New Wave of Immigrants May Be Heading to Australia

[Stavros]

I assume when they are not referring to refugees from the jungle of American politics...

Elephants and rhinos in Australia 'could control damaging wild grasses'

Alison Rourke
The Guardian Wednesday 1 February 2012


African gamba grass, introduced in the 1930s, wreaks havoc on the landscape and provides dangerous fuel for wildfires, experts say


Introducing elephants to Australia could help the continent's troubled ecosystems, argues Prof David Bowman in the journal Nature.



Elephants and rhinoceros should be introduced to the Australian outback to control the impact of damaging wild grasses, according to an Australian professor of environmental change biology. But other Australian academics warned the proposal risked its own set of problems.
Prof David Bowman of the University of Tasmania says the giant African gamba grass, introduced as food for livestock in the 1930s, wreaks havoc on the landscape and provides dangerous fuel for wildfires across northern and central Australia.
"Australia has a deeply troubled ecology and current land management approaches are failing," he said.
Because of its height, gamba grass almost completely replaces native vegetation. Its fuel load is up to eight times greater than that of native grasses meaning it burns with greater intensity and produces substantial greenhouse gases.
Bowman estimates that at least 5% of the Australian continent was burnt in massive fires last year, an area three times the size of England. He says, if unchecked, the gamba grass has the potential to grow to cover an equivalent area of the country.
In an article for Nature magazine, Bowman proposes introducing large herbivores like elephants and rhinoceroses as a way of containing Gamba grass which can grow to four meters in height.
"It is too big for marsupial grazers (kangaroos) and for cattle or buffalo, the largest feral mammals," he said.
"I'm talking about using elephants as a machine or ecological tool to manage this grass," he said in an interview for the Guardian, acknowledging that his proposal is radical and has major risks associated with it.
"You'd use all the sophisticated technology available to manage and husband the elephants, containing and tracking them with GPS collars and tracking their fertility," he said.
Scientists at Charles Darwin University in Darwin acknowledge the urgent need to tackle the spread of gamba grass, which has been declared a pest by the government, but say conventional methods will work.
"There is an urgent need for action but we need to pursue the problem in a conventional, strategic and well-resourced way," according to Dr Samantha Setterfield, associate professor of environmental management and ecology at the university.
"Introducing elephants is a very extreme proposal that would have very significant social and environmental impacts," she said.
"It suggests that we've exhausted the conventional options like the use of common herbicides like roundup which work on gamba grass," she said.
Ricky Spencer, senior lecturer with the Native and Pest Animal unit at the University of Western Sydney says introducing elephants would pose significant problems.
"If we did go down the road of introducing elephants to Australia, we had better develop the technology to clone saber-tooth tigers to eventually control the elephants," he said in a statement.
The biggest opposition to Bowman's suggestion though is likely to come from Australian quarantine authorities which impose some of the world's strictest requirements on the importation of animals. Currently the importation of both rhinos and elephants is prohibited under the Quarantine Act, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. Animals destined for zoos may only be imported under special provisions.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...lia-wild-grass

[muh_muh]

because its worked so well in the past with rabbits and dogs?
not to mention that its usually a bad idea to introduce a continental animal into an island ecosystem

[trish]

To keep the pachyderm populations in check they probably should also introduce poachers.

[Prospero]

The best poachers are from Africa. So maybe allow some Kenyans to move to Australia.

I'm now waiting for Russtafa's response.

[russtafa]

The best poachers are from Africa. So maybe allow some Kenyans to move to Australia.

I'm now waiting for Russtafa's response.

got them in Blacktown and they fight with the Lebo gangs .these uni types want to bring more introduced animals here? cats and dogs are wiping out lots of native animals

[trish]

Wasn't uni types who introduced rabbits into Australia. It was settlers with the "First Fleet" for hunting. Red foxes were also introduced by hunters. Cats and dogs were brought onto the continent to serve as pets. Pigs and goats were brought for livestock. Fungi, beetles and other pests just came along for the ride carried by imported goods.

Not to say uni types didn't partake of this foolishness. The cane toad was intentionally imported to control the cane beetle which is native to Australia. The university types recommended the introduction (and I believe actually did the hands on collection and release) but Australia's sugar cane industry lobbied their encouragement. Today the cane toad is responsible for putting various native reptiles on the endangered list.

Mynahs are also pests in Australia and a threat to public heath. They were introduced to control locusts. The agricultural industry did not protest the introduction.

It amazes me that there are still proposals to introduce one species to control another. Asian Carp now threaten the Great Lakes in North America. They were introduced by fisheries to control algae in catfish ponds. Once in the wild they out compete and endanger a number of valuable native species, besides just being a general nuisance to fishermen and boaters.

Are there any success stories? Perhaps we just don't hear about them?

It just seems that we're so bad at this sort of thing, we should probably just leave it alone; the advice of the chaotician in Jurassic Park.

[Faldur]

It just seems that we're so bad at this sort of thing, we should probably just leave it alone;

Success stories are few and far between. The accidental introduction of species has been equally disastrous. Look at the silver carp in Indiana, or the pythons in the florida everglades. We have entire bodies of water that are changed forever.

[hippifried]

Success stories are few and far between.

Oh, I don't think there's anywhere near that many. You're being generous.

Australia's an ecological disaster. I don't think it's fixable. It's been happening since the earliest days of colonization, & has gotten worse continuously. So bring on the elephants, rhinos, llamas, lions, tigers, & bears, oh my... Put the whole circus in the Australian wilds & see what happens. What the hell... We could see Easter Island II in a couple of generations.

[trish]

The worst was when English and European Homo-sapiens were let loose into the wilds of Australia. They fucked up everything.

[russtafa]

The worst was when English and European Homo-sapiens were let loose into the wilds of Australia. They fucked up everything.

not the worst the early Aboriginal that started wide spread burning of the local vegetation for hunting purposes and destroyed a lot of lager animals and also permanently altered Australian vegetation