TASMANIA'S great fox hunt is headed south as part of a poison blitz that will involve burying baits across almost half the state.
The Fox Eradication Program will now bait all "core fox habitat", which comprises three million hectares of farms, open woodlands and grasslands, The Mercury reports.
For the first time, large-scale baiting will occur in the South, where 400 landholders in the Huon and Channel areas have been asked to allow the controversial 1080 poison banned in state forests on their properties.
The baits are put in meat, buried 5 to 10cm deep and removed after two to four weeks.
One bait is enough to kill a dog and Fox Eradication Program manager Alan Johnston said that was landholders' greatest concern.
"We do everything to reduce the risk to dogs, get permission from landowners, notify neighbours and put up signs," he said.
"Dogs should not be roaming unattended."
Mr Johnston said he was only aware of two or three dog deaths because of the baiting program aimed at wiping out foxes in Tasmania.
Dogs Home of Tasmania president Geoff Clarke said pet dogs must be protected.
"1080 is an absolutely hideous poison and it would be horrible for a dog to pick one up," he said.
"It's a hideous death. They say it's quick but it's not."
But Tasmanian Conservation Trust director Peter McGlone encouraged landholders to co-operate, saying foxes are the greatest threat to biodiversity .
"There will be a small number of native animals killed," he said.
"But we could lose entire species if we don't get rid of foxes."
The state and federal governments have spent $36 million trying to eradicate foxes in Tasmania but a live fox has not been trapped in the state.
This month the Federal Government redirected $7 million from the Mt Lyell Remediation Project to the fox hunt.
Evidence has included sightings, dead foxes, scats, footprints, blood and a skull.
An independent review of the fox eradication program last year found the evidence foxes were in Tasmania was "unequivocal" and recommended the change to baiting all core fox habitat.
"Those who object to killing animals or to the use of 1080 must be reconciled to not having their way if eradication is to proceed," the Landcare Research review said.
The review said people worried native animals would be killed should "be mollified" by the potential cost of not eradicating foxes and a study that found the worst-case annual kill would be one "non-target death" per 120ha.
Studies show some native animals are much more resistant to 1080, a naturally occurring plant compound.
One 1080 bait could kill a fox, dog, cat or possum, but a fatal dose for a Tasmanian devil is 10 baits.
In the past, baiting has been concentrated in the Midlands but last year two scats were found near Cygnet indicating foxes had moved south.
Mr Johnston said it would take about five years to bait all core fox habitat, which represented about half of Tasmania.
He said baiting would start in the South next month and information sessions would be held in the Huon and Channel areas this week.
"It's critically important for us to get access to land," he said.
"In most areas, we have probably had 90 per cent of land owners give approval."
He said the impact of a fully established fox population in Tasmania would be "devastating".
"We could be looking at more than 200,000 foxes in Tasmania," Mr Johnston said.
"This is a really serious problem we are dealing with here.
"We recognise the risk to dogs, but we do have to acknowledge that 1080 is our key tool in the eradication of foxes in Tasmania."
