By GREG KELTON 04may06
OUTSPOKEN Liberal backbencher Graham Gunn has given Parliament the "recipe" for a poison to kill thousands of corellas in the state's Mid North in a bid to cut their numbers.
Mr Gunn said his personal assistant's grandfather had provided the details: "50 pounds of wheat, a bottle of strychnine and a cup of paraffin oil."
Mr Gunn said it would have the corellas "falling out of the sky like Spitfires".
"When they hit the ground there will be a bit of dust but that is a minor problem," he said.
Mr Gunn said the corellas were in plague proportions and if anyone drove to Melrose they would see thousands of the birds. "Now is the ideal opportunity to deal with the problem," he said.
"There is only one way to fix them - you have to poison some of them. There are too many to shoot."
Mr Gunn, who represents the state's largest electorate of Stuart and is SA's longest-serving MP, said if the birds were poisoned people would not have to put up with trees being stripped, TV antennas being bitten, bowling greens being torn up or nails being pulled out of house roofs.
"All that will have gone," he said.
An environment department spokeswoman said a "trap and gas corella trial" was currently under way in various parts of the state "and will wrap up shortly".
"Strychnine poisoning is not currently used to manage the species as the poison causes convulsions in the birds without causing unconsciousness and therefore not an acceptable way for the birds to die," she said.
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