G’day everyone,
A friend notified me of an article the Sydney Morning Herald ran yesterday regarding poaching @ Long Reef. Link to article: http://bit.ly/j9OMgl
The article talks about protecting marine life like the Eastern Water Dragon (I haven’t ever seen one at Longy), and the poaching of sea urchins, shellfish, cunjevoi, sea snails.
It recognizes that poaching of marine life is a problem at places like Long Reef, but fails to say whether any additional measures will be taken other then the voluntary work done by Shannon Leckie who plans to video tape poachers in the act and then refer them onto the police.
The article unfortunately doesn’t mention anything about the bird life that the reef supports. Which is a pity as birds like the Sooty Oystercatchers eat the limpets, cunjevoi and Sea Urchins, and Ruddy Turnstones eat only certain types of Limpets. A study was done by Ricki Coughlan on this a few years ago
Nearly every weekend you can go to the reef and see someone picking shells, periwinkles, urchins etc off the reef. I’ve spoken to some people on some occasions that this is illegal to do, and nearly everyone has responded by putting them back. The odd person feels it’s their right to take what they want, even though there are signs up asking people not to do so. It seems though that most people just don’t read the huge big sign near the carpark @ Brownwater asking them not to take things from the reef.
I’ve had a chat to council rangers before about this and about people walking their dogs out on the reef. They are aware of what happens but they feel they don’t have the man power to properly address this issue.
Which is sad, because the reef is such a fantastic place for people to see marine wildlife and birdlife, up close. More needs to be done to look after this precious resource before its picked clean.
Regards,
Mark
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