Page 3439 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 17 September 2019
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fish, the management of aquaculture, and it protects native fish species. Amendments will also make compliance with and enforcement of fishing rules more straightforward and more effective.
The bill’s amendments improve protections for native fish and habitat. It does this by allowing the Conservator of Flora and Fauna to declare areas of critical habitat for native fish and provides associated offences and penalties for damage or destruction of this habitat. Additional offences relating to the damage or destruction of spawning areas and aquatic habitat are also included.
The declaration of critical habitat allows the community to understand what habitat is important to native fish, where this habitat is and how to better protect it. The declaration is not likely to impact recreational fishing activity in the declared areas as most fishing activity is not destructive. It will, however, protect against the removal of fallen timber or rocks which provide important habitat.
The bill also allows the urgent closure of fisheries in certain circumstances, for example, to control disease outbreak or to protect certain species of fish if an unusual environmental event makes them particularly vulnerable to overfishing. The conservator must give public notification about the closure at or near the waters affected.
As I discussed when introducing the bill, in a further effort to protect our native wildlife, provisions are included to explicitly prohibit the use of certain gear through a declaration. The declaration will initially be used to prohibit the use of enclosed yabby nets in all ACT waters in order to protect platypus and other freshwater mammals from drowning if caught in the traps. This is only intended to ban the use of gear to catch yabbies that can cause the death of native animals and other air-breathing animals. It does not restrict the catching of yabbies using permitted gear which is readily available and shown to be effective in studies undertaken by the Victorian government.
As I said in my introductory remarks, I would like to ban the sale of enclosed or opera house style traps altogether. However, my advice is that this is not possible without the agreement of the states, territories and the commonwealth. I have written to my counterparts and will continue to raise this issue through ministerial forums that I attend.
The release of invasive aquatic species back into waterways can have a significant environmental impact. For example, European carp in our waterways have caused a decline in native fish populations, and redfin perch carry disease which could significantly threaten the endangered Macquarie perch. The bill enables the Conservator of Flora and Fauna to declare certain fish, and/or certain areas, where it would be an offence to return invasive species to the water. This will allow for areas not currently impacted significantly by pest fish to remain free of invasive animals. This offers greater protection to sensitive environments and better controls around invasive fish, while still taking into account concerns raised by some members of the community that being required to kill pest fish species, if caught, would likely stop them fishing.
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