For 10 days from Sunday 1 September, the Southern Queensland Landscapes Canine Conservation team of Tom Garrett and his springer spaniel Rocky will be scouring the coastal dunes for foxes in a bid to protect the upcoming season’s marine turtle nesting sites.
Working in partnership with Sunshine Coast and Noosa Councils and Coolum and North Shore Coast Care (CaNSCC) Tom and Rocky will begin at Noosa Heads National Park and continue south along the coastal dunes to Maroochydore.
Rocky, a gun dog with “a really good nose”, was trained by renowned conservation dog trainer Steve Austin to sniff out pest species – foxes, wild dogs and feral cats.
In this job he will let Tom know through his tail wagging and sitting at the presence of fox in a den, then Tom will fumigate the den using carbon monoxide gas which sends the foxes to sleep. Tom said being an animal lover he preferred this more humane way of killing the animals to poisoning with 1080 which was also an approved method.
The work is taking place off the back of a successful detection programs at turtle nesting areas at Deepwater National Park near Agnes Waters and Mon Repo near Bundaberg where Tom estimates they saved about 8500 turtles from fox predation.
Tom said the coastal area was home to hundreds of foxes which would both dig up and eat the turtle eggs and lie in wait for surviving hatchlings.
When in the field, Rocky wears a GPS unit so his location and search path can be recorded against what he finds, enabling Tom to produce detailed reports of the feral pests in a particular area.
The turtle season runs from November to January. To report a stranded turtle phone CaNSCC on 0478 435 377.
