Monaro farmers to the west and north-west of Cooma have voted to proceed with a Stage One 19km wild dog fence to curb continuing attacks on their sheep.
Although they say the ACT Parks and Conservation Service and trappers with the South-East Local Land Services are doing an excellent job at controlling wild dogs they want an additional tool to deal with the scourge of attacks.
The Shannons Flat wild dog committee that includes landholders from Michelago in an arc right round to Shannons Flat on the NSW side of the ACT border, voted 10-3 to proceed with the fence plan that took four landholders 18 months to agree on the route of the fence.
Farmer Brian Clifford said the fence would be an essential tool for farmers in controlling dogs. Mr Clifford said he understood farmers at the end of the fence would be concerned that dogs might be directed down there way, but he said further stages of the fence would be on the table.
The fence, that is yet to receive any funding, would by an exclusion fence with eight wires, four of them hot wires. Wildlife such as echidnas would still be able to get through.
"Farmers will do the fence maintenance," farmer and proponent Rowan McDonald said.
He imagined the cost of the fence would be about $12 a metre. "This will benefit the whole area, not just us," he said. "This will benefit everyone right through to Cooma."
The group was told to expect any fence to be "smashed" by wildlife in the first three months, as animals including wombats would want to get through, but problems would settle down after that.
There was a plan to clear vegetation up to 30m along the fence, but this had been reduced to 6m.
Mr Clifford said he believed the fence would meet native vegetation code requirements.
Similar hot wire fences in Victoria had been successful. It was not believed Australian Wool Innovation would fund the fence. The Land was told recently that farmers could expect one hole every 14 days per kilometre on the fence, and ongoing maintenance would be a big job.
The committee heard that "putting the fence up is the easy bit, maintaining and chasing the last dogs inside the fence is where the big effort is". Mr Clifford said that "if we don't make a start on the fence now, nothing will happen" and it could take another 10 years to get it up and running.
He admitted there was a lot of passion over building such a fence. The Local Land Services was requested to help forward the fence proposal.
"Once you put a fence up there's always somebody at the end of it," one said.
John Ellicott
journalist and author
journalist and author
