SAGFA PLAYS A KEY ROLE IN GOVERNMENT DECISION TO BAN INSHORE NETTING IN SOUTH AUSTRALIAN WATERS
For a decade the South Australian Fishery Advisory Council has been ringing the alarm bells on the declining stocks of marine scale-fish stocks in local waters.
During this period...
Graham Woollard (SAGFA Executive Officer) is Chairman of SARFAC and State President, Ian Guest, is also on the SARFAC Board.
After ten years of knocking on doors, making numerous submissions to Fishery Management Committees and Ministers (we had 5 Ministers of Fisheries and 3 Fishery Directors during this period) SARFAC took off the gloves late last year and increased the tempo of their efforts.
During the past six months activity has been intense with many letters being sent to the Premier, the Minister and his Cabinet Colleagues. There has been an orchestrated campaign of letter writing to the media, a petition circulated which collected over 16,000 signatures, a Bill introduced in the Upper House by the Democrats to ban the nets in Gulf of St Vincent and many television, radio and newspaper interviews. Hundreds of letters from angry shack-owners and recreational anglers were also sent to parliamentarians from all sides of the house.
Our strategy was to take the moral high ground and use the media to swing public support behind the campaign. It was the right strategy and it worked brilliantly.
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