Duckheads, wetlands and shooting culture; a dispatch from the war zone

It’s pretty grim out here in the wetlands as the annual slaughter of ducks by sporting shooters continues, and its not just the wildlife that is suffering.

Conservation activist Julia Symons was shot in the face on the first weekend of the season. Whether or not she should have been there is irrelevant. Apart from the obvious questions of intent, due care and responsible shooting, why is a so called sporting shooter discharging a shotgun aimed so low that she was in his firing line? Ducks are supposed to be taken on the wing, not the ground or water. That’s what the alleged sporting bit is there to signify.

calm before the storm; what will the new day bring?
[photo © Kirsa Veal]

Kirsa Veal is another conservationist out in the front lines with a passion for birds. Braver and more active than most, she's dedicated to getting her message across at these critical flash points, putting herself in harm's way to do so. She regularly confronts gross behaviour by shooters: sexism; racism; intimidation; abuse; assault and even implied rape. Coming from groups of blokes wielding guns, this is dangerous anti-social bullying at best.

It seems that some of these weekend Rambos are not very sporting at all; there are reports of them ganging up on lone male protesters and targeting women. The shooters demonstrably dismember ducks in front of protesters; wounded ducks are purposely left to bleed and flail when they fall nearby; and women are pelted with bird heads and entrails. Kirsa was abused by a shooter who screamed at her; ‘You Aussie piece of meat’ and darkly threatened ‘what he and the rest of them would do to me’.

Problems with this kind of shooting are many, but some obvious ones are:

• the sorts of behaviour and culture it promotes

• the difficulty of monitoring hunters and hunting sites; and this is necessary - for example live wounded birds have been found in shooters' bags when inspected

• identifying which birds are OK to shoot and which aren’t; there is a steady toll on rare and endangered species, and waterfowl other than ducks

• promoting cruelty and inhumane practices; many birds are only wounded and are left to die slowly; chicks are orphaned and die of starvation. 

body count; those left behind to suffer and die a slow death -
note the little chicks [photo © Kirsa Veal]

A big issue this season is the drought-breaking wet, cool weather. You’ve noticed it and I’ve noticed it. But apparently those who make critical decisions about hunting policy have not. Many waterfowl have taken advantage of the conditions after years of drought and degraded habitat. They’ve bred late into the autumn. So there are many fledglings still in care of parent birds. Shooting the adult birds is resulting in many orphaned chicks unable to fend for themselves.

The new Victorian State Government in its wisdom extended the hunting season this year. So you’d think it would have been viable to postpone the opening of the season to give the ducklings a few more weeks to learn their survival skills. This would have ensured a healthy population of ducks for next hunting season if nothing else.

Unfortunately, it seems that decisions by authorities that control hunting are not based on this kind of logic. In addition to an apparent unwillingness to enact conservation rhetoric proclaimed on their websites, they are probably not even aware of many grass-roots environmental issues. The agencies are notoriously poor at gathering information about what’s happening out here in the real world. They simply don’t have the people on the ground and they don’t listen to volunteers or others with highly developed local knowledge and relevant skills. Anyway, office-bound decision-makers and advisers are committed to dates in calendars insensitive to the cycle of life and seasonal variation in our wetlands.

looking the part; dressed to kill [photo © Kirsa Veal]

Kirsa provides insight into how ineffective and misdirected the agencies are when they do manage to put personnel in the field. ‘[The agency] spent more time fining protesters’ than monitoring shooters who were ‘inflicting cruelty on the birds’. She was also informed that; ‘If we tried to rescue ducklings, many only a few days old, we would be charged with “interfering with wildlife under the Wildlife Act.”’

In July 2009, the Department of Sustainability and Environment published a document responding to the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act of 1988. In it they listed twenty-nine processes that are considered a threat to the environment. Some examples:

• loss of hollow-bearing trees from Victorian native forests

• loss of terrestrial climatic habitat caused by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases

• predation of native wildlife by the cat, Felis catus.

The only process that is claimed to be repealed is:

• use of lead shot in cartridges for the hunting of waterfowl.

collateral damage; the plumed whistling duck  
Dendrocygna eytoni is a protected species
[photo © Kirsa Veal]

In other words, sporting shooters have to use steel shot as they blaze away at the ducks to reduce the amount of toxic lead being blasted into the landscape. It beggars belief that this is even presented as an achievement; it would be laughable if it wasn't so delusional. Like so many conventional bureaucratic attempts to define and manage human interaction with OUR shared habitat, it misses the point entirely. Is it any wonder that those of us with a connection to this land and a concern for country are disenchanted with the inaction and downright avoidance of issues by governments and their agencies?

cultural complexity; old ways die hard
[photo © Kirsa Veal]

So what can we do? Here's a call to arms from Kirsa: 

‘So get angry people and fire up about this. Do something! We have 13 weeks of this. Keep all eyes and ears out in your local areas. Always take your camera with you. Look for evidence of shooting; spent cartridges, feathers, remains. Take photos! Get active! Writing letters, emails and phone calls all helps. DO NOT approach shooters on your own. Leave that up to bloody lunatics like myself. Ten ducks a day bag limit and I cannot just sit there and let it happen.’

For more information visit:

Coalition Against Duck Shooting website

Animals Australia - duck shooting fact sheet

Birds Australia article: Victoria’s Wetlands Become the Killing Fields … Yet Again 

stalemate; a shooter cradles his gun
while an activist is in the line of fire

[photo © Kirsa Veal]