MANY South Australians are unaware that duck hunting is still legal, and that many otherwise protected species may be blasted from the sky during the hunting season, as applicants are required to pass only one Waterfowl Identification Test before receiving a permit.
Duck hunters use spray pellets – which often harm or maim birds without killing them.
The RSPCA states that up to 40 per cent of birds shot are injured rather than killed outright, and will then usually face a slow and agonising death.
Some duck hunters are people who kill and maim defenceless animals just for the fun of it, and they largely ignore hunting laws.
For example, an independent review of the Game Management Authority in Victoria found “commonplace and widespread noncompliance with hunting laws” including the shooting of endangered and legally protected species.
Three quarters of South Australians have repeatedly said in surveys that they want an end to this annual gratuitous slaughter.
Please contact the Minister for Climate, Environment and Water and your local MP to urge them to end this barbaric hunt in SA, as it has been already in three other states.
Desmond Bellamy,
PETA Australia special projects co-ordinator
