PETER Guivarra recalls how the sky would thicken at this time of the year with vast numbers of magpie geese that nested in swamps near his home settlement, Mapoon, on Cape York Peninsula's western side.

With thousands of geese being shot annually by indigenous hunters, Guivarra, chairman of the Mapoon Aboriginal Shire Council, says the bird population is a fraction of what it was 10 or 15 years ago.

Says Guivarra: "There were hundreds of thousands, but now it's thousands and the numbers get smaller every season. I want my sons and grandsons to be able to hunt, but at this rate they won't be able to."

Across the Gulf of Carpentaria, in the wetlands of Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory, indigenous hunting of magpie geese with shotguns is so prolific that untargeted wildlife are suffering lead poisoning from spent lead shot ingested while foraging for food.

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