Guns and rosellas: hunters collected
May 28, 2007 — Filed in: Conservation
TWO men who shot and hid the bodies of dozens of rare parrots have been sacked by the company-owned orchards that employed and armed them.
In one of the worst killings of a threatened bird species ever detected in Victoria, 40 protected Regent parrots were shot near a large almond farm outside Robinvale, 470 kilometres north-west of Melbourne.
Only about 2400 Regent parrots survive in the wild, with half that number in Victoria.
Neil McManus, 46, of Swan Hill, and Joseph Borg, 40, of Robinvale, were employed by Australia’s biggest almond grower Select Harvests and its subsidiary, Kyndalyn Park, when they shot the birds.
