I think I saw this on an episode of the Simpsons
Here's the Story:
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 ($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 — without
thinking long and hard, 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 the Antarctic continent, 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 arrive there each year to breed.
The
cats, rabbits, rats and mice are all nonnative species to Macquarie,
probably introduced in the past 100 years by passing ships. Authorities
have struggled for decades to remove them.
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 problem was not the original eradication
effort itself — but that it didn't go far enough. They said the project
should have taken aim at all the invasive mammals on the island at once.
"What
was wrong was that the rabbits were not eradicated at the same time as
the cats," University of Auckland Prof. Mick Clout, who also is a
member of the Union's invasive species specialist group.
"It would have been ideal if the cats and rabbits were eradicated at
the same time, or the rabbits first and the cats subsequently."
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. "Since
cats were eradicated, the grey petrel successfully bred on the island
for the first time in a century and the recovery of Antarctic prions
has continued since the eradication of feral cats."
Now, the parks service has a new plan to finish the job, using technology and poisons that weren't available a decade ago.
Wren
said plans to eradicate both rabbits as well as rats and mice from the
island will begin in 2010. Helicopters using global positioning systems
will drop poisonous bait that targets all three pests. Later, teams
will shoot, fumigate and trap the remaining rabbits, she said.
Some
of the earlier critics are now behind this latest eradication effort,
saying it should help the island's ecosystem fully recover because it
would remove the last remaining invasive species.
"Without
this action, there will be serious long-term consequences for the
majestic seabirds which nest on the island including the four
threatened albatross species, and for the health of the island ecosystem as a whole," said Dean Ingwersen, Bird Australia's threatened bird network coordinator.
"We
believe that the process they are going to follow uses best practice
for this type of work," Ingwersen said. "And that all possible
ramifications have now been considered."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090113/ap_on_re_au_an/as_australia_rabbit_infestation
Australians Remove Cats From Island to Save Birds, Rabbits Thrive
Re: Australians Remove Cats From Island to Save Birds, Rabbits Thrive
