Managing pests with exclusion fences: progress and potential biodiversity benefits

Abstract

Historically, wild dogs were extirpated from Australia’s sheep growing regions using the same control techniques that are available today: poison baits, trapping, hooting and fencing. In the last half century wild dog management has focused on laying cost-effective, target-specific and humane poison bait, principally coordinated 1080 baiting programs. Unrepaired netting fences, inadequate participation in, and variable efficacy of, ‘coordinated’ baiting programs, and the ability of wild dogs to disperse hundreds of kilometres has allowed wild dogs to infiltrate and recolonise sheep production regions. Faced with these and other economic and environmental challenges, sheep production in Queensland has contracted dramatically. Improved fence materials and designs, more favourable economic conditions for sheep production, government incentives and formal agreements designed to ensure the private maintenance of fences in perpetuity have renewed interest in exclusion fencing. Based on a study that commenced in 2013 in southwest and central-west Queensland, this paper reports the progress two cluster fence groups are making towards reducing pests and increasing productivity.