It has been a tough 2 year learning curve

Learning that Council caught a fox in order to protect our endangered shorebirds was both exciting and totally devastating at the same time.

I’ve had such an enormous learning curve in the last 2 years. I still have problems reconciling my pre-Maianbar life with what I now need to deal with here.

Before you come to an area like this it is quite easy to fall into the trap of all “wildlife” has a right to life.

I was mostly a weekender for around 15 years and loved all the “wildlife”.

Then you live here permanently.

You notice animals like the bandicoots have disappeared from your garden. You see groups of shorebirds that used to be here for a full season, but only now briefly stopping by. Trees where the tawny owls used to have nests, have been cut down.

You find through bird counts that you are sharing birds with Boat Harbour, an even worse area than here as they have 4 wheel driving on the beach plus off lead dogs, but apparently that is home to some birds, they stick it out until there is no other choice and flee here.

From here where do the birds go? There is no space left in Botany Bay. A small area was given over to them at Towra Reserve but they used to have all of Botany Bay before airports, oil refineries and the Kurnell and Woolooware areas that is now being developed too quickly for wildlife to cope with.

So it has been a steep learning curve for me. I didn’t know before two years ago that birds even layed eggs on a beach!

I have had to learn how to best to set up fence lines, how to find and train volunteers, how to engage with Council to gain and keep support given some local opposition, how to do presentations in front of a group of people (that was possibly the most terrifying), how to catch foxes ethically, what signs work best, how to engage with people that are just out for a day on the beach and know nothing of endangered birds.

So excuse me if I was backwards and forwards on the joy of catching a fox. It is a big brain shift in only two years. I am coming to terms that sometimes you need to sacrifice one for the other, and am having to take my lead from Parks groups that are saving an endangered species group (Devils in Tassie) to the detriment of other native wildlife. That in itself was a big shift, choosing one native species over another. What happens if we concentrate on just the higher profile species that could end up killing the lesser?

So saving non-native wildlife really should be at the bottom of the pile.

In Australia, if you care to look, we are close to having mass species extinctions. The vast number gets hidden because most people are not media savvy so they do not know how to engage media or run a campaign to save a species.

If you happen to share an area with an endangered species you can suffer quite vocal local complaints. That may not be the majority opinion of people that live in an area but it can be enough to back you and Council/Government down.

Such a shame that we may stand by and see the endangered shorebirds go, they will be the first group to go, before people may feel we have reached a point too far for wildlife.