A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR PRIORITISING AREAS FOR PEST MANAGEMENT ACROSS A REGION. Mike Braysher1 and Gle

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A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR PRIORITISING AREAS FOR PEST
MANAGEMENT ACROSS A REGION.Mike Braysher1 and
Glen Saunders2

• 1. University of Canberra
• 2. NSW Agriculture

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Why have a guide?

• A National Feral Animal Strategy
• Series of national pest animal guidelines.
• These provide the necessary background
  information but not the specifics of planning and
  undertaking pest animal management. This requires
  local implementation.

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Guidelines key messages

• Use a strategic approach
• Damage not numbers
• Local eradication is rarely possible
• Success requires cooperative action
• Work within legislative restraints
• Sometimes guided by imperfect knowledge
• Sustainable land management requires an
  integrated approach

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Pest animals are only one of a number of factors
that influence sustainable agricultural
production.
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The strategic approach to pest animal control

• Define the problem damage not numbers
• Develop a management plan
• Implement the plan
• Monitor and evaluate progress and outcomes

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Defining the problem

• What is the problem (agricultural and/or
  conservation)?
• Who is affected and who else is involved?
• Define economic / environmental impact
• Measure or estimate this impact
• Map existing knowledge eg. impact, control

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The management plan

• Define objectives
• Identify partnerships and government role
• Select management options
• Develop a management strategy
• Requires clear objectives and time-frames to be
  set eg. increase lambing by 20 over 2 yrs.
• Define performance criteria
• Operational eg. costs and performance eg. lamb
  percentages

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Implementing the plan

• Group action - ownership and community support
• Maximise effective use of resources
• Apply to whole farm, catchment or district
• Continue mapping to log actions
• Start monitoring regime

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Monitoring and evaluation

• Assess progress over time
• Standardise measures (time and indices)
• Compare techniques and cost-effectiveness against
  performance indicators
• Modify objectives if required
• Set criteria for failure or when to stop and
  re-assess the program

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Why have a guide?

• National/State threat abatement plans
• State/Territory pest animal manuals
• State/Territory individual pest strategies
  (outfox the fox, rabbit busters etc)
• State/Territory catchment management plans
• Funding opportunities

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Guide is a tool

• The process is merely a tool to assist land
  managers
• provides a structured series of questions and
  prompts about pests and the problems that they
  cause
• allows flexibility to modify the plan to suit the
  needs of participants
• helps to adjust the plan according to assessments
  of progress.

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What is the Guide?

• The PESTPLAN process
• main document is for pest animal coordinators,
  provides details for developing a plan and tips
  for facilitating the process through workshops
• The TOOLKIT
• provides fact sheets and
• work sheets for use developing a plan during
  workshops eg. ranking threats, prioritising
  actions and setting milestones

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In the beginning

• A core group needs to initiate the process
• Consists of key community and agency
  participants 6-8 is optimum
• Determines if there is a valid reason to
  implement PESTPLAN and the likelihood of success.
  
• If yes, plan the workshop

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In the beginning

• Initial planning is critical
• Avoid generating false expectations
• Most people workshopped out. Poor planning
  risks losing key players.
• Core group needs to understand the problem and
  all associated issues and have sufficient
  commitment to bring others on board.

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Some keys to success

• Dont exclude any key players
• Focus on problems and solutions rather than
  apportioning blame
• A good start is to remove all property and land
  tenure boundaries eg. national parks, when first
  examining the problem.
• Recruit a pest animal specialist to assist
• Have all information at hand eg. maps

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The WorkshopThree Stage Process

• Stage 1. Planning
• Stage 2 Identify and set priorities for Land
  Management Units
• Stage 3. Develop implement effective pest
  management plans

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Stage 1- Planning

• What is the trigger?
• Key target group?
• Identify describe areas of concern
• Gather necessary information
• Review information and determine key Land
  Management Units

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Trigger or symptom?
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Stage 2 Prioritising Management Units

• Determines key Land Management Units
• Ranks LMUs for production and conservation
  values
• Ranks LMUs for pest threat
• Determines overall rank
• Applies reality check

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Hypothetical Case Study - A Section of the
Murrumbidgee River
Fig3.
Recreation Lake 2
Irrigation Channel
Irrigation Area 3
Murrumbidgee River 1
Billabong A 4
Billabong B 5
Billabong C 6
Levee Bank
Tailwater Swamp
Weir Pool 7
N
Weir
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Stage 3 Management Plan

• Defines the problem - what is to be achieved by
  when
• Develops the plan of attack
• Steps for monitoring and evaluating performance
• Steps for implementation of plan (ongoing)

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Options for the Management Plan

