Animal rights industry never has to take bait

People in government departments don’t want to admit what every old trawler operator and surfer knows.

A few years ago my wife and I took two of my boys to the Northern Territory and were lucky enough to be given extensive access to the Tiwi Islands by the local land council.

It was a rare privilege and I learnt much, but the thing I did not expect to learn had nothing to do with the culture of the local Tiwi Islanders at Bathurst and Melville Islands or the progress they were making at Tiwi College.

What stuck with me were the photographs on the walls of the Barramundi Lodge showing World War II GIs, in the hundreds, swimming during shore leave. Today the waters of the Tiwi Islands are so infested with saltwater crocodiles that the Aboriginal kids we met would not dare swim beyond knee deep at their pristine beach.

Across the NT coastline and in most of the Top End’s saltwater rivers, swimming is strictly off the agenda. Croc watching is big tourism business and crocs make great copy for the local newspaper, the NT News.

But as the Tiwi elders told us, it was not always this way. In the days when crocodiles were hunted for food by the Tiwis and for skins by white hunters, it was not nearly so dangerous to enjoy the tropical waters of the Territory. Croc hunting was banned in the Territory in 1964, in Western Australia in 1962 and in Queensland in 1974. Populations have boomed and croc distributions widened dramatically since.

So it is with sharks today. People in government departments don’t want to admit what every old trawler operator and surfer knows. There are more large sharks in our waterways, and particularly more great whites. The protection of great whites, the banning of longline and gillnet commercial shark fishing in 1998 in the waters off Victoria and a ban on taking all great whites in Victorian waters in 1998 and by the Commonwealth a year later have had the desired effect.

The resulting increase in shark numbers has been helped by a series of buybacks of professional offshore fishing licences by eastern states’ governments, especially in NSW where more than two-thirds of professional fishermen have left the industry.

Fewer small sharks are being caught for eating, and therefore more sharks are reaching a dangerous size. Vastly rejuvenated stocks of fish off the east coast are attracting juvenile great whites that once would have headed for the Southern Ocean and its seal population.

Now no one wants to see either great whites or saltwater crocodiles extinct or in danger in our country, but by the same token it is obvious the pendulum has swung so far in the direction of these predators that humans are at much greater risk.

Sure there is a lot of truth in the old line that when surfers enter the water they are entering the domain of the ocean’s apex predator. I have seen sharks in northern NSW waters since the early 1970s and most surfers understand the danger and how best to minimise it. At least they did until recent changes in shark numbers.

To his very great credit my friend Fred Pawle, this newspaper’s surf writer, has been a fearless advocate for his constituency on the issue of safety and sharks. I recommend everyone who is interested in the issue seek out his interview on Sky News’s The Bolt Report last Tuesday following the sad death of 17-year-old West Australian Laeticia Brouwer, who had been surfing with her father at Kelp Beds, 3km east of Wylie Bay near Esperance in Western Australia.

And anyone who wants to see the warped mentality of his critics should read some of the reader comments on his best pieces on this newspaper’s website.

Now even though I agree netting is almost impossible on the vast, sparsely populated WA coast line, I think the metropolitan beaches around Perth need netting and drum lines, as do the beaches of the NSW coast from Port Macquarie to Byron Bay, where the number of attacks and fatalities has risen dramatically in the past few years.

The psychological change in WA since the election of the state Labor government last year has been stunning. After Brouwer’s death, new fisheries minister Dave Kelly announced no drum lines would be deployed to catch the shark that mauled her, and said: “We don’t see the merit in automatically deploying drum lines in these circumstances.”

It is almost certain the cycle of attacks that prompted the previous Barnett government to introduce a drumlines policy will most likely continue. This is part of a new global trend among the young in the West that places the value of animal life above human life. We know how to protect beaches against attacks but the constituency opposing such action is vocal and raucous.

We can prove shark attack deterrents work. Since the introduction of netting and drum lines on popular southeast Queensland beaches in 1962 there has been only one death at a protected beach, compared with 27 at the same beaches between 1919 and 1961. Shark attacks also fell dramatically in Sydney after netting of the city’s most popular beaches in the 1930s and despite a fivefold increase in the city’s population and the rise of surfing as one of the city’s most popular sports.

Critics from the Greens argue netting does not create a fixed barrier against sharks. True, but the figures do not lie. Sharks approaching popular beaches seldom pass the nets strung offshore, preferring to take the large drum-line baits below the surface. Environmentalists say other animals also die. True, but so what? Most Australians would prefer their safety, and we know whale and dolphin numbers are healthy.

The NSW government is now working on a program of nets and drum lines in the north of the state after a series of attacks off Ballina and Evans Head. Many surf clubs have also invested in shark-spotting drones. After the debacle of the Baird government’s attempt to ban greyhound racing, this is smart politics.

How unsurprising then — as Pawle has revealed — that a federal Senate environment committee chaired by Tasmanian Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, and including Sydney Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon, has taken the view its role “is to help revive the numbers of sharks, downplay the dangers they pose” and dismiss successful protection methods.

At its hearing in Perth last week, only days after girl’s death, it took evidence mainly from opponents of netting and conservation academics.

Whish-Wilson lamented the lack of coverage by media of drowning deaths and asked why the local newspaper had devoted its first four pages to Laeticia’s death. Well Senator, that would be because newspaper editors know what the public thinks about shark attacks.

In general, the popular newspapers and most commercial radio and television news programs do a good job on the issue and understand the horror the public feels about humans being eaten by sharks. Of course, at our ABC and Fairfax Media, reporters usually favour elite environmental and animal rights opinion. Just as they did during the greyhound racing ban controversy and the Gillard government’s live cattle export ban.

It is ironic that only days before the WA shark attack, activists renewed their campaign against thoroughbred hurdle racing after the death of a single horse in an Adelaide Hills race last weekend. No such protest on behalf of young women killed by sharks. People from the thoroughbred industry who secretly supported former NSW premier Mike Baird’s greyhound ban need to be very careful. Animal rights activists are well aware so-called “wastage” rates among thoroughbreds are far higher than among greyhounds.

The animal rights movement is underpinned by a philosophy that cares little for the lives of human beings. At its extremes it even supports the banning of guide dogs for the blind on the basis no animal’s life should be devoted to the privileging of humans. Media need to scrutinise this movement as The Australian’s Pawle has done.