By MELINDA CAIRNS HACK

More supporters and signatures are required for a petition circulating over the last few months proposing the installation of wildlife fencing on the Monaro Highway to combat the high number of native wildlife road kill on the section of highway between Cooma and Canberra.

The petition (change.org/Install_Wildlife_Fencing_On_Monaro_Highway), which has more than 2300 signatures, was created in July by Ted Streatfeild. He has had a mixed response to the proposal to install wildlife fencing in key locations along the Monaro Highway.

Some of the supportive comments on the petition include:

- “A recent holiday down to Perisher highlighted the danger of the lack of wildlife fencing to both animals and people. We had to swerve to avoid wildlife multiple times whilst driving along the highway and saw multiple cars pulled over after hitting them. The animals don’t know any better and they don’t deserve that fate. We need this fencing!”

- “So sad to see all the dead wildlife along the road, this will definitely help.”

Others from Facebook posts on community noticeboard sites have been less positive:

- “I appreciate the sentiment, but it seems very impractical on a lot of levels. Finance, for one. It’s a long road, who pays for it? Certainly not SMRC [Snowy Monaro Regional Council], who have no money. People will likely object to the views along the road being impeded. What about private landowners along the road and their rights?

“I feel like there must be a better way to focus efforts towards improving the situation.”

- “Wombats burrow under fencing.”

Mr Streatfeild is attempting to gauge interest and support from local, state and federal government. He has requested a meeting with Member for Monaro, Steve Whan, and plans to contact the federal member for Eden-Monaro, Kristy McBain, and the ACT government.

“There is a significant portion of the Monaro Highway in the ACT and the Snowy Monaro Regional Council may need to be the official requesting agency for the fencing,” Mr Streatfeild said.

“The project could not be done by a local council, it requires state and federal road safety and environmental grants to gain sufficient funding to do the job effectively.

“A few million dollars out of the 2.8 billion dollars of funding for regional road safety initiatives in the 2025-2026 NSW budget papers as well as funding from environmental organisations should be enough.”

He said the problem will not go away in the summer months “as more people take to the coast and the mountains for swimming and hiking and mountain biking. The deceased animals will not be so obvious as they will disappear more quickly due to the heat and the flies and the higher grass on the roadsides”.

Mr Streatfeild has conducted a road count on the number and location of wildlife collisions for this ski season on the Monaro Highway between Cooma and Canberra (and plotted the locations on a Google earth map - with a link available on the ‘petition updates’).

“I counted 208 dead animals from road collisions over the ski season, the last four or five months,” he revealed.

“157 kangaroos, 21 wombats, 21 wallabies, two foxes, four deer and one goat.”

He believes a combination of virtual fencing to train the kangaroos and wallabies when it is safe to cross and hard fencing re-directing to underpasses and tunnels where wombat crossing points are identified would alleviate the severity of the problem.

“Wildlife safety solutions, a company producing specific virtual fencing for road applications, advised me that they could provide a trial virtual fencing system for 100km an hour roads.

“It would be ideal to see the Monaro Highway between Cooma and Canberra become a trial for doing wildlife protection fencing effectively as it is one of the highest impact highways in NSW.”

Mr Streatfeild said more than 5000 travellers use the Monaro Highway on average each day.

“They have a roughly one in 10,000 chance of hitting a large wild animal, leaving it dead on the side of the road and a severely damaged car with an average insurance claim of $5500.”

Mr Whan has indicated he would be happy to meet with Mr Streatfeild.

“I can understand the concern about the toll of wildlife on the road, but I do think the fencing proposal has a number of hurdles it would need to overcome,” Mr Whan said.

“Firstly, there are a number of practical issues around just fencing an existing road. I would need to seek expert opinion on a lot of this but the considerations would include the need for crossing points, which a retro-fitted road would not have, as well as cost.”

Anyone who has yet to support the change.org petition can do so through a link on Facebook to Install Wildlife Fencing on Monaro Highway.