Species Eradication Backfires Big Time

After Feral Cats Were Removed To Protect Seabirds, Exploding Rabbit Population Defoliates Island

(AP)  It seemed like a good idea at the time: Remove all the feral cats from a famous Australian island to save the native seabirds.

But the decision to eradicate the felines from Macquarie island allowed the rabbit population to explode and, in turn, destroy much of its fragile vegetation that birds depend on for cover, researchers said Tuesday.

Removing the cats from Macquarie "caused environmental devastation" that will cost authorities 24 million Australian dollars (US$16.2 million) to remedy, Dana Bergstrom of the Australian Antarctic Division and her colleagues wrote in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology.

"Our study shows that between 2000 and 2007, there has been widespread ecosystem devastation and decades of conservation effort compromised," Bergstrom said in a statement.

The unintended consequences of the cat-removal project show the dangers of meddling with an ecosystem - even with the best of intentions, the study said.

"The lessons for conservation agencies globally is that interventions should be comprehensive, and include risk assessments to explicitly consider and plan for indirect effects, or face substantial subsequent costs," Bergstrom said.

Located about halfway between Australia and Antarctica, Macquarie was designated a World Heritage site in 1997 as the world's only island composed entirely of oceanic crust.

It is known for its wind-swept landscape, and about 3.5 million seabirds and 80,000 elephant seals migrate there each year to breed.

Authorities have struggled for decades to remove the cats, rabbits, rats and mice that are all nonnative species to Macquarie, likely introduced in the past 100 years by passing ships.

The invader predators menaced the native seabirds, some of them threatened species. So in 1995, the Parks and Wildlife Service of Tasmania that manages Macquarie tried to undo the damage by removing most of the cats.

Several conservation groups, including the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Birds Australia, said the eradication effort did not go far enough and that the project should have taken aim at all the invasive mammals on the island at once.

"It would have been ideal if the cats and rabbits were eradicated at the same time, or the rabbits first and the cats subsequently," said University of Auckland Prof. Mick Clout, who also is a member of the Union's invasive species specialist group.

Clout and others said the Macquarie case illustrates the struggle that Australia and New Zealand have had trying to remove invasive species from their islands, mostly in a bid to protect seabird populations. They have targeted dozens of islands over the past few decades with mixed success.

Cats were removed from Little Barrier island off New Zealand, but it took a second campaign against a growing rat population. On the remote Campbell island off New Zealand, authorities successfully removed sheep, cattle, cats and rats in one of the biggest eradication projects to date.

"The whole ecosystem is recovering superbly," Clout said of Campbell island.

Liz Wren, a spokeswoman for the Parks and Wildlife Service of Tasmania, said authorities were aware from the beginning that removing the feral cats would increase the rabbit population. But at the time, researchers argued it was worth the risk considering the damage the cats were doing to the seabird populations.

"The alternative was to accept the known and extensive impacts of cats and not do anything for fear of other unknown impacts," Wren said.

The parks service now has a new plan to use technology and poisons that were not available a decade ago to eradicate rabbits, rats and mice from the island.

The project to be launched in 2010 will use helicopters with global positioning systems to drop poisonous bait that targets all three pests. Later, teams will shoot, fumigate and trap the remaining rabbits, Wren said.

Some of the earlier critics are now behind this latest eradication effort to remove the island's last remaining invasive species.

"Without this action, there will be serious long-term consequences for the majestic seabirds...and for the health of the island ecosystem as a whole," said Dean Ingwersen, Bird Australia's threatened bird network coordinator.

[lloydbest1]

Boy howdy....Sure didn''t take much to turn this thread into an anti-Muslim/anti-Zionist screed did it?

[missingamerica]

Put a rabbit stew factory on the Island now. Cook it and can it and it will pay for the repairs!

Posted by BlackYowe at 07:14 PM : Jan 14, 2009

Or a Chinese restaurant?

[blackyowe]

Put a rabbit stew factory on the Island now. Cook it and can it and it will pay for the repairs!

[erasmus606]

Isn''t it funny how "man" always interferes?
They always have to be destroying things.

Man should not have deposited the cats and rabbits on the island to begin with.

