Renee, Volunteer Coordinator, HO

by Renee Borg

I am currently working part-time as Volunteer Coordinator at WIRES Headquarters, along with my team members Rachel, Kailyn and Annette, our Volunteer Support Manager, who covers Workers Health and Safety, conflict resolution and insurance matters. Together we make up the WIRES Membership Team.

My role is focused primarily on processing new and existing members, membership enquiries from our 3800+ members in 28 branches and any other ad hoc duties that come about. I am also helping with the integration of all of our current systems using Tall Emu management software. The next step will be to integrate the call sheet process into Tall Emu.

I also assist various departments with implementing exciting new projects across the organisation to enhance wildlife rescue outcomes. Members can keep informed of these projects through our members’ blog (WIRES login required).

I started my career in the healthcare sector. However after completing my Bachelor of Science at Macquarie University, I left my job in clinical research for a role with WIRES. I have always been passionate about wildlife and conservation. Whilst I was at university, I joined WIRES as a volunteer and have always admired the passion and dedication of all involved in the organisation.

I have been working at WIRES for three years now, starting off in the Rescue Office and then moving to Training Admin Coordinator where I helped with administrative tasks and the set up and coordination of courses. I then progressed to the Volunteer Coordinator role in November 2019 which was sadly the beginning of the very devastating bushfire season.

It has been an amazing, challenging and rewarding journey so far and it has been a pleasure seeing WIRES overcome so many challenges and changes in the face of such adversity in a short amount of time.

Members can contact me on my direct line 02 8977 3394 or email members@wires.org.au if they have any membership related queries or require assistance with Tall Emu, CarerHQ or xMatters.

Ringtail Possum on the Line

An adult ringtail possum was spotted on power lines at Moruya Heads, 5m above the ground. The caller reported that cockatoos were closing in on him.

Alan Nash attended and called Essential Energy. “When I got there it was magpies, a butcher bird, and a pied mudlark harassing him”. Rachel McInnes also attended.

When Essential Energy arrived it was decided that since the possum didn’t seem to be injured they would let him find his own way to the pole and down.

Alan checked him during the night and sure enough, the possum eventually made its way to the pole and home.

Greyhound attacks

In March we had a callout for a juvenile kangaroo that had been attacked by a greyhound at Merry Beach Caravan Park in Kioloa. It was dead by the time Zora Brown got there to rescue it. The greyhound was apparently a ‘rescue dog’ that had accidentally slipped its leash.

Unfortunately many greyhounds have been trained to chase and attack animals, commonly known in the industry as “blooding". Until July 2019, all pet greyhounds in NSW were legally required to wear a muzzle in public unless they had completed an approved retraining program. This was changed as part of the government’s “commitment to improving living standards and rehoming rates for greyhounds”.

Now registered pet greyhounds do not have to wear a muzzle unless they are in an off-leash area and have not done the approved training. However, owners may choose to muzzle their dogs and one would hope they would do it in a caravan park and in wildlife areas.

Animals that are subject to dog attacks may die of shock or infection from dog tooth or claw injuries that may not look too bad, so it is important to get them to a vet as soon as possible.

The penalty for any dog owner in NSW if their dog "rushes at, attacks, bites, harasses or chases any person or animal (other than vermin), whether or not any injury is caused to the person or animal” is up to $10,000. If that attack is "as a result of a reckless act or omission by the dog’s owner or another person in charge of the dog at the time of the attack” the penalty is up to $22,000 and/or up to 2 years in prison.

Ref: Removal of the muzzling requirement for pet greyhounds - FAQ’s, Office of Local Government, accessed 14 May 2021; Dog Attack Reporting, Office of Local Government, accessed 14 May 2021.

Brainy Birds Play with Others

A study by Gisella Kaplan, at the University of New England, has found that Australian birds that play with others have the largest brain mass relative to the size of their bodies. They also live longer.

"Play behaviour usually occurs in juveniles but in some species, such as little corellas or galahs, it extends into adulthood. Play behaviour occurs in species which tend to have long juvenile periods, long-term support from parents and which grow up in stable social groups.”

Surprisingly, the same correlation with brain size does not hold for tool use. It is not known whether social play leads to larger brains or larger brained birds tend to play together.

Ref: Gisella Kaplan, Birds that play with others have the biggest brains - and the same may go for humans, The Conversation, 15 January 2021.

A Lucky Escape

by Nalda Paterson

Place: Back country roads, Pomona QLD.

Callout for baby juvenile feathertail glider, 10pm Wednesday night, September 2012.

Roads were very dark, no lighting and very narrow tarred road.

As pre-arranged a flashlight was waving me to stop and I knew I was at pickup site with Member Of Public (MOP).

Got out of my car and at that stage MOP was back in his car.

Feeling okay at this stage I got closer and the fellow handed me a box with an adult feathertail in it. As I was thanking him he got out of his car, a huge guy and I began to become concerned. He allowed me to see a gun on his belt as he reached into the inside of his jacket, and I thought, “This is it, I am finished, goodbye world, haven’t got enough money to leave the kids”. Crazy things one thinks of in a flash of a second.

Out of his pocket he pulled a card and he was a policeman. I was still petrified. He gave me a great dressing down, warning me of how dangerous this pickup could have been. This turned out to be a setup by police as they had warned various wildlife hospitals many times not to send us ‘lovely ladies’ out on night rescues.

Lesson learned.

Editors note: A useful reminder that we should have someone accompany us if we go on rescues after dark.

Wildlife Threat from Mouse Poison

The NSW government has requested approval from the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA—a federal body), for the use of bromadiolone to kill mice and have secured 5000 litres of the poison.

