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African animals to roam Australia ?
Invurt writes: "In a strange twist to the traditional conservation story, Media Magnate Kerry Packer has announced that he is planning to open a huge African game reserve, for reasons of conservation and endangered species breeding in Australia. This would basically replicate Africa in the Australian continent, on a huge scale. They are not sure if they'd leave the kangaroos there or not - always wondered what it'd be like with kangaroos roaming the plains with lions."
I'm sure it won't work as intented. We all know what happened with rabbits, right?
;-)
And besides, we all have seen "Jurassic Park", didn't we?
My weblog in spanish
Wouldn't this then be unnatural natural selection?
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
always wondered what it'd be like with kangaroos roaming the plains with lions
Have you? Really? Or are you Lion?
Short. And messy ;-)
cmclean
"Any similarity between the hooting of a million eager monkeys and Slashdot is purely coincidental." -THEFLASHMAN
I wonder what the effect on the Australian wildlife will be... It might sound great now, saving all kinds of African animals by housing them in Australia, but we might just be introducing new animal deceases in an equally precious eco-system... I don't think this is the way to go...
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The intent is good but it can be very dangerous for the indigenous fauna to import new species. Some species of platypus will probably disappear because of cats. On the other hand it might be the only way to save some endangered african species. It's really hard to know what to do in this case.
True warriors use the Klingon Google
I think I speak for all Australians when I say:
"Kerry, you are a fucking idiot!"
Everything he touches turns to shit, whether it's TV networks, airlines, or now the whole fucking ecosystem.
So Australia will have a huge african wilderness park and a 1km high concrete windmill?
I guess calling the place Oz was a nice bit of foresight.
Since your UID is smaller than mine, I can only conclude that you're trolling. -s20451 (410424)
I suspect it would be much more fun for the lions.
I am guessing that they have decided not to remember the africanized honey bees brought to the americas from africa.
I wouldn't wish anything like that on the australians.
is a bad idea.
In Europe, escaped kangaroos became a menace in the mid-1800s in southern Germany. Eventually, after years of hunting, all kangaroos wre wiped out.
Australia still suffers from European species introduced there.
Please, don't introduce African game... No one knows what will happen.
From the article:
Wait a minute, the source code for a hippo is available? How come I've never seen this here?
Inventor of the LOLbalrog meme.
Kerry Packer likes to claim he is the true blue australian tycoon, unlike his rival Rupert Murdoch.
However what this nutcase is proposing here is nothing short of ecological genocide. If large predators escape from this "park" you can kiss goodbye all of the rare and beautiful marsupial animals that inhabit his "home". If he really wants to preserve african wildlife, he can do it much more easily by offering to fund the anti poaching forces in tanzania and kenya, as well as solving rural african poverty that means many in poorer outlying areas must hunt for bushmeat which goes for a high price in Nairobi. Perhaps a biology and a reality lesson is in order Mr. Packer?
Why would one person feel it appropiate to fight nature and bring groups of animals from one region to a completely seperate land. This makes no sense in the fact that Australia has some of the most unique creatures and we don't want them to lose them because we want to save some other animals from a certain extinction. Why do we feel that we need to save all animals from extinction. Yes we may have caused them to dwindle much faster then they normally would. Moving them to Australia would be an ecological nightmare (especially if they got out).
Kerry Packer likes to claim he is the true blue australian tycoon, unlike his rival Rupert Murdoch.
However what this nutcase is proposing here is nothing short of ecological genocide. If large predators escape from this "park" you can kiss goodbye all of the rare and beautiful marsupial animals that inhabit his "home". If he really wants to preserve african wildlife, he can do it much more easily by offering to fund the anti poaching forces in tanzania and kenya, as well as solving rural african poverty that means many in poorer outlying areas must hunt for bushmeat which goes for a high price in Nairobi. Perhaps a biology and a reality lesson is in order Mr. Packer?
Just a thought, but how about doing the conservation of African animals in Africa?
This is nothing to do with conservation.
