By Lucy MacDonald. Topic: Animal Cruelty. Our response to an invasive species is "kill, kill, kill", says Animal Liberation Tasmania's Kristy Algar.
Supplied: Dan Collom. A new plan by the Tasmanian Government to protect nesting swift parrots from sugar gliders through a capture-and-cull method has been criticised by Animal Liberation Tasmania. Found in parts of Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales, the critically endangered swift parrot breeds only in Tasmania. Sugar gliders, which were introduced to Tasmania from Victoria in the early s, have been shown to have a devastating impact on the swift parrot's breeding success.
A swift parrot safety zone is to be created by 80 sugar glider traps. Supplied: Dejan Stojanovic. The gliders will eat swift parrot eggs, kill chicks and even adult birds. Up to 79 per cent of nests and 65 per cent of breeding females on mainland Tasmania can fall victim to sugar gliders each year. The boxes will be placed in swift parrot breeding areas and monitored, and any sugar glider trapped will be culled.
About 65 per cent of breeding female swift parrots are killed by sugar gliders every year. There's just this bloody single-minded view of kill anything in sight, but not actually think to the long term about how to manage breeding in the future.
She said humans needed to look at how they were "contributing to the plight of the swift parrot" through logging and habitat destruction. Primary Industries Minister Sarah Courtney said the plan would support the swift parrot into the future.