[shanev137]

sounds like a good way to get your hands on 24 million Australian dollars (US$16.2 million)

[pvperson]

"because his God says it is his"

it was more the British than any God.

[spiritwalk]

No, the Israeli''''s are too busy defending themselves from terrorist attacks each day. Why not ask Muslims instead - they have nothing better to do but plot Jihad.
Posted by Cheetah-Man7

-----------------------------------
The Palestinian terrorists are blowing up the houses they used to own before the Jewish terrorists arrived.

The Palestinians just seem not to be able to reconcile to the idea that they have to give up the land their family has been living on for 20 generations because it really belongs to someone whose faily has been living in Poland for 20 generations, because his God says it is his.

The Native Americans couldn''t understand that point either until we manifest destinied the idea into them.

[cheetah-man7]

playing GOD is tricky..

Posted by MrNegrodamus at 12:10 AM : Jan 14, 2009




Just ask the Israeli''''s.


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Posted by hungry684

No, the Israeli''s are too busy defending themselves from terrorist attacks each day. Why not ask Muslims instead - they have nothing better to do but plot Jihad.

[spiritwalk]

To the eradication of the feral cat add the eradication of the feral dog which National Geographis is calling for because they are a threat to the eco-system...and the wild Asian Water Buffalo.

The pattern seem to be that every species that mand has kidnapped from the wild and domesticated should be wiped out. Is it because the wild ones are a danger or because man does not want to admit that they were wrong to have taken them from the wild in the first place and now want to destroy the evidence that they ever were wild.

It is not as MrNegrodamus suggests that man was "playing god" he was playing "slave master".

[zoe-2009]

Guam is a perfect example of the devastation evasive species can do - the brown treesnake (Boiga irregularis). There are no birds, rats, mice, lizards on this island.

[ubrew12]

Predator/Prey population dynamics, especially on islands, has been well documented for half a century. The particular effect of removing a predator, and thereby allowing RABBITS (yes, rabbits, just as in todays Australian debacle) to overpopulate was studied decades ago. Pretty much the same thing happened.

The only surprise here is that these Australian researchers were surprised. I was only in an undergraduate ecology program, and it was standard reading. 30 years ago!

Islands are great for these kind of population dynamics studies (no diffusion due to migration). Its a great way to introduce students to differential equations.

[cyberdjs4]

Gotta love it when we mess with Nature.

[legacyabq]

oh my,

what the old saying?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions?

Hedhehehehehehehe

[runningralph]

"Backfires Big Time" Wow! They''re talking about a dinky island near the Antarctic circle. In San Franfreako a woman named Meredith Patterson is genetically engineering bacteria in her dining room to turn green when they eat melamine. Plastic eating bacteria could soon spread across the Western Hemisphere. The doctor put a piece of plastic in my guts. What will happen to me and others with replacement parts? What will happen to homes, cars and aircraft with plastic parts? Backfires big time? You ain''t seen nothin'' yet.

[spadeisspade]

What they really should do is import a bunch of hunting happy rednecks onto the island without any food and lots of guns and ammo. They''ll take care of the problem!

[ibzjem]

I can''t remember the specifics now (maybe I can google it and produce some more CO2), but a while back near the pacific coast fish were eating all the vegetation in the water. they removed the fish, the vegetation came back but brought with it other sea creatures that were damaging the eco system. We''ve done this sort of thing before. And we will do it again, because we can''t learn not to mess with nature!!

[scottyusa]

Are these guys the relatives of the three stooges or what? THIN the population not eradicate it. They should have seen this coming. Everything has its place.

[traveler73]

PS-- funny also that the poisons to kill the rats will in a few years time no doubt be shown to weaken the eggs of the nesting birds and effectively destroy their population to a far greater extent .... wait and see- nothing more dangerous than good intentioned scientists

[traveler73]

They may get rid of cats and even rabbits but good luck with the rats...it won''t be possible and they eat eggs also, so in actuality it would have been a lot easier to just let the damaged ecosystem continue and spend the 16 million in better places than on desolate grass covered rocks.

[impeach___w]

Too bad no one died. Humans will never learn.