Bromadiolone is a second generation anti-coagulant poison currently used as a household rodent poison but banned from use in fields. According to WIRES fact sheets: "Small mammals including possums and bandicoots often consume poisons such as snail bait, or rat bait that has been laid out to attract and kill rats, mice, and rabbits…. Wallabies and kangaroos have been known to suffer from rodenticide poisoning…”

Although a single grain of bromadiolone-poisoned grain can kill a mouse, the mouse won’t feel sick for several days and will go on eating the poisoned grain. The poison stays in the bodies of mice even after they die. Bromoadiolone poisoning therefore also poses a danger to prey animals such as goannas, snakes, eagles and owls that eat these mice before or after they die. This secondary poisoning can result in death or other health problems.

Dr Peter Brown, leader of the rodent management research team at the CSIRO, gives the example of owls that eat mice poisoned with anti-coagulant poison and then are “unable to have successful hatching of young because there’s something wrong with the way that the eggshells form.”

"A scientific review from 2018 documented the poisoning of 31 bird, five mammal and one reptile species. Second generation aniticoaugulant rodenticides were implicated in the death of these animals.” (NB: Pindone rabbit/rat poison is also an anticoagulant and is used to kill possums in NZ.)

However, the president of the NSW Farmers Association, said the possibility of native animals being impacted was “the lesser of two evils”.

Note: The APVMA has also doubled the allowable concentration of zinc phosphide in mouse baits. These baits can also poison wildlife. They can cause a toxic gas to form in an animal’s stomach and pose a risk to anyone conducting a post mortem on poisoned wildlife.

Ref: Matilda Boseley, Australian mouse plague: ‘napalming’ rodents could kill native and domestic animals too, The Guardian, 13 May 2021; Robert Davis et. al., Mouse plague: bromadiolone will obliterate mice, but it’ll poison eagles, snakes and owls, too, The Conversation, 21 May 2021.

Wombat Media Campaign

Tony de la Fosse, our branch wombat coordinator, is running a media campaign to alert property owners about the problem of mange in wombats and to prompt them to invite WIRES to treat afflicted wombats on their properties.

"We have the personnel, expertise and the necessary chemicals to treat wombats. All we need to do is get invited onto the property and we'll treat them for free”, Tony said.

Caused by the introduced sarcoptic mite, mange has a lethal effect on wombats. "The mite burrows into the skin, lesions open up and often this results in÷the death of the animal in a slow, agonising way. The wombats literally itch themselves to death."

Ref: Mange threatening local wombats, Milton Ulladulla Times, 12 May 2021.

Dingo Eradication

Dingos are being labelled “wild dogs” by farmers and government agencies around Australia so that they can be shot freely without a backlash from those who would object to dingos being treated this way.

In fact the South Australian government is offering landowners $120 for each ‘dog' killed on their properties as well as support for traps and poisoned baits. This is clearly aimed at eradicating dingos rather than just controlling their numbers.

Mike Letnic, a professor of conservation biology and ecosystem restoration at the University of NSW, says governments and landowners have avoided the term dingo in any public language for the last 25 years.

“The reason is pretty clear,” Letnic says. “Killing wild dogs causes no objection. If we call them a wild dog they’re not a native species. But if we call them a dingo they’re a native species and that raises a range of issues.”

Farmers are concerned that dingos kill their sheep but there is scientific evidence that they keep ecosystems in balance by keeping kangaroo and feral goat numbers under control so that there is better coverage of vegetation and grass. Dingos also kill feral cats and foxes.

Some people believe that there are no genuine dingos in NSW because of interbreeding with domestic dogs but there are genetic studies that show that is not true. A 2019 study found 75% of ‘wild dogs’ tested across north-eastern NSW had mainly dingo genes and 25% were pure dingo.

Ref: Adam Morton, ‘Dingoes were here first’: the landowners who say letting ‘wild dogs’ live pays dividends, The Guardian, 22 May 2021; Sherry Landow, It’s not ‘wild dog’ management – we are just killing dingoes, UNSW media release, 1 November 2019.

Suicidal Male Antechinus

At the end of the breeding season, male antechinus drop dead, “poisoned by their own raging hormones”. In the two week breeding season (between July and September depending on species and location) the males mate with as many females as they can “in marathon sessions lasting up to 14 hours”.

During that time levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, increase in their bodies. “Surging testosterone from the super-sized testes in males causes a failure in the biological switch that turns off the cortisol. The flood of unbound cortisol results in systemic organ failure and the inevitable death of every male."

Ref: Andrew Baker, Meet 5 of Australia’s tiniest mammals, who tread a tightrope between life and death every night, The Conversation, 28 April 2021.

The War on Seals in Tasmania

The salmon industry in Tasmania has been waging a war against long-nosed fur seals that damage nets and ‘steal' their salmon, thus undermining profits. The seals are a rare and threatened species in Tasmania.

At one time the salmon farmers shot and killed seals, then when that practice was exposed they relocated thousands of them to north-west Tasmania where they interfered with fisheries there. This involved trapping them, holding them for days, sometimes without food or space, then transporting them for several hours.

Now they use deterrents that can be cruel and life threatening including the use of ‘blunt darts', water cannons, or shooting them with cloth socks containing 40 g of lead pellets. In 2016 the Tasmanian salmon industry used 39000 seal bombs that "have been shown to shatter bones of marine mammals and to kill fish within the blast vicinity". Even a human swimmer has been killed by a seal bomb.

Ref: Richard Flanagan, War on seals: The ‘cruel measures’ used by Tasmania’s salmon farming industry, The New Daily, 16 May 2021.