DO not go out into the bush alone.
Whether it is to collect firewood, to hunt or fish, to ramble by foot or to ride your bike, you should not go alone.
Amid an alleged worsening of the shire’s long-standing wild dog problem, that is the message from local resident and Mansfield Shire Mayor, Steve Rabie, speaking in his capacity as a farmer and ratepayer rather than on behalf of council.
He said the wild dogs living and breeding and hunting and feeding out in the bush travel in packs and therefore so should we.
“Wild dogs in the shire concern me," said Mr Rabie.
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“I'm worried about what could happen.
“I have grave concerns about the amount of livestock that they're killing and the impact that’s having on our farmers.
“If we have a drought or when the program to stop shooting feral deer ends, which it will, what will the dogs eat then?
“We've got people camping in the bush, people hiking, people fishing, people riding their bikes.
“Our town relies on tourism and if we have an incident with a dog, tourism in Mansfield Shire will suffer.
“Our local economy will suffer.
“I heard a fisherman recently went into Mansfield Hunting and Fishing to buy himself a gun.
“He told them that he had been up to his waist in the river, fly fishing, and he heard dogs in the bush on both sides of the river.
“They were talking to each other as they surrounded him to bail him up.”
Mr Rabie is not the first person to express their concern about wild dogs in Mansfield Shire.
In the past weeks the Mansfield Courier has spoken to multiple concerned parties living on the land from Tolmie down to Woods Point and almost everywhere in between.
There seems to be an overwhelming consensus that the wild dog situation that farmers and landowners of the shire are contending with is merely a symptom of a bigger issue.
The increasingly complicated situation that comprises the management, or mismanagement, of not just the wild dogs but their entire ecosystem and the entire Australian bush is the unimaginably large and seemingly insurmountable problem sitting below the surface.
“I’m not exactly what you would call a greenie but I am an environmentalist,” said Mr Rabie.
“I believe in trees and I believe in looking after the land.
“I question how we are currently going about that."
Chief amongst his concerns is how we are currently managing the presence of feral animals across the state.
The program to shoot deer and other problem species from helicopters, he said, is costly, inefficient and morally problematic.
He said hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer's money is used to leave rotting carcasses in the bush.
Along with the multiple farmers from across the shire that the Courier has spoken to, Mr Rabie has expressed concern about the attempted management, the aerial culling, of feral deer.
Each individual who has spoken about the matter has repeated the exact same notion, almost word for word, in response to questions on the matter.
A full-grown sambar carcass can provide enough nutrition for a female wild dog to raise an entire litter.
Normally, without such an easy meal left behind after aerial culling, rearing a large litter would be difficult.
With less food available, mother dogs would struggle to produce enough milk, and only the strongest pups—perhaps two or three out of a dozen—would survive.
That’s nature’s way of keeping the wild dog population in check.
But local farmers say that’s no longer happening.
They argue that aerial deer culling is leaving the forest floor unnaturally stocked with easy food.
As helicopters fly overhead and shooters fire hundreds or even thousands of rounds into the herds below, the leftover venison is creating ideal conditions for wild dogs to thrive.
Nature’s usual filters aren’t working because we’re interfering with the process.
Instead of just a few surviving pups, farmers claim that nearly all are now reaching breeding age—and the cycle is accelerating.
“Not only is it an issue here in Mansfield, it's an issue elsewhere in Victoria,” said Mr Rabie, who was moved to sadness and anger when he discussed the situation in Gippsland.
“I spoke to Sonia Buckley recently, she’s the deputy mayor of East Gippsland Shire Council, down in Benambra.
“She was telling me about the program to shoot brumbies down there.
“They're shooting the brumbies but they're not shooting the foals.
“The foals are lying down next to their mothers to suckle and the dogs are coming in, attracted to the smell of a meal.
“The foals are helpless.
“It's a terrible thing, it’s inhumane.”
This follows the State Government’s decision to approve the aerial euthanasia of more than 700 koalas in Budj Bim National Park after a bushfire.
Mr Rabie has raised concerns about bushland management with councillors and the Great Forest National Park task force.
He argues that doing nothing—or simply “returning land to nature”—is not a solution, as the Australian bush has changed drastically since European settlement.
Where his great-grandparents once could drive a cart through open country, the landscape is now choked with invasive species and dense undergrowth.
With fewer Indigenous people practising traditional land care like cool burns, Mr Rabie says the bush no longer resembles what is truly natural—adding that invasive species must be managed more effectively and humanely.
“When I spoke to the Great Forest National Park task force, they asked how I would manage the bush," he said.
“I told them I would give the bush back to the hunters, to the loggers, and to the Taungurung people.
“That's how you manage it.
“The money that is being spent on aerial culling would be better spent giving licenses and bullets to hunters, paying them a bounty to remove the carcasses of invasive species from the bush.
“I believe in logging, when logging is done sustainably and the trees.
“The windows and the doors of my house are from timber logged in the area and that’s a beautiful thing.
“Councils like ours haven't got the money to look after every inch of remote road and the same goes for the bush that no one's looking after.
“What used to happen, the logging companies would fix the road up as part of their contract.
“They'd have dozers, excavators and graders and they made things accessible, they looked after all of the bush tracks and everything; they made it safer.
“Matt Burns (CEO of the Taungurung Land & Waters Council) is big on invasive species; he said they need to come out.
"He believes, with responsible management and planned cool burns, we put the bush back to what it was before European settlement."
Along with listening to the traditional custodians of the land, Mr Rabie would like the current custodians of the land listened to.
“We have to listen to the farmers who are dealing with these animals, these guys have been in the bush all their lives," he said.
“We need to see more logic in the way Spring Street are managing the bush and the way they're managing our feral animals.
“We have to talk about it because we have a wild dog problem and the problem is out of control.”
