Is it accepted? Will it work?

There are two simple criteria to test the effectiveness & efficiency of any contentious public policy:

Is it accepted?
Will it work?

Question 1: The community’s response to any emergency, in large measure, is reliant on whether sufficient ordinary citizens are personally convinced by what is announced AND then motivated by the adverse consequences. [E.g. serious fire threat, disease outbreak, food-safety risk, pollution incident, tsunami or storm warning, etc]

Genuinely expressed conviction shown through numerous personal experiences (i.e. sufficient numbers of recognized individuals being steadfastly and confidently convinced) can build confidence and co-operation throughout the community. This engenders a shared responsibility and a shared response.

Community acceptance of an important realisation is derived from a steadfast trust in (a) the credibility of eye-witnesses, (b) independent repeatability of that truth and (c) open and formal confirmation of that reality. In short, does it add up?

In the case of precautionary responses to controversial threats a methodical and open approach supporting the risk assessment and risk management approach is recommended.

Community confidence is paramount to the acceptance of public policy processes (top-down) and for their participation (bottom up).

Despite the fox incidents that have occurred since the much publicised escape of a single live fox at the seaport at Burnie in 1998, discernable apathy and lack of community acceptance surrounding the fox task force program remains. This has been regularly expressed in the mainstream media’s trivialisation of the issues [cartoons and some reportage], in letters to three Tasmanian newspapers and several investigative stories now written or televised on this topic.

Much of the embedded scepticism is directed to the confused public storylines rather than an outright rejection for the need to keep Tasmania fox-free.

A critical gauge of overall acceptance of the government’s storyline on foxes has been the somewhat qualified endorsement of the public policy approach by conservation biologists and ecologists. Whilst there is an empirical acknowledgement of the threat an established fox population poses for Tasmania’s biodiversity, it is regrettable that very few scientists have actually undertaken a methodical analysis of the forensic and diagnostic evidence that has been presented.

Various responses are now in the public record (including Hansard) to explain why, after 7 years operation of this program, there remain critical gaps in biological data that is required to conclusively connect the recovery of physical evidence [e.g. investigations of dead foxes or suspicious animal attacks; the recovery fox-positive faeces] to the actual physical presence of wild fox(es) at those locations.

Recommendation: In order to gain universal public acceptance and confidence that foxes ARE free-ranging and breeding in all areas where their faeces have recently been recovered, further efforts are required to obtain compelling, repeatable and conclusive field evidence of fox presence.

Question 2: Ultimately the answer to this vital question relies on the critical application a decision-making framework based on a detailed understanding of the unwanted organism being targeted (fox), a detailed knowledge of the target ecology that the organism has entered (Tasmania) and a realistic appraisal of the effectiveness of the available eradication or control tools.

A discussion paper presented to this Committee in March 2009 – Assumptions in relation to Foxes in Tasmania – was a genuine attempt to support such a decision-making framework approach.

It reviews the key assumptions and historical information relevant to fox presence and establishment in Tasmania. Question 2 and Question 1 are, in my view, inexorably linked.

Once there is government & community consensus that an unwanted organism (in this case, a medium-sized mammal – the red fox) has recently entered, potentially become established and then spread, application of a decision-making framework allows a science-based (non-political) assessment to take place.

A: Irrespective of effectiveness of current efforts to eradicate foxes in Tasmania, what is the likelihood that foxes will re-enter again and again?
B: Given a selective application of border biosecurity protection and reports where fox releases were allegedly attempted on numerous occasions since their establishment in Victoria in the 1870’s, what particular factors might have kept any resident foxes (and their possible progeny) in Tasmania at low density or even eradicated them?
C: What is the basis for the conviction that the use of the currently applied tool of eradication – namely the deployment of thousands of individually buried 1080-meat baits [FoxOff™] – will, if applied for a sufficiently prolonged period, be effective at killing all foxes across their favoured habitats of Tasmania and of itself not be have an adverse impact to biodiversity?
D: What natural ecological processes – uniquely Tasmanian – might actually have prevented and continue to prevent the growth in the population of wild Tasmanian foxes?
E: What human activities – applied exclusively in Tasmania – might have prevented the growth in the population of wild Tasmanian foxes?

Recommendation: Application of a decision-making framework is a means of critical evaluation of current and future fox task force activities. Since considerable quantities of taxpayer funds are used in this program, it is absolutely essential that the efficacy of natural ecological processes as well as techniques applied by humans for fox eradication or control is evaluated.

Conclusion: This has been a missed opportunity to develop a ‘shared responsibility’ approach between Government and the Tasmanian community to significant feral animal threat.

The budget for the fox program has constituted a considerable proportion of the DPIPWE Nature Conservation and Biodiversity funding over several years through both the Commonwealth and Tasmanian governments.

In my view, the fox task force program has failed these two criteria for assessing its effectiveness and efficiency. In retrospect both the political and the scientific management of this program might have been handled differently.

We will never know what a cost-effective and genuinely open approach to managing this type of perceived threat might have achieved.

Community participation in my view has been squandered with too much emphasis on a top-down, taxpayer-funded model.

If the Tasmanian government and its Departmental advisors in 2002 were convinced that there were localised populations of free-ranging foxes in Tasmania AND that successful removal of those animals was achievable using the currently available tools of eradication, where was the leadership and enabling legislation to support that aim?

With the scaling back of fox eradication effort, in line with diminished taxpayer resources, these two criteria of public policy efficacy remain fundamental – not only to this program but further environmental threats that Tasmania will face in the decades to come.

Prepared by: David Obendorf, registered veterinarian
2 November, 2009; also download
Parliamentary Inquiry in relation to Foxes in Tasmania.doc