I Wish They Had Asked
The BBC reports on the environmental disasters on Macquarie island.
Apparently ships deposited rabbits on the island, and cats, rats, and mice jumped ship there. The authorities removed the cats as a threat to the sea birds without properly reckoning what would happen if you removed the main predator. The result was entirely predictable to anyone who looks at systems, and not individual components – the rodent population soared and is destroying the island’s vegetation, as well as attacking eggs and young chicks.
So next they are going to work on the rodents.
I view the feral cats that I take care of as replacement for the snakes that were wiped out. Without the snakes the rodent population soared, and the cats keep them under control. I manage the predation of birds by feeding the cats, but they never lose their instinctive anti-rodent behavior. You have to balance the system. You can’t remove the predators without causing the prey population to spike. They needed to deal with predators and prey at the same time. I wonder if they considered chemical birth control instead of poisons. It would be a bit slower, but it would achieve the same result.
6 comments
No one gives sufficient thought
What St. Patrick likely wrought.
When you rid your land of snakes,
You need cats, for heaven’s sakes!
When you rid your land of cats,
Doubtless you’ll have lots of rats.
Want less trouble? Do my bidding:
Put an end to all this ridding!
– SB the YDD
Man keeps messing about making decisions that might serve his short term interests, but few bother to think about long term consequences.
Anything they do will upset the balance. I hope the birds can survive all this mucking about.
…the history of species management is absolutely thick with examples of Grand Ideas that didn’t work – sometimes spectacularly – because of a lack of understanding of the interconnectedness of species in a given setting (which is usually the real problem). Back in the 1960’s, somebody decided that it would be a great idea to introduce a particular species of freshwater shrimp into Lake Pend Oreille in northern Idaho as a prey source for the introduced and native salmonid species in the lake. The rationale was that this shrimp species, kokanee salmon, and various species of trout thrived in a lake in Canada, resulting in large kokanee and humongous trout…
The result was a disaster, resulting in the complete collapse of a once-thriving commercial kokanee fishery and a dire threat to the entire lake ecosystem. We generally aren’t smart enough to actively manipulate Mother Nature to any particular benefit on a good day. On those bad days when we don’t think it through or sufficiently understand the circumstances and consequences, we can make a real hash of things…
No that people in New York have decided that deer hunting isn’t a great idea, the deer population is in a lot of trouble. We wiped out all of the predators, and were obliged to take their place. Without predation the herd is getting larger and will probably have a population collapse.
We just don’t know enough to make these kinds of decisions. Mother Nature can get really nasty when you horn in on her territory.
The ignorant British Aristocracy (Land owners in Victoria circa 1859) brought rabbits and foxes to Aus for their sport. Unfortunately, there were not enough hunters by far, and the rabbits bred like, well, rabbits. 🙂 They began doing enormous amounts of damage to Australia’s environment and meat and wool industries.
By 1950, there was an estimated 600 million rabbits. So, a decision was made to use myxomatosis to wipe out the rabbit plague. It was spectacularly successful. An estimated 99% of the Rabbit population was destroyed. The cattle and sheep industries recovered swiftly. However the results were much greater than anticipated, the fur and felt trade that relied on the rabbits declined severely and several furriers, milliners and clothing businesses that used rabbit skins and felt were forced to close. By 1995, the rabbit population that survived the myxomatosis in 1950 bred to high numbers and RHDV (rabbit calicivirus) was used to decimate their numbers significantly. These two instances of using a biological agent to control a mammalian pest successfully (by CSIRO) are considered the most successful in the world.
CSIRO were a brilliant Scientific organization that was Government controlled until the 90’s when they were partially privatized and forced to compere with the private sector. They became another typical mediocre research organization. Many (including myself) believe (with reason) that the reason CSIRO were privatized wasn’t because of what was touted as a ‘waste of taxpayers money’, but because they quite often successfully challenged patents by private companies that didn’t do their due diligence (or ask questions) properly who came up with some invention only to discover that the CSIRO had created something similar or better a decade before and it was sitting on some dusty shelf somewhere waiting for someone to make use of it. 🙂 Another thing they did regularly, was to discover a much *better* way of creating something or doing something that a large corporate company did *inefficiently*. IE, they would often be quoted in the press saying things like “You know, there is a way that can be done that will make it a lot cheaper to make and for people to buy.” The corporates, of course, couldn’t have that! Why… if people discovered efficiency and could buy things cheap, how would they make massive profits?! It couldn’t be tolerated. Therefore, CSIRO simply had to be made ineffectual. However, the corporations then discovered to their horror, that many of *those damned scientists* began taking positions at Universities, and they began this very un-capitalist idea of teaching graduates and post-grad’s how to make things cheap that actually worked! So, the Gov (Howard, of course) then semi-privatized Universities. and that’s how Capitalism won the day and about 5% of the World was able to breath a sigh of relief (at the expense of the rest). 😉 😀
And that, children, is how the World works today. Sadly, in this story, nobody lived happily ever after. G’night, sleep tight, and don’t let the capitalists bite! LOL
Well, you can’t blame the British for cane toads, any more than we can blame them for kudzu, we do things to ourselves. As Pratchett wrote “Man’s last words will probably be: I wonder what this does.”
We both know that they don’t hate government because it’s ineffective or inefficient, although it can be both, they hate it when it is both effective and efficient.