Status: Completed
Start date: 1 April 2018
Completion date: 30 June 2022
Project code: P01-L-005
Species/Threats: Feral goats, Feral pigs, Wild dogs
Substantial investments have been made in pest-proof netting fences (‘cluster fences’) around grazing properties in western Queensland.
To inform future cluster-fencing activities, the project team assessed whether exclusion fencing is effective in Queensland – specifically, the reduction in wild dog predation and reduction in competition from kangaroos.
There was little evidence of improvement in ground cover since cluster fences were set up in 2015, and it even declined in some areas. Wild dog activity inside cluster fences was much less than in traditionally fenced properties, but variations in climate, land-type productivity and reproductive diseases made it difficult to tease out the differences caused by cluster fences.
The objective of this project was:
Modelling procedures have been established to run sensitivity analysis for multiple clusters for multiple years with the option of changing domestic livestock and macropod density independently. Interim simulation modelling suggests that the sensitivity of cover to changes in total grazing pressure is low (less than 10% for a 40% change in total grazing pressure in the Morven cluster).
Wild dog activity inside the Morven cluster continues to be significantly lower than the activity detected outside the cluster. There is no evidence of an increase in other predator activity inside the cluster in response to lower wild dog activity.
Castle G, Smith D, Allen LR, and Allen BL (2021) Terrestrial mesopredators did not increase after top-predator removal in a large-scale experimental test of mesopredator release theory Scientific Reports 11(18205). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-97634-4.
Castle G, Smith D, Allen LR, Carter J, Elsworth P and Allen BL (2022) Top-predator removal does not cause trophic cascades in Australian rangeland ecosystems Food Webs 31(00229). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fooweb.2022.e00229