Due to large numbers of threatened Freckled and Blue-billed Ducks, CADS pushed for this wetland to be closed to shooting, but the request was unsuccessful. On the opening morning, a barrage of shooting started 20 minutes early, yet the many regulating officers and police present were powerless to stop it. Game Management Authority compliance officers stayed on shore due to OH&S regulations. Rescuers exposed the massacre and recovered 183 illegally shot threatened species and 296 protected birds. Altogether that year, 1,500 dead birds were delivered to politicians and around 10,000 spent shotgun cartridges were left outside Agriculture Minister Jaala Pulford’s office in Ballarat.

Ch 9 News, 18 March 2017 – Opening of the recreational duck shooting season

Channel 7 News, 18 March 2017 – Opening of the 2017 Recreational Duck Shooting Season in Victoria

25 March, 2017 – 3AW News – Dead Birds Dumped Outside the Premier’s Office

ABC 7.30 program, 29 March 2017 – Rescuers find pits of dead birds, which leads to the Pegasus inquiry

29 March 2017 ABC Transcript 1

Channel 9 Regional News – Call for the 2018 Duck Shooting Season to be Stopped

The CADS volunteer veterinarians worked frantically to treat all the injured birds recovered by rescuers at the Koorangie wetlands in 2017.

The Pegasus inquiry was commissioned to investigate the Game Management Authority following the Koorangie Marshes massacre (see ‘2018 Pegasus Report’).