Lots of people go on African safari holidays, (hopefully) most of the money spent goes to African people. As civilised capitalists we cant have that can we? Lets make a shoddy copy of it in our country so all the money stays here!
Whats that you say Mr African Reserve Keeper? You wont give any of your animals over for us to exploit through cheap commercialism? But we are conserving them! They only get killed by poachers in your country anyway. What do you mean if we gave you some money you could control poachers better yourself? Where's the money for us in that? Talk to the hand!
Grim.
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On the one hand it seems like a better place to see exotic animals than in cages in a zoo, and there's less land-use pressure in the outback than in much of Africa. But Australia doesn't exactly have a happy record with introduced species (rabbits, rats and domestic cats all spring to mind).
Provided they only introduce mega fauna it'll probably be alright (though with a possibility of spreading disease). If animals escape (and it's a fairly safe bet that some will eventually) then the key to stopping their spread into the surrounding areas is in knowing that there has been a break-out, and then finding all the escapees.
Obviously this is a lot easier with elephants than meercats or rabbits...
So, the filthily wealthy has decided in his insecure ego (the contradiction in terms is on purpose) that he needs to leave some tangible legacy behind. And what, in his utter wisdom, has he chosen?
Yes, the preservation of wildlife. A noble cause in itself, noble indeed. But to introduce African wildlife into Australia? That is pathetic.
Let's start with the famous rabbits, foxes, cane toads etc which roam the Australian country side. It's not a pretty sight, with all the introduced animals, having perhaps few predators and therefore outbreeding the local fauna.
There may also be the small problem of germs brought into Australia by the animals. Ever been to Oz? Ever try to bring something even remotely animal-sourced material into the country? Even the soil under your shoes has to be cleaned, for fear of foreign infection due to the relative isolation of the continent.
And also, if they plan to put a big fence around the property, they also need to maintain the damn thing, which, due to the size of it, should mean a constant monitoring of the thing and watching for any escaping animals (which would bring us back to point 1).
In short, any "let's bring in species X into that continent" has, up to now, caused so many unforeseen side effects this should not be done without a proper scientific ground, and even with that, it should not be done lightly. And certainly not on the whim of an insecure rich man like Kerry Packer.
Consolidated already has secured a land swap deal with the WA Government to free up property north of Kununurra for the reserve.
What do you reckon is on this land then..? I think the hippos are just something to hide behind.. the lions are to keep people from snooping. He's building a secret shuttle launching facility? Nuclear weapons experiments? There are opals there? Perhaps it *is* Jurrasic Park?
Australia already sports a very large introduced camel population which traverse the Australian Outback desert parts. Something like this was inevitable. Parts of Australia have similar climate to African savannah.
Aye aye aye aye, I am the Frito bandito.
they're too xenophobic and racist ... pauline hanson, one naton etc
Wouldn't this just lead to more of the same in Australia. IIRC there are already problems with ferrel cats, mice, cane beetles, cane toads(which were supposed to eat the beetles), and wild horses too I think. I guess a few zebras, lions and elephants couldn't hurt.
Kevin
... even a swede like me knows Australia got enough problem with feral animals.
And for the word feral - thanks steve Erwin!!
// a steve fan...
when i went across the outback in 1986 I saw wild camels and horses.
roos are spread all over but less so in the bush than the burbs. I saw more of them in the urbanisations than the outback (but hey, maybe they are just easier to spot near the coast!).
maybe the lions will become so numerous that i will be able to fulfill my eq dream and have real lion steaks. (bah, i'm vegetarian, oh well).
i hardly think the rabbit explosion is a good example . i can't see the place becoming flooded with large mammals, predators OR prey!
As for preserving the ecosystem, it's not like there's much there to lose, unless you really like sand.
Kerry is obviously trying to make a fast buck but seeing as he likes spactacular failure things don't bode well.
While I'm on about spectacle we decided yesterday that should the US actually capture Bin Laden they would have a PUBLIC execution, probably on Pay Per View.
If I was him, though, I would just shave my beard and hair off and calmly walk away. No-one will ever know it's him.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
This is the same thing in a larger scale.
