Central Tablelands Local Land Services has welcomed two new biosecurity officers, Sean Brindle and Ashleigh Britten. With landholders keeping watch and acting on pest animals, invasive weeds and maintaining vigilance for disease in livestock - the new staff are here to make an impact and protect primary producers. "I think it's easy to get complacent - vertebrate pests and weeds don't respect boundaries. We need to be vigilant when it comes to feral pigs, deer, foxes. What you might not think is a problem this month can become a problem if you let it go." said Sean Brindle. For Ashleigh, working on the land is in the blood - with a background in the dairy industry and a family cattle farm in Gooloogong. Sean says a passion of his is harnessing new capabilities to make an impact. "Based on the mapping work and monitoring I used to do, following pest species from the Great Dividing Range - they could become an emerging problem because they're so secretive, it's harder to know where and what species are there." "We can't be everywhere, so using more sophisticated surveillance and reporting methods to get a sense of the size of the issue." One of those resources is FeralScan, a mapping tool that landholders can use to report sightings of pest species. With concentrations of reported sightings only visible to authorities, entries are anonymised and protect sensitive data. In the right hands, the information can help coordinate pest control resources against an identified threat, or help guide larger responses when several neighboring landholders report sightings. With so many issues to cover over such a large area, with complex relationships to manage, the two biosecurity officers have to be nimble, but evidence based in their approach. Much of the data they rely upon comes from land holders. With reporting software like FeralScan, as well as the new BioResponse NSW app being rolled out - as well as reaching out at the saleyards, or to your local LLS office - individual pieces of data can help biosecurity staff paint a larger picture and marshal resources against a threat. "To be effective in controlling numbers, the best approach is to have groups of people like neighbours working together," said Sean, "That's when we can give greater advice and support to a larger number of people," said Sean. "One of our objectives this year is to connect with more groups who want to maximise the use of their time, because farmers tend to be time poor, and they might not either want or have time to dedicate to shooting vertebrate pests."
