Proposed Australian Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines – Exhibited Animals Consultation Regulation Impact Statement March 2014

A4.1 – Incremental cost of providing for fox proof enclosures – S3.2 (Macropods)

Under proposed standard S3.2, the operator would need to ensure that if macropods are kept in regions where wild fox populations occur they are held within a fox-proof enclosure. Enclosures containing only adults of Macropus giganteus, M. rufus, M. robustus, M. antelopinus and M. bernardus are exempt (as the idea is to protect smaller and younger macropods from fox predation). With respect to fox-proof fencing the guidelines have suggested the following design:

G3.1 One design of a dog and fox proof enclosure that has been successfully used incorporates a 2.0 metre high 50 mm x 50 mm mesh fence, with electrified wires on outriggers attached 10 cm out from the outside of the mesh fence at 10 cm, 1.0 metre and 2.0 metres above ground, with a 900 mm wide footing mesh laid over the ground and clipped to the bottom of the vertical mesh to deter burrowing.
A submission from a small facility has noted a simpler design which incorporates a 560 mm wide stainless steel mesh footing laid over the ground and clipped to the bottom of the vertical mesh with the following cost components:

• 
  Stainless steel hex mesh ($2240)
  
• 
  Freight ($360)
  
• 
  Clips and stainless steel pegs ($200)
  
• 
  Labour ($640)
  

This would provide a total cost of around $3440 per holding and non-walkthrough enclosure. For the purpose of estimating the incremental cost it is assumed that all macropod holding and non-walkthrough display enclosures would potentially contain small or young macropods either currently or possibly at some time in the near future. Therefore cost estimates are undertaken for 5% of non-compliant relevant enclosures apart from NSW, VIC and WA where fox proofing is already required under the base case.

As shown in Table A4.2, the estimated one-off cost of fox proofing requirements for macropod enclosures over 10 years would be $0.074m in present value 2012-13 dollars with 81.2% of the cost incurred by small size facilities and particularly in QLD and TAS.