No WA Shark Cull

In November 2013, in response to a fatal shark attack on a surfer, the State Government announced it would install baited drum line hooks off Perth and the State’s South-West coastline with the intention of hunting and killing large sharks. The announcement was made after a 15-month period in which no fatal shark attack had occurred in Western Australian waters, while over a dozen people had drowned off our coast.

Against strong community opposition and doubts whether the strategy would do anything to reduce attacks, the drum lines were implemented on Australia Day long weekend in late January 2014. Although the policy was described as targeting large ‘dangerous’ sharks over three metres in length (including great white, tiger and bull sharks), it swiftly become clear that many under-size sharks were being caught, including non-target species. If the undersized captured sharks did not die on the drum lines, they were shot or in numerous documented cases, released in a condition in which survival was unlikely. 

With no evidence that this plan will make people safer and growing evidence that the sharks impaled on the hooks or released in poor condition may in fact be attracting bigger predators, the Greens have fought in parliament at a State and Federal level to end the catch and kill strategy: an expensive, ineffective policy grounded by fear rather than fact.

At a state level Lynn MacLaren has challenged the lack of science and due process in the policy’s development through questions in parliament, and spoken at protests to collectively more than 10,000 people with anti-cull organisations that include Sea Shepherd, West Australians for Shark Conservation and Animal Amnesty.

The battle continues to end WA’s shark cull, through continued political pressure and community opposition as well as appeals to environmental agencies and a legal challenge.

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