Wildlife for Sale

The commercial use of Australian native wildlife could provide the next boom in live exports, adding new meaning to the term 'primary producer'. The farming and export of cockatoos, freshwater turtles and magpie geese are already in the planning stages in the Northern Territory where the commercial utilisation of wildlife is enshrined in policy. By Dennis Schulz

Sold down the river or saved from extinction? Commercial use of wildlife could be one way to ensure the survival of threatened species. Photo: Deborah Bisa

The plan could not only present landowners with a lucrative income but also with a wildlife conservation strategy. The scheme places a dollar value on native animals—an economic incentive for the landholder to keep wildlife habitat undamaged and look after species on their properties rather than destroying or ignoring them.

A Senate Rural and Regional Affairs Committee Report, published last month, called for trials in the commercial utilisation of wildlife and a review of export laws. "It has got the potential for a far better use of Australia's northern rangelands than grazing cloven-footed animals," declared Committee member, former NT Senator Bob Collins. "It could be an important regional income contributor while having really positive environmental effects."

The report concluded that wildlife residing on 93 per cent of the Australian landmass is unprotected, lying outside established national parks or sanctuaries. That means the overwhelming majority of species are vulnerable to feral animal predation and habitat destruction initiated by landholders. Commercial utilisation of wildlife targets those landowners.

This is already the case in southern Africa where landowners benefit economically from wildlife through tourism, export sales, selective culling and even big game hunting—all in the name of conservation. After decades of plunder, many species are making dynamic population come-backs in countries like Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe, where landholders have been entrusted with wildlife wellbeing. At CITIES (Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species) 1996 international conference, those three countries were rewarded for their increasing elephant populations by the organisation officially sanctioning a tightly controlled export trade in ivory.

The report recognises that lucrative markets for Australian wildlife exists overseas, but the current federal legislation prohibits commercial wildlife export—except if they're already dead. It is under these cadaverous regulations that kangaroo meat, emu products, bushtail possums and crocodile skins are currently exported.

The NT's crocodile management plan provides a blueprint for commercial utilisation. In 1971, after decades of over-hunting, saltwater crocodile numbers in the NT were depleted to an estimated 5000 animals. That's when shooting the animal was banned and biologist Dr Graham Webb designed a management plan to restore its population.

Today, over 10,000 croc eggs are harvested from the wild annually, with landowners paid for each egg taken from their property. Animals are farmed for skins to the value of $3 million per year in exports yet the wild population continues to grow at a rate of 5 per cent a year to a current total estimated at 70,000. So many fully grown adult crocodiles now patrol NT watercourses that late last year the NT Government sanctioned test harvest trials allowing the export of wild skins.

Pastoralists on Carmour Plains station initiated a trial harvest along with Aborigines from the Maningrida community, whose harvest accompanies a successful egg gathering and incubation operation. The NT Government also backs communities interested in crocodile big game hunting, potentially the most valuable commercial wildlife scheme. A hunter taking a single animal can pay $25,000 to an isolated community otherwise dependent on government largesse.

"If we can do it with crocodiles we can do it with other species," said Parks and Wildlife NT assistant director of conservation management, Dave Lawson." These are valid alternatives. We should try them. I'm not saying they all will work. All we're saying is this deserves a valid test."

Lawson's department has already initiated management plans for the sale and export of red-tailed black cockatoos and draft management plans for magpie geese and long-necked turtles.

The Senate committee also believes a live export trade will undermine the flourishing illegal trade. It calls current state and federal laws regulating the use and protection of native species, "confused and inconsistent."

Export proponents argue that a controlled legal trade would put the poachers out of business. Opponents contend that the commercial utilisation of wildlife remains an untried conservation scheme. That is a view recognised in the Senate report. A major committee recommendation is to set up an experimental management trial to examine the economic viability and conservation prospects of the commercial formula. The trial would see scientists and landowners working on a 2000 square kilometre marginal pastoral property, funded by the Natural Heritage Trust.

They would identify commercial species, turning off all they could on a sustainable case-by-case basis. According to Dr Webb, the rewards could radically change land use nationwide. "Let's test it," he urged.

"What if we found you can put vast areas of Australia aside and make them earn more income through wildlife than you can through agriculture?"