The enterprise is to humanely lure feral goats from destroying endangered plant species essential for native wildlife and insects: Tip Mountain, situated at the end of Gulf Road, Emmaville. 3000 acres on on the NSW New England Tablelands and borders the Torrington State conservation area (SCA). The SCA encompasses 30,030 hectares of land on the north-eastern side of the Beardy River, extending northwards to the plains leading into the Dumaresq River. The SCA is essentially a plateau that is surrounded by low range hills and landscapes modified for agriculture. It is an important vegetation remnant of the New England Tableland and provides protection for rare or endangered plant species. Presently and I might say seldomly National Parks and Wildlife Services conducts radio-collared goat program in conjunction with helicopter shooting. As a property owner beside the park this is most ineffective and feral goats are flourishing in great numbers. Hence native vegetation is suffering leaving less and less food for the native animals, insects and especially bees. However (pictured above) we have ran various successful trials to draw these goats out on to our private land and humanely round them up for processing at a local agent called AUSGOAT in Glen Innes. I feel strongly that with a little funding this continued action will keep the feral population under control and the processing revenue could become self funding to save even more native wildlife.

Feral goats are enticed by salt blocks and lucerne over ramps and fences into holding paddocks and hence removed for processing  allowing native species in the conservation territory to thrive.

We can do this with your help and save the native species and promote plant growth.

Aerial picture of Tip Mountain that boarders the conservation area littered with feral goats.Feral goats eating food meant for wildlifeThe funds will be used to purchase holding pens $3,000 and transport costs ($150 return trip) as we need a vehicle to transport at least 50 feral goats at a time. We estimate the cost of a second hand livestock truck to be around $25,000 and the remaining costs are ramps ($1,000), lucerne (100 bales per annum @ $14.00 each), salt licks ($1,500 per annum), dredging ($400), round up dogs (purchase $800 each plus feed and maintenace), taging and labour (up to $1,500 each round up). This is a very conservative estimate. The goats are immensly attracted to lucerne and salt licks and therefore congregate around these lures. Overall I estimate at least at six roundups per year of around 500 goats in total. This will yield around $13,000 to pay for ongoing musters and baits not to mention fuel costs year on year. It is important that with your pledged funds in year one we can make a serious dent in depleting goat numbers thus keeping future breeding numbers down and assisting the wallabies, emus, kangaroos and insects.

The challenge is to free these guys to roam on native land that was theirs before the ferals were introduced!