Western Australia’s Environmental Protection Authority will be reviewing the West Australian government’s plan to extend its shark bait and cull program to three years from its start in January 2014. Currently the program is targeting bull, tiger, great white, and mako sharks, the latter two of which are protected species. The sharks are baited using lines of floating oil drums 72 units long placed off of popular beaches located in Perth and the surrounding areas. Once they come for the bait, they are shot and killed. The current program, slated to run for 13 and a half weeks this summer (starting in January as their seasons are opposite from ours), has seen the potential to expand to 22 weeks every summer for 3 consecutive years. Despite 11 people being killed by sharks since 2000, seven of which died since 2010, the vast majority of the 10,000 public comments and write-ins about the project have been negative.

The problems that the Environmental Protection Authority must consider are the impacts on the four shark populations, two of which are protected species, the impact on the environment with less apex predators such as sharks, and how the 72 unit drum line placed off the coasts of popular beaches in Perth and west-southwestern Australia. Gerry Waneck, vice-president of Western Australians for Shark Conservation, has said on the project “They’ve only killed tiger sharks so far, which are probably the least aggressive sharks in terms of attacking humans,” and “The drum lines aren’t protecting people at all, the bait is actually attracting more sharks towards beaches.”

Link Here