Uh, why doesn't he just build a wildlife refuge in Africa and save himself the trouble of shipping them to africa. Probably be cheaper to get workers, bribe a few government officials and you get carte blanch in matters of security. They'd love you for the tourism you'd bring, it wouldn't mess with Austrailia's ecosystem, and it might actually do some good.
Why transport them to .au, and put them in a foreign environment where they may not survive?
Surely it would be smarter (and cheaper) to put a reserve in Africa and just keep the bloody poachers out.
Its just going to be like Dubbo's open plan zoo but on a larger scale.
just wondering does anyone agree that it is a bad idea. While it is good to try and protect endangered species has anyone thought about the damage it would inflict to the eco system in Australia? surely if mother nature had wanted Elephants etc to live in Australia she would had a population there before man arrived.
Jumping lions ?
The premise is noble, but in reality the idea is faulty.
Southern Africa has already implemented plans to create the world's biggest game reserve that spans three countries - Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe - and which will ultimately be 38,600 square kilometres in size. Within this game reserve, animals will be free to roam, the way they were able to in deepest, darkest Africa of the past before colonisation/civilisation. Due to the success of game parks, the wildlife population is springing back despite problems such as poaching and overcrowding. So while there is always a problem associated with "threat of eventual extinction of species", Africa is already doing the best it can to preserve its species. Australia should take care of its own problems first.
Visitors to game parks in southern Africa are very lucky if they get to spot "the Big Five" in the same day - that is, lion, elephant, buffalo, rhino, leopard; and when they do, it is at a very respectful distance, and always with an armed game ranger. These are not the tame and cuddly animals you see in zoos or sanitised environments like Disney's animal park.
What I'm saying here is that African wildlife is dangerous. Beautiful to look at, but dangerous. Forget Rudyard Kipling's stories about the lion being the king of the jungle (Africa isn't even a jungle, it's more of an arid savannah!) - here, each animal knows its place in the hierarchy.
Ignoring for the moment that there has to be a reason (whatever it may be) why kangaroos are not found in Africa, and the Big Five are not found in Australia, I'm very much afraid that in a pissing match between the two continents, the Australian wildlife will lose.
Kerry Packer's billions would be better spent at creating more game reserves in Africa, but bearing in mind the cliche "charity begins at home"....
We've already got one...
Admittedly, it's prolly not as big as the one Kerry's planning.
|>
Here be Dragons
There are 6 billion people on the planet so 5000 odd Americans not reaching the expected life expectancies is really a non-event.
The 4 most important things on this planet are:-
Air
Water
Topsoil
Biodiversity
Really humity doesn't rate - we are dependent on all of them, they are not dependent on us.
In actually fact we have become a cancer to our host -in a biological very short time we've gone from being in Balance with the enviroment, say up to half a million years ago, to the point where we are breeding out of control & poisoning our host with our bi-products - we are no longer a balance part of our hosts eco-system, just like cancers are to the body - its gotten to the point there's an extra billion of us every decade (the last billion took 12 years, the next billion will take 8 years).
The fact is that we are causing extinctions a 1000 times faster than these species could evolve naturally to adapt to us (evolution is a very slow process)
You know there's only less than 20 Sumatran Tigers left, which means if I had the choice of saving one Sumatran Tiger & saving all the Americans on the planet, I pick the Tiger without hesitation, because 250M/6B is 1/24, so really then 1 Sumatran Tiger is worth more than 250m Americans (1/20 is bigger than 1/24)
I wonder if the rapid domination of the planet by humans started with a mutation, just like the way cancers start? & you know how cancers end? With the destruction of their own host, unless they are halted in time.
When the lions/hyenas get loose, and start eating all the indigenous Australian wildlife like <strike>camels</strike> kangaroos, they'll be an ecological menace right? We'll have to track them down and kill them, right? And if we're going to have to do that, wellll, we'll have to do it as an organised, controlled hunt - the lions still belong to the reserve, so we can't have any old Bruce Stockman just thinking he can shoot them, right? And while we're doing that, we might as well charge concerned individuals a fat free for the priviledge of helping out? All funds to go back into the reserve, of course...
Am I being overly cynical here? I really don't know if I'm joking. At the least, if they get the ecosystem wrong within the park, they'll have to cull the big predators anyway, and if they're going to have to do that, they might as well make some money off it (and so on).
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
A (ex)cattlestation full of African game animals would be no worse on the enviroment than a cattlestation full of tradition grazing livestock.
Really this is just going to be like Dubbo's open plane zoo , but on a grander scale
Australia is already hosting a vibrant population of another endangered species from the African continent....
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Homer: Hey, look! Those frogs are eating all their crops.
[everyone starts laughing]
Lisa: Well, that's what happens when you introduce foreign species into an ecosystem that can't handle them.
[everyone laughs more]
[a lone koala holds onto the helicopter with determination]
Some men spend their entire lives trying to kill themselves for having been born. --Ross MacDonald
D'oh!
There could be two major reasons for doing this. You can preserve Africa animals and flora, and you could enhance Australia's turistic appeal.
But why not simple inest on Africa? That continent need a major improvement on the quality of life. With investiments there, a huge help to mankind will be done. Won't sleep better after this? I know I will.
There are also several other points. If you lower the airplane ticket, heck, could be with the governament help, will Australians travel to Africa? Of course they would. You would help Australia turism agencies, and still keep the people's desire to see lions and elephants.
Damn, let Africa keep their animals! Other comments already mentioned the ecological impact to bring strange life forms. Hey, how about these virus and germs from another specie to come infect yours?
Nature has balanced the enviroment, and instead of living with this ecosystem, this fellow is trying to destroy it. What a STUPID idea. No, I mean, the last step of this path is good. But I believe that to put money on our African friends will do a MUCH better to the world, AND you still gonna have all (okay, not all, but the majotity) of the good outcomes of this idea.
The proposed implementation is just horrible.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
I read somewhere once that the gold rush crowd in the western US (forget if it was California or Alaska, think it was the former) sometimes amused themselves by importing large predators from around the world, and pitting them against grizzly bears. They discovered a grizzly bear can kill just about anything in a minute or so.
What do you do if a bunch fo large predators, say lions, escapes and threatens the wildlife? You kill them of course. It's not like lion are hard to locate, or that they multiply too fast to be exterminated. Just think about it for a second: rabbits weren't in danger of becomming extinct when they were introdused to Australia. Large predator are, because finding them and killing them is so easy. Of course, killing the animals probably wont be neccesary, they have to be captured to bring them Aus in the first place, capturing escaped animals should be no different.
Lessee, why is he an idiot - can anyone say 'prickly pear' or 'domestic house cat'? How about Jamaicans discussing the mongoose infestation problem, or Guam residents discussing brown snakes. One does not import significant chunks of one ecosystem into another without drastic effects. The government should fly over Nancy Reagan to just say no.
Maybe Kerry Packer has enough money now that he doesn't need to think. Maybe he focussed on economics in school rather than taking biology. I don't know. Mr Packer seems pretty clued up when it comes to money but whats he doing now?!?
There's a food chain and an ecosystem. Mr Packer wants to isolate an ecosystem with some sort of fence. The food chain goes down to tiny organisms which can easily pass through his fence. Either the food chain will have significant gaps which cause this idea not to work, or there will be some mixing between ecosystems.
If the ecosystems mix, then he risks unbalancing nature's balance within the Australian ecosystem. If he leaves gaps in the food chain, then it's possible that Australian organisms may fill them but then how does Mr Packer expect to contain birds with his fence?!? What about plant life? It's part of the ecosystem too... birds can spread plant seeds and plants can probably spread through Mr Packer's fence.
I don't take biology as a subject but there are problems preventing this from being feasible that are incredibly obvious. Has Mr Packer thought about this idea at all? It seems as if he had the dream last night and started working on the press release just after he woke up.
um, fuck you
It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one!
How about this? We take samplings of each eco-system, and put them on every other eco system, and see which ones destroy which eco system. If it gets out of control, that's okay - because we'll just bio-engineer giant mutant ants that can fly, which will wipe out only the bad stuff. And if that doesn't work, we'll make an army of intelligent android like machines to kill all offending life forms - and that's perfectly safe, because we can always hit the "off switch".
Yes, so here he is again, trying to put himself forth as a preserver of all that is good and beautiful in Australia. It is therefore a bit strange that he picks African animals as a way to boost the Australian image and attraction.
Please Mr Packer, if you're really into saving the endangered species and not just into massaging your own ego, there are heaps of organizations in Africa against illegal poaching etc that can use that sort of investment. It will be money much better spent than in a wildlife preserve in Australia.
I'd like to share a revelation I've had during my time here. It's that you humans aren't actually mammals. You see, every mammal instinctively reaches a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You multiply and multiply until every last resource is consumed, and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another being on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is?
A virus. You humans are a disease, a cancer on the planet. And we? We are the cure.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I support this wholeheartedly. Yes, the introduction of other species in the past has decimated Australia's natural wildlife, but what this guy is talking about seems to be very different.
There is a huge difference between inadvertently introducing small species such as rats and rabbits across the country (well, starting at coastal shipping ports), and introducing large mammals into a controlled region. Large mammals such as elephants and hippos are much easier to track, and more importantly will typically have offspring every few years (about every two years for hippos and rhinos, four years or more for elephants, and two years for lions, though the latter usually have a few cubs per litter), while rabbits breed like well, rabbits.
Personally I think he'll have a very hard time of doing this succesfully; it's not easy to create an African savannah ecosystem from an Australian outback, and megafauna are notoriously slow at increasing population (thats one of the reasons we need reserves in the first place).
The results do vary, but here is the result of a recent clash...
But! A game reserve for ENDANGERED species might be ok, because that would be things like rhinos and giraffes and primates. There's a reason that they're all endangered, and part of it is because humans can kick the ass of any natural population with ease (compared to rabbits, which breed like rabbits, and thus are not endangered).
So for these species it would be less risky. On the other hand, a reserve in Africa would be ideal, and it is possible to have a reserve without major problems from poachers if the location is right.
For someone titling their post "Your priorities are fuckup," you could probably use a dose of perspective yourself. You write:
..if I had the choice of saving one Sumatran Tiger & saving all the Americans on the planet, I pick the Tiger without hesitation..
>
Thank god, then, that you'll never have the choice. Of course it's at least 100,000 times more likely that you're just a troll engaging in a bit of posturing than the alternative -- that you're a full-blown psychopath capable of condemning 250,000,000 people to death "without hesitation," but in my opinion it doesn't say much for the readers of Slashdot that your tired extremism has been modded up several points.
In the end, it's opinions such as yours that opponents of conservation use to discredit more moderate environmental positions, by associating them with whichever category is more appropriate for your statement - ignorant nonsense or psychopathic diatribe - neither choice being very palatable to the vast undecided majority.
If you honestly care about the Sumatran tiger, find some way to save it that doesn't rely on making an either/or choice between the tiger and the 280M people of the United States or the 230M people of Indonesia.
I'd say, fix the problem instead. And what is the problem? The problem is the africa's wildlife is being killed off. Fix that instead of screwing up Australia.
.au yet, but he is one of the few who really do care about animals and knows his shit. It's people like him we need to make decisions.
I would love to hear what Steve "the Crocodile Hunter" would say about this. Sure the guy is the goofiest person I've seen from
A guy called John Wamsley (google search) set up a reserve in Oz to protect Australian species from Cats, Dogs, Toads etc... that had been imported.
He got put in jail. Why? He killed all the Cats, Dogs and Toads on his land. This is against the law as its 'cruel'. The law has since softened - but technically it is still against the law to protect native species to the detriment of introduced ones.
He has been succesful in setting u a number of reserves though - everywhere he has killed Cats the native marsupials etc have thrived. Often coming back from just a few hundred specimens to many thousands.
He sells shares in his reserves to people, to fund purchