Um, but I think getting lobbying Canberra is gonna be uh a tough road to hoe. It really is. I I don't have a magic solution to get through to polys. I wish I did.

SPEAKER_01 42:30

So just to say that it's sort of interesting that with what's going on in the Middle East at the moment, all of a sudden the phone is actually starting to ring. Um to say what what solutions do you have for these problems? There you go. Never waste a crisis. So it's um it the time is very good. All right. Good luck.

SPEAKER_04 42:54

Hi, my name is Carolyn. Um I was just um interested. I'd work with um organic producers in Queensland around the fire ants. And I'd be really interested to ask, I guess, around you mentioned before about um the least harm. And I'd be really interested, I guess the parameter around the fire ants is coverage. It's basically, you know, 95% coverage of a harmful chemical with GM product on on a very big area of more than a million hectares, rather than actually reducing the risk, which is the fire ant. And I and I I guess I would ask whether the invasive species council actually uses that same parameter you mentioned before for all types of species.

SPEAKER_05 43:34

So I I I'm uniquely qualified because I've been stung thousands of times by fire ants. So I feel the pain. Um fire ants was a travesty because it was too little, too late. We knew, we knew they were there for a long time before any actions were taken place. Invasive Species Council, I'm a big fan of them and his organization. They went above and beyond in lobbying and getting some very high profile um. Policy pieces together to basically force, force the arm of both the Queensland and the federal government to invest in this. But by the time funding was released, in my view, far, far too late, the horse had bolted. So I think it's now a bit like plague locust control that you're broadcasting nasty baits that are broad spectrum that affect all sorts of beneficial insects as well as the nasties. Where was that effort, you know, a few years ago when it was a far, far, far smaller um, you know, target area? Um, there's going to be textbooks, textbook case studies written about just what a royal fuck up that was.

SPEAKER_00 44:42

All right. Oh, we have one last one.

SPEAKER_03 44:43

It has to be relatively quick, please, and then we'll wrap up. Thank you very much. My name is Penny Scott. And uh it's a question about the uses uh that the um Invasive Species Council tends to use. And it relates a little bit to the fire and situation where locally um boiling water and borax have been found to be effective in killing off the nests. However, because they are not approved or within the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authorities book, guidebook, only chemicals can be used. So approved chemicals and obviously toxic ones. So with the APVMA having this amount of pull or influence, is the Invasive Species Council being sponsored by the APVMA to um use the only these tools to for eradication? And I hear what you say about that should have been dealt with back in 2002. But it's not. It's doing now, it's a mass eradication. We're doing so well, we're covering a million hectares, but the effectiveness of the chemicals is not necessarily impacting on the fire ants when hot water and borax could.

SPEAKER_05 46:12

Thank you for your question. And yes, it works. Um my my parents-in-law lived in Arkansas and they used borax and boiling water on their fire ant problem and worked like a charm. So I concur. Um, yeah, the invasive species council has nothing to do with the AP VMA. The AP VMA is is a is a legislative body that works very, very slowly. It was relocated to Armadale when Barnaby was in charge. They lost most of their staff. They're running on a skeleton crew. They took, I think, 12 years to work out that rodent baits should be should be banned. Um, they're grossly understaffed. Um, but no, they're not they're not secretly, there's not a secret alliance between them and the invasive species council at all. And I think the invasive species council runs a very tricky line between advocating for more funding, more awareness about the impacts of feral animals while adhering to the legislation of the day. And so they are hamstrung by what the APVMA says is allowable because that's that's the current law. If you don't like that, then push to change the laws. Um and they're very responsive. So I'd I I I'd I I'd I I'd I'd make this point directly to to them.

SPEAKER_00 47:26

All right. Can everybody please join me in thanking Pat and Dave? I just wanted to take this opportunity for anybody that's um around to be listening for one last piece from me before I depart. Jake Robinson's new book has a section in it that I read recently, and I loved an excerpt that I came across that hit me in the face somewhat and actually forced me to do some deep reflection on myself as a member of the human race. I'll share it with you briefly now. It's from a section in the book that's discussing the hunting, trafficking, and eating of a species called, and I may get the pronunciation wrong, pangolins. It's a creature. Uh the and the goal of all of this was supposedly to cure diseases in humans. And the quote says, So we know that poor communication is dangerous. It can harm wildlife and divert attention away from meaningful agendas that benefit humans. But something lurks deep in the human psyche that often drives this poor communication. Scapegoating. It's the phenomenon whereby humans seek to place blame on specific entities or circumstances rather than taking responsibility for their broader systemic behaviors that actually cause an issue. Now thanks, Jake, for that because I feel so strongly that each and every one of you at Grounded Here Today has made the conscious decision not to follow that path of scapegoating. You are here, you are willing to be open, curious, and vulnerable to learn and take responsibility. Change is hard, and we will collectively make mistakes, and that is totally okay. But we will stand together, grounded, and we will keep moving forward. So thank you and enjoy the last talk at four ten.