Conservation Hunting Bill – RSPCA NSW Provides Feedback on Committee Recommendation Ahead of NSW Government Report

In early July 2025, an Upper House Inquiry was established to examine the Game and Feral Animal Legislation Amendment (Conservation Hunting) Bill 2025.  

RSPCA Australia and RSPCA NSW provided a joint submission and gave evidence before the Committee, outlining our shared position that we do not support the Bill, which seeks to significantly alter the way recreational hunting has been regulated in NSW for more than two decades. 

In the submission, RSPCA outlined five key reasons for opposing the Bill to amend the Game and Feral Animal Control Act 2002 (NSW), including: 

1. It poses significant risks to public safety and animal welfare and significantly weakens safeguards necessary to regulate hunting in NSW.  
2. By creating a statutory right to hunt, replacing restricted licences, expanding access to hunt on Crown land, and broadening access to prohibited weapons, such as night vision equipment and firearm suppressors, it poses serious risks to public safety and animal welfare.  
3. By replacing restricted licences and turning them into conservation licences which are undefined and do not require mandatory training, it is likely to increase the risk of animal suffering through incomplete or ineffective kills and increases the likelihood of target misidentification, leading to the harm or death of non-target and endangered species.  
4. It replaces one statutory authority – the NSW Game and Pest Management Advisory Board, with another, more expensive statutory authority – the NSW Conservation Hunting Authority (CHA), the membership of which is very problematic, dominated by hunting interests, and without adequate representation from conservation, ecology, pest animal management, veterinary and animal welfare experts or firearms and public safety expertise. This structure risks undermining evidence-based pest management.  
5. The amendments promote recreational hunting as a form of pest control, despite clear evidence that it is not effective at delivering meaningful pest control outcomes. Recreational hunting is neither a safe nor effective method of pest control and should not be treated as such. 

Following the inquiry the Committee released a report containing one recommendation. In advance of the Government reply, RSPCA NSW responds to the recommendation below: