Game Council New South Wales
Encyclopedia
Game Council New South Wales was established in 2002 under the Game and Feral Animal Control Act 2002
Game and Feral Animal Control Act 2002
The Game and Feral Animal Control Act 2002 is an act to manage and regulate the hunting of game in New South Wales in Australia.The Act established the Game Council New South Wales.-External links:* at the New South Wales Government...

 ('the Act') as a New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

 statutory authority, subject to the control and direction of the Minister for Primary Industries. Its aim is to provide for the effective management of introduced species
Invasive species in Australia
Invasive species are a serious threat to the native biodiversity of Australia and are an ongoing cost to Australian agriculture.Management and the prevention of the introduction of new invasive species are key environmental and agricultural policy issues for the Australian federal and state...

of game animals, as well as promoting responsible and orderly hunting of those game animals on public and private land and of certain pest animals on public land.

The Act specifies a range of functions for the Game Council centred on administering the NSW game hunting licensing system, representing the interests of game hunters, making recommendations and providing advice to the Minister on game and feral animal control, liaising with other stakeholders in managing game and feral animals, promoting and funding research into game and feral animal control issues and engaging in such other activities relating to the objects of the Act as are prescribed by the regulations.

During 2008, the AECGroup conducted the first Public Benefit Assessment (PBA) of the Game Council. The PBA is updated each year based on survey data from licence holders and in the 2009-10 financial year there was again an increase in public benefit reported. Game Council's activities are reported as a community service and a cost-effective method of achieving its natural resource management objectives, specifically game and feral animal control.

Voluntary conservation hunting provides a number of genuine, measurable Natural, Social and Economic benefits to NSW. Each year an Environmental Scorecard is published to track these benefits. The 2010 scorecard lists the following:

The NSW Natural Environment benefits from:
  • More than 40,000 game and feral animals removed from declared State forests since 2006.
  • Up to 620,000 game and feral animals removed from private land in NSW annually by licensed Voluntary Conservation Hunters.


The NSW Economic Environment benefits from:
  • Direct and indirect economic benefit from annual expenditure by Game Hunting Licence Holders estimated at $50.1 Million - most of this in country towns and rural communities.
  • 900 industry jobs (660 jobs in rural NSW)


The NSW Social Environment benefits from:
  • Development of the
  • 16,000 hunters accredited or participated in training schemes.
  • Education and hunting clinics and workshops improving hunter training.
  • Mandatory attached to every NSW Game Hunting Licence.
  • Bush Alert crime reporting initiative to catch illegal hunters and report rural crime.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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