Remember the Grant Picnic Grounds in Kalista?? Where hundreds of tourists feed wild birds.
Well, I talked to some people who tried to shut this place down years ago, unsucessful, it's still operating. Very cleverly they countered everything thrown at them by doing their best to fend off every angle they could be attacked from. There are signs up now, covering their arses against every possible . I don't think there is any way to help those birds and close the place down.
I show you the signs and even some above taps to wash your hands, although I didn't see tourists washing their hands. You can make up your own mind about this place, if you can't read the signs, go into my Flickr Account to enlarge them.
( the photos aren't all that good, my husband took them, sorry) please read them and think about the cunning way they are formulated. Let me know what you think?
This is one more clever sign :
M-L
I find the last one the most cunning, it tells you about the bacteria and viruses they birds carry, even not to handel feathers. By doing that, they cover getting sued by anyone contracting any illness.
M-L
Who's exploiting who?
Birds were exploiting us first - a long time ago. The first grain grown in Australia was plundered by king parrots, rosellas and currawongs. Naturalist George Caley, arriving in Sydney in the 1800's when the colony was twelve years old, recorded this. Blue wrens skipped through his garden and flycatchers danced on his roof.
If you can't stop the birds, how are you going stop the Homosapiens.?
Nightowl
See it! Hear it!
Mid-North Coast NSW
It's intersting how they put signs up as if they care about the birds. If they really cared they wouldn't build a feeding enclosure and bus circle.
Cheers, Owen.
Hi Nightowl, I thought about not answering to the "nonsense" you are saying, because I feel you are trying to make me say something I might regret later, but I will. Haven't heard anything more ridiculous than: birds were exploiting us first . (next would be to say, they deserved to be shot?) Maybe those early settlers should have stayed in the countries they came from, instead of chopping trees down and destroying the beautiful fauna and flora in this land that didn't belong to them in the first place, and was cared for and looked after the Aboriginal people for thousands of years.
M-L
I suggest that the signs are there to cover 2 issues - the many complaints about the impact of feeding (the maximum quantity and only our 'quality controlled' seed) and any possible legal claims from a tourist getting ill (don't touch feathers, wash your hands, etc).
I was going to say that the words would have been drafted by a solicitor but they seem to be too brief
Peter
The other sad fact is, those signs are formulated and put up by Parks Victoria, because they must be very worried about any tourist catching diseases? (that should give us something to think about?)
M-L
Araminta, thanks so much for the photos of those signs which are a stark reminder of why I sometimes see red. What a classic piece of blah. No wonder people are disillusioned with authorities when they put out spin like this. A few comments:
Nightowl, birds have yet to evolve to the stage where they're able to take responsibility for the decisions they make about exploitation. I'm very concerned about statements that place responsibility on birds for exploitation when they clearly lack the capacity for the consequences of their decisions. It's rather like punishing a baby human for crying. However, Homo sapiens does have the capacity to learn & change. All it needs is the opportunity & motivation to do so. In the case of the tea room tourists it seems they've lacked at least the opportunity in that they, perhaps, haven't encountered information about the importance of birds being able to seek their natural food sources. As for the tea rooms, their motivation would be profits which would almost certainly be stronger than any motivation to benefit wildlife.
Yes, profits for the tea room and mis-information for the tourists. It would be nice if the tourists were asked instead to donate to the making of nest boxes. Little remote computer cameras are very good these days and could be installed in the nest boxes to show tourists the activity inside. That way the tourists get first hand experience for their money without the risk of catching bubonic plague from the birds.
Good thinking, Night Parrot. That's the sort of education the tea rooms have the potential for being involved in.
Night Parrot and Woko, I can see you have the same "problem" I have, almost an illness, IDEALISM. Unfortunately not a contageous disease, and somehow commercialism seems to prevent people from catching it. I have to telll you, the owners of those tea rooms are not interested in doing anything else apart from making money.
M-L
Who is the numbskull that allowed this idiotic practice to take place? Which government office? Schiess ihnen! Jetzt und schnell!
I tell you how God damned stupid the bureaucrats are in my neck of the woods. At a place called Pugh's Lagoon, Richmond, are a couple of nice ponds with lots of tame waterbirds. These birds became tame because of people's actions, feeding them with bread etc. Which is most likely innocently done and people do genuinely feel they're helping the birds. I occasionally talk with the people when I photograph there and most seem to understand what I explain to them in my nicest manner (hard, but I can manage) LOL.
Some time ago I sent a note to Hawkesbury City Council asking for help in erecting signs and educating the people about feeding the birds, in other words, not to feed is better practice. Then some total idiot came back to me saying the place is popular with fishermen and they cannot stop them from being there. I clearly outlined that people were feeding birds because they feel sorry for them and my e-mail was not about fishermen. How dumb are these council people? GOD!
Well put Akos, what I've been doing though, when I'm in the area, I take my camera and stand next to the tourists getting off the buses and talk to people, explaining what it does to the birds. Asians get very worried by any bird diseases, last time I went there a large group went back to the bus. It won't take very long before I will get banned from the site. Some locals have started to warn people about getting sick. Well,if scaring helps to keep tourists away, so be it. They do massive promotion though, on plains flying into Melbourne, they show videos of the place as one of Melbourne's best attractions, to get close to "wild birds"
Makes me as angry as it does you.
M-L
It's all about the money. Period. End of sentence.
In a Previous post I commented that birds are exploiting mankind and there were some negative responses to this comment. I have been offline for some time because of work but needed to better my earlier comment.
The word 'first ' in the Oxford dictionary. "Earliest in time or order "
So what I mean is I don't think they had Grants picnic grounds or any other bird feeding parks around in Australia.
As to "was not going answering back to " nonsense" or not going there again" I think you said that before. And just like the birds who can't help themselves either - Well Well!
Let's face it. Urban dwellers all feed birds one way or other...
Having fed a bird as a child gave us interaction and probably our love of birds in the first place, and we have all done that.
Having a mown lawn helps magpies and willy wag tails.
Having a swimming pool, pee wees pluck insects from the surface.
Having a dog or cat, bowerbirds and currawongs steal food from their bowls.
Having planted a hybrid grevillea, stops the movement of a honeyeater.
Having flushed the loo, sewage-fattened worms for migration waders.
Having been a passenger in a motor vehicle, insects get caught in the grill and butcher birds pick them out.
Having put the rubbish bin out, ends up at the tip. Attracts hundreds of gulls and ravens.
Having a light on at night while posting on birds in backyards attracts insects to the window which are eaten by wattle birds and swallows in morning - unless you're living in the dark!
So what are these examples showing? That nature is more opportunistic than we think. That birds aren't always fixed in their ways and that they will exploit the opportunities we provide.
And just because you mention aborigines - top-end explorer Ludwig Leichhardt saw Chestnut-quilled rock pigeons at a well dug by aborigines. His words "Clustered like flies around a drop of honey."
We need each other, all this has been happening for thousands of years and it will continue even when we are gone!
P.s I know where your're coming from and I agree, to a certain point, but just trying to let you know it's just not there - its happening all around us.
Every bush or shrub we plant is artificial feeding unless it is endemic to the area you live....
Nightowl...
See it! Hear it!
Mid-North Coast NSW
Thanks Nightowl, I have changed my mind regarding: was not going to answer back to......
I will always " go there ", ( wherever that might be ?) ,and answer back to "nonsense".
M-L
This is sad to see, Parks Victoria should be protecting our native fauna (& flora). I would have to agree with Akos and Araminta that it is all about the money. The government has a lot to answer for. The fact is that if the they wanted to they would ban it but money speaks louder.
Araminta, I have never been there so I wouldn't know but if there are all these tourists are signs written in their language, is someone actually translating all the information?
Jackie
Hi Jackie, yes, those signs are written in a few Asian languages, even the ones telling you to wash your hands before and after the feeding, so you don't catch anything from the birds, and the birds don't catch anything from you. I have watched many buses turn up with mostly Asian tourists, they head straight for the birds, I didn't see a single person wash their hands.
M-L
Hi Darin. Thanks for the context for your comments about birds exploiting humans. They certainly made your point much clearer.
My concern is that humans with their technology, consumerism & environmental destruction have become so pervasive that the birds & other wildlife are being forced out of existence no matter how much some (but by no means all) bird species are able to exploit human activities. Even that exploitation is often to the birds' ultimate detriment. E.g., eating human-supplied food.
Hi again Araminta, I have been doing a little research into this. The more I look the more I am disgusted with what is going on. I have provided some information below. It shows how hypercritical they are and it is a classic case of "Do as I say, not as I do" for the government & Parks Victoria.
Let me know what your thoughts are.
Victorian Consolidated Regulations
National Parks (Park) Regulations 2003 - SECT 9
Interfering with animals
9. Interfering with animals
(1) A person must not, in a park, disturb, harass, remove, hunt, capture,
take, kill or injure or otherwise destroy or interfere with any fauna or other
animal or destroy, disturb or interfere with the nest, bower, display mound,
lair or burrow of any fauna or other animal.
Penalty: 20 penalty units.
(2) A person must not, in a park-
(a) feed, offer food or offer any object as food to any fauna or other
animal, where the animal is not lawfully brought into the park; or
(b) permit or allow food to be taken from the possession of the person by
any fauna or other animal.
The below information is taken directly from Parks Victoria website.
Grants Picnic Ground sits within the Sherbrooke Forest, the largest section of Dandenong Ranges National Park. A number of walking tracks, starting from the picnic grounds, enable you to discover some of the plants and animals of Sherbrooke.
Bird Feeding Area
There is a bird feeding area at Grants Picnic Ground.
Visitors must purchase a token from ‘Grants on Sherbrooke’ kiosk to enable them to enter the fenced Bird Feeding area and obtain a measured amount of seed to be offered to the wild birds. Visitors are not permitted to bring in their own seed nor offer seed or other food items to birds outside of the Bird Feeding Area.
There are no other areas within the Dandenong Ranges National Park where seed can be offered to native birds. The below information is taken from the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988.
Version No. 035
Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988
No. 47 of 1988
Version incorporating amendments as at 5 October 2007
On page 7 of doc (page 11 on PDF)
wild means in an independent unpossessed or natural state and not in an intentionally cultivated or domesticated or captive state, regardless of the location or land tenure;
Thanks Jackie for posting this information, I hope many people on here will read it. The whole thing just blows my mind. As Cath& Shane told me before, just 1 Km down the road from there people get fined ($130) for feeding wild birds. If you read the signs I posted again, the perversity of it really hits you in the face.
M-L
Has this hypocrisy been brought to the attention of a, hopefully, fully embarrassed Minister of Feeding Birds?