WA Shark Cull: No Deal says EPA

I am delighted to be able to write my first post to this blog about an event worth celebrating. It seems someone in Australia has finally seen sense and suggested baiting the beaches to lure sharks into traps perhaps isn't the best approach to reduce human interaction. After a three month trial using baited drum lines off Western Australian beaches earlier this year, The Western Australian Environment Protection Agency (EPA) has rejected the state governments proposal to continue baiting beaches and culling sharks for a further three year period. The controversial matter has been spreading through the wires of the ocean loving and environmental community and has received disapproval and condemnation accross the globe. In my humble opinion whoever suggested such an absurd solution in the first place is deeply misguided. Who would think attracting sharks to a particular point in their watery environment using food to appeal to their highly developed senses in order to deter them from coming to those precise places looking for food is a good idea?
Say you had a pack of wolves, for example, that usually eat say, ferrets and rabbits, which had happened to explore close to your farm and due to perhaps a lack of ferrets on that particular day they spot a lamb from your herd and think they'll test that out. Turns out it's very easy to catch but it doesn't really taste very good and so the wolf returns to searching for ferrets, unless perhaps circumstance has put this particular wolf in a position where it is so terribly hungry that it eats the lamb regardless of its unappealing taste. As a concerned farmer would you proceed to set delicious ferretty baits around your farm in order to draw in the wolves and kill them all? I wouldn't. Why? because it's silly. For starters without the wolves I'm going to become terribly overrun with rabbits and ferrets which will cause all kinds of problems for the health of my farm. Plus I'd be more than a little worried that the baits would entice in more wolves which may never had ventured anywhere near my farm otherwise. These surplus wolves combined with a lack of their usual food source may become even more inquisitive towards my defenseless lambs!

Over 3 months last summer 172 sharks all of which are protected by WA law were caught on drumlines along the coastline, none of which however were great whites, which they were targeting but 50 of which had their lives taken and many of the 'released alive' individuals have been rumored to be too badly injured to survive. I hope the Australian government listens to the reasonable arguments of the protestors to this proposal and no more sharks need to be killed in such an inhumane and tragic way.