00:00We're at Mulligan's Flat Woodland Sanctuary in the north of Canberra and we have a fox proof
00:05sanctuary at the back here that protects eastern quolls, eastern bettongs, bushstone curlews,
00:10largely from the impacts of foxes in the landscape and we're doing some preparatory work behind us to
00:17develop some facilities to be able to respond to bird flu should it arrive in this part of
00:22the world. We're concerned about the risks of the impacts on all wildlife, particularly going
00:28to affect the waterfowl, ducks, swans, those sorts of species but we're really worried about the
00:35crossover impacts into native mammals, those mammals I mentioned earlier and the eastern
00:39quoll particularly which is highly likely to predate upon or eat sick birds. From what we've learned
00:45overseas the bird flu can transfer to cats and foxes so there's potentially going to be impacts on
00:51domestic animals but also foxes in the broader landscape which for some of us wouldn't be too
00:56bad a thing. We use the cattle to manage biomass in the sanctuary particularly. There's a lot of
01:03questions we haven't answered yet about how we're going to manage those stock in the face of bird flu
01:07arriving and we would really be taking our lead from the agriculture sector in that in that context
01:13about what we should be doing with our stock when the bird flu arrives. One thing we've learned here at
01:18the sanctuary is that if we take foxes out of the landscape nature will recover. We've got a lot of
01:24echidnas here, we've got bush stone curlies, we've got eastern bettong surviving. I think as a nation we
01:30need to turn our attention in the future to what we're going to do about the fox problem.
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