Neutral: State forests could get the same hunting rules as national parks.
State forests could get the same hunting rules as national parks.
Photo: Chris Lane
Hunting in state forests is likely to be permanently curtailed under a government shake-up.
New rules will be imposed that are likely to restrict volunteer shooters to participating in supervised culls of feral animals, with tougher training requirements.
The NSW Forestry Corporation is contacting 600 hunters with permits allowing them to shoot independently in 400 state forests, to advise them hunting has been suspended until a risk assessment is done.
A spokeswoman for Primary Industries Minister Katrina Hodgkinson said this would be modelled on the process that resulted last week in the imposition of strict controls on a trial basis for shooting in national parks.
Under the national park rules, amateur hunters would need training equivalent to that of a parks officer, and would either work shoulder-to-shoulder with parks officers or be supervised in culling operations.
While the details for state forests were yet to be worked out, the government wanted a ''tenure-neutral'' approach to pest control, with one set of rules across national parks, state forests, Crown land and private property.
The O'Farrell government had to pass legislation to allow volunteer hunters access to national parks in the name of pest eradication, under a deal with the Shooters Party, which controls the balance of power in the upper house. But a scathing independent review of the Game Council, which issued hunting licences and regulated hunting, led to it being abolished on Thursday.
While the national park trial will proceed in October, the fallout from the Dunn report will also result in state-forest hunting being suspended as the rules are overhauled.
The only previous risk assessment for hunting in state forests was done in 2009 by a private consultancy that found 17 corrective actions needed to be taken for the safety risk to be deemed ''acceptable''. These included reviewing hunter education to include map-reading competency, putting emergency meeting points on maps, and introducing electronic surveillance of hunting.
But no electronic surveillance is in place, and hunters are not required to demonstrate map-reading skills to get a licence. The 2009 risk assessment said the Forestry Corporation should consider tougher controls.
Until last week, hunters needed only to sit an open-book paper test and undergo a police background check to be issued a licence by the now defunct Game Council.
They could then make a booking to go shooting in any of 400 state forests that were listed as containing a mix of feral deer, pigs, goats, cats, dogs or rabbits.
The new system would be modelled on volunteer bushfire brigades, and it is likely that volunteer shooters would only be called upon to take part in organised pest-eradication programs where a pest was deemed to be out of control.
The executive director of Sporting Shooters Association of NSW, Diana Melham, said its members were ''concerned at the potential loss of public access, having invested considerable time, effort and expense assisting the government, at no cost, to reducing the environmental devastation caused by feral pests''.