Council facilitates first steps on feral animal management

Published on 22 September 2025

Council has responded to community calls for a coordinated response to the issue of livestock predation and feral animal management, facilitating a meeting on 10 September with key stakeholders and the relevant Authorities. 

The meeting brought together members of the local farming community as well as representatives from Council, the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, Parks Victoria, the federal government and Up2Us Landcare to discuss the impacts and explore practical solutions. 

The group discussed the current situation and management practices as well as the outcomes each party was looking for. 

Mayor Cr Steve Rabie said Council set up the meeting to connect affected community members with the relevant authorities.  

“We recognise that feral animal management is an issue for some of our residents and ratepayers, especially those with sheep, goats or other small animals. Though management of feral animals is not a Council responsibility, we’ve listened to concerns from our ratepayers and stepped in to help get the conversation going with the authorities who are responsible,” he said. 

“Council will also facilitate a second meeting, and our aim is that after that the relevant authorities and local community stakeholders will be in a good position to continue working together.” 

Outcomes from the first meeting included improved data collection, providing more direct support for farmers and more “on the ground” resources to manage the problem. 

Additionally, community members are being asked to report sightings and evidence of feral animals through a single platform – the FeralScan app. FeralScan also provides guidance and resources. 

“We’ve already identified through our first meeting that there’s an app called FeralScan and people can use that app to report incidents or sightings. This evidence will come in very handy for the responsible authorities to start managing the risk to agriculture,” Cr Rabie said.  

“I think it’ll soon be clearly demonstrated that more ‘on the ground’ resources are required. Council will continue to advocate for more resources if necessary to get on top of the problem of feral animals, and our position will be much stronger with hard evidence.” 

Community members can download the FeralScan app from the Apple App Store and on Google Play. 

Quotes attributable to Jenny Delaforce, local community member 

“We had a really good nuts-and-bolts discussion with Council, relevant authorities and community members about what needs to be done. 

“We’re encouraging our whole community to be more proactive in recording dog attacks and sightings. Without those records and reports we have no data to help the government allocate more resources. 

“Please get on FeralScan – it helps us get all those reports in one place. You can also use it to alert neighbours and nearby properties when there are dogs in the area.”