NT: Town prepares for New Year's Eve feral pig and cat shootout

AAP General News (Australia)
12-16-2003
NT: Town prepares for New Year's Eve feral pig and cat shootout

By Karen Michelmore

DARWIN, Dec 16 AAP - Forget traditional fireworks, a Northern Territory outback town
has found another way to bring in the New Year with a bang.

The remote gold mining town of Pine Creek, 200km south of Darwin, is preparing for
a wild pig and feral cat hunt - to the horror of animal welfare groups.

Cash prizes will be given to the person who bags the biggest boar and feral cat, with
no rules on how the animals should be caught and killed.

"You can get them anyhow you like - with dynamite or you can run them over," organiser
Rod Haines said.

Participants could even enter fresh road kill, he said.

"If there are any backpackers travelling along and they want to nominate in it and
they see something across the road that's not too squashed and not too rotten they can
bring it in and have it weighed," he said.

Mr Haines said the event, now in its third year, was aimed at helping reduce the number
of feral animals around the town.

He said at least 70 people were expected to nominate this year, bagging as many as
200 boars between them over the five-day event which ends with a party on New Year's Eve.

But the RSPCA has slammed the event, warning people who take part may be prosecuted.

"To even make this kind of suggestion indicates a blood lust which is completely out
of court in today's society," RSPCA NT chief executive officer Jim McNally said.

"And to use the methods suggested would open the perpetrators to prosecution.

"The RSPCA has once again called on the authorities to ban events such as this which
have no place in a humane society."

Mr McNally said the RSPCA understood feral animal numbers needed to be reduced from time to time.

"... when this needs to be done it should be done under government supervision by trained
operators using the most humane method available," he said.

But Mr Haines said he was just "giving mother nature a hand".

"Unless someone can come up with a better idea I'd like to hear it, we have got to
give mother nature a hand," he said.

"These animals destroy what our tourists come here to see.

"I want to be able to show my grandchildren all the animals, I don't want to show them
feral pigs, cats, toads, camels.

"We've got to start making a stand."

AAP km/jv/jlw

KEYWORD: PIG

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