Ban Opera House Nets
© Canva NFP
Wildlife Queensland calls for our state government to stop stalling and ban deadly opera house traps before more aquatic mammals suffer.
Latest update: QLD Govt. considers ban on opera house nets
Fisheries Queensland seeks public feedback on proposed recreational fishing reforms, including banning opera house nets (enclosed yabby traps). Queensland is the only state yet to fully ban these nets, despite ongoing reports of platypuses and other air-breathing animals drowning in them.
Queensland’s wildlife needs YOUR voice! The preventable drowning deaths of air-breathing animals is a serious animal welfare issue and a significant conservation issue, as they can cause potential local extinction events.
Have your say and support a ban on opera house nets in Queensland. Submissions close at 5:00 pm on 9 May 2024.
In 2014, the government of the day amended regulations to significantly reduce the size of the entrance hole of traps being used east of the Great Dividing Range and east of the Gore Highway. While this action was a step in the right direction, platypuses and other non-targeted air-breathing native fauna continue to be caught and drown in these traps — and their deaths are entirely preventable.
Read more about how enclosed traps pose a deadly threat to air-breathing aquatic mammals.
Opera house traps of any size continue to pose a real threat to air-breathing aquatic mammals.
Platypuses swim in after a feed of yabbies and then can’t get out, they thrash around and they’re dead within minutes.
But, it’s not just platypuses, it’s also rakali, water dragons, turtles and fish, so it’s an animal welfare issue as well as a conservation one.
Wildlife Queensland is once more calling for Queensland to follow the other states’ lead and say no to enclosed yabby traps (opera house nets).
Five Australian states have now implemented a full or phased ban on the use of the enclosed traps.
- The use of enclosed traps is banned in the ACT, and in all Victorian and Tasmanian public and private waters.
- New South Wales commenced a phase-out of enclosed traps from 30 April 2021.
- The recreational use of enclosed traps is banned in South Australia from 1 July 2023.
We urge the Queensland Government to hurry up and ban opera house death traps in all Queensland public waters.
Send an email to the Hon. Mark Furner MP, Minister for Agricultural Industry Development and Fisheries and Minister for Rural Communities and the Hon. Leanne Linard MP, Minister for the Environment and the Great Barrier Reef, Minister for Science and Minister for Multicultural Affairs, to say we need to change the legislation/regulation around the use of Opera House Nets in Queensland now!
More ways to support platypuses
Latest campaign news
QLD Govt. considers ban on opera house nets: Have your say!
Fisheries Queensland is inviting feedback until 9 May 2024 from fishers and the wider community on recreational fishing reform options, including the proposed ban on opera house style nets (enclosed yabby traps).
Act now to save Queensland’s platypus and other aquatic wildlife!
Wildlife Queensland is making an urgent plea to Queenslanders to support the Society’s campaign to ban the use of deadly opera house nets (enclosed yabby traps).
Have you seen the world’s only aquatic monotreme?
August is platypus month, an initiative embraced by Wildlife Queensland’s PlatypusWatch Network. Despite almost everyone knowing about the biological curiosity that is the world’s one and only living platypus species, many Queenslanders haven’t seen this elusive egg-laying mammal in the wild.
Authorised by Des Boyland, Secretary, Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland, Suite 1, Level 1, 30 Gladstone Road, Highgate Hill, Brisbane, Qld 4101.