• Local eradication
• Strategic management including
• one-off control
• sustained management
• targeted management
• Crisis management
• Commercial management
• No management

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Monitoring and evaluation

• Surveys for distribution and abundance of
  vulnerable species
• Production performance eg lambing percent
• Keep in mind other factors eg. drought,
  competition, habitat fragmentation

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Monitoring and Evaluation

• Critical part of a pest management program
• Will vary in accuracy and intensity according to
  the management group eg. landholder, govt.
  agency, NHT
• Helps improve cost-effectiveness
• Keeps program on-track eg. milestones achieved
  and if not why not
• Make achievable eg. all warrens mapped, 50
  warrens ripped, bait laid, lambing , spotlight
  counts, newsletters

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Determining priorities

• Divide region into land management units.
• Rank LMUs for production and conservation values
  - assess according to quality of the resource.
• Rank units for threat from the pest or pests -
  often difficult due to imperfect knowledge of
  impact.
• Determine overall rank (value threat 6 high, 1
  low)
• Apply reality checks

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Reality checks

• Is management technically feasible at the
  required scale of operations?
• Is it economically desirable - cost vs benefits,
  sufficient resources to complete the plan?
• Is it environmentally acceptable?
• Is it politically acceptable - consistent with
  Landcare or Catchment priorities, Government
  policies, legislation?
• Is it socially acceptable - other impacts eg.
  conservation, animal welfare

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Warning - do not proceed

• Without a local group that is willing to take on
  the responsibility for developing and
  implementing the program, success is unlikely.
  The plan needs
• local enthusiasm and ownership
• commitment to long-term maintenance and
  monitoring of outcomes
• requires neighbour cooperation and support

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Coolbagie Goonoo Cooperative Pest Plan

• The pests
• Foxes - predation on lambs and mallee fowl
• Rabbits - remove ground cover, cause erosion
  and compete with stock
• Feral pigs - dig up pasture, foul water ways,
  prey on lambs
• Feral goats - compete with stock and potential
  agent of disease transmission

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Coolbagie Goonoo Cooperative Pest Plan

• The problems
• Lack of coordination in pest control activities
• Ad hoc approach has resulted in rapid
  re-invasion and lack of long-term benefits
• Increasing levels of observed pest animal impact
  
• Multiple forms of land tenure

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Coolbagie Goonoo Cooperative Pest Plan

• The triggers
• Drought has dramatically increased value of
  lambs and the need to ensure their survival
• Drought has also seen an unhealthy decline in
  remnant mallee fowl populations
• There was a local will from government agencies
  and landholders to improve pest animal management
  and address these drought related concerns

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Coolbagie Goonoo Cooperative Pest Plan

• The key players
• Dubbo and Coonabarabran RLPBs
• NSW NPWS
• State Forests
• NSW Agriculture
• Landholders

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Coolbagie Goonoo Cooperative Pest Plan

• Knowledge of pest animal distribution and
  abundance
• recent pest animal survey has documented this
  information for the district - foxes widespread,
  other species locally abundant
• Knowledge of pest animal impact
• recent surveys of mallee fowl populations
  implicate fox predation as primary cause of
  decline
• landholders closely monitoring lambing
  performance due to drought

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Coolbagie Goonoo Cooperative Pest Plan

• Key constraints to success
• lack of communication
• lack of agreement on scale of the problem
• poor organisation
• no monitoring and feedback of information
• no participation by some key landholders
• scepticism due to previous program failures
• lack of resources due to drought feeding
  operations

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Coolbagie Goonoo Cooperative Pest Plan

• Land management units
• centred on Goonoo and Lincoln forests
• divided into the 11 bush fire brigade areas
  surrounding these forests which provide
  infrastructure, appropriate in size and hold
  regular meetings
• contained within Macquarie Catchment Management
  Blueprint Plan
• part covered by NPWS central-west pest
  management strategy

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Coolbagie Goonoo Cooperative Pest Plan

• Core group participants
• NPWS pest animal manager
• NSW Ag agricultural protection officer
• State Forests operations manager
• RLPB rangers from Dubbo and Coonabarabran
• Rural fire captain (also landholder)
• Landholder from Eumungerie
• Landholder from Mogriguy

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Coolbagie Goonoo Cooperative Pest Plan

• Management actions
• Regular meetings
• Coordinated farm and agency baiting
• Mapping and data collection
• All participants kept informed through flyers,
  media releases, newsletters and field days

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Coolbagie Goonoo Cooperative Pest Plan

• Monitoring and evaluation
• Spotlight counts
• Bait uptake and lambing over time
• NPWS to monitor mallee fowl populations
• Farmer participation rates over time
• Number of complaints received over time
• Assess participant and community attitudes