Graziers Paul and Jane Martin say they have been forced to sell their property due to delays in fixing the Wild Dog Fence. Since funding was announced five years ago to fix a 32-kilometre-wide hole, 19km has been completed. There is still no timeline for when the project will be completed, which includes the extension fence to the Murray River.
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00:00For Paul Martin, livestock production is his livelihood, but a 32km hole in the wild dog
00:09fence has left his business vulnerable to pests.
00:12It is the reason we're selling, it's the number one reason, if the dog fence had been completed
00:17we would have been able to run our full aggregation to its capacity.
00:23The fence is the world's longest environmental barrier protecting sheep from wild dogs.
00:28Dog losses haven't yet been significant but Paul Martin says it's only a matter of time.
00:33The dog migration has already begun, people are getting dozens of dogs up here now.
00:39The funding to repair the fence and extend it down to the Murray River was announced
00:43back in 2019.
00:45In the last year, 19km of that extension has been built.
00:49You absolutely have to be joking, 19km of fence in a year.
00:55We've got people up here that can do 19km in a month or less.
00:59The NSW Minister for Agriculture Tara Moriarty visited the dog fence in November last year
01:05and she addressed the delays in the fence's construction.
01:07It has been a priority for me as the Minister to do this on behalf of the community.
01:12So again a year ago there was nothing here, we will be completing 32km of fence very soon.
01:18The Minister says the NSW Government has engaged with the local community about the project
01:23but the NSW Soil Conservation Service have the right expertise for the job.