This came to me via the ADF war dogs association


Good Afternoon

The Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service, in conjunction with the Australian Government, is embarking on a project to eradicate rabbits and rodents from Macquarie Island Nature Reserve, located 1500 kilometres southeast of Tasmania in the Southern Ocean.

Intensive rabbit hunting will be required to eradicate rabbits.

Individuals with highly developed skills in training hunting dogs are invited to submit a tender for provision of fully trained dogs for the project, trained to specific standards for target and non-target species. Training of personnel to handle the dogs on Macquarie Island is also required.

The tender documentation is attached, and is being sent to you directly because of your registration of interest in this tender.
Full details of the tender requirements can be found in the Tender Specification (Part 2 of the attached document).
(See attached file: DTAE Trained Hunting Dogs for Macquarie Island RFT 141207.pdf)
If you have any queries regarding this documentation or the process, please feel free to contact
Keith Springer - either by email ( Keith.Springer@parks.tas.gov.au) or telephone 6233 7876 ( International +61 3 6233 7876).
If Keith is not available, I am happy to answer your queries.
Thank you for your time.

Yeutha May
Administrative Officer
Macquarie Island Pest Eradication Project
Parks and Wildlife Service

Phone: 03 6233 2691
Fax: 03 6233 6559

I saw that Bakesy and for a moment thought about a tender,there are an est 100,000 rabbits there and as they are being sold now for around $10 each there is a projected million bucks less costs income stream....all one needs is a good woman,a good gun or two and a couple of good dogs to load into the 4wd and start spotlighting ,places that have never been shot in will have the good shooter knocking over 3 to 500 pair a night and for a younger keen fella it would be ideal....gotta have the sheila though wink wink

Haha, Macquarie Island hey...

Ok if you're into ice, snow, penguins and seals I suppose.
I have a mate who went down for a 12 month stint working at the weather station there.
Looks like a very wild, very cold, wet, remote and very lonely place to me. Literally a thousand miles from anywhere.
I think there are only a dozen people on the whole island, all blokes or maybe one or two hairy arm-pitted sheilas, all scientist types.
There's just no way you could cruise around in a 4WD with your arm out the window spotlighting because a) It's probably at or below 0c for most of the year b) no roads (and probably no 4wds) at all.
You would be on foot with a backpack amongst the snow and ice, in full winter gear and dodging around the elephant seals.
There's also no way you could get the rabbits you shoot out of the place either, there are only a handful of boat visits a year to resupply the weather station with food etc.

Good luck.

Its got me buggered what they want the dogs for. Flushing? Chasing? going down burrows? Buggered if I know.

Four wheel m/bike is low impact on terrain and the snow and ice is not constant for the year,if it was the rabbits wouldnt be a problem at all,i went into

here http://www.aad.gov.au/default.asp?casid=25718

and as you can see the bloody rabbit pictured (on maq is) is on grass which is evident at the summer period,its not as bad as Antartica weather at all.

Supply ships would handle freezer containers of rabbits with no problem as done from some of the more remote places on our mainland if there is a demand there is a way to get it in order.

You are right too bakesy about the dogs,what bloody for,pointing to a gun in tussocks is about it i reckon.

Just introduce Ferrets, Stoats, Feral Cats,and a few other nasty critters.
That's what they did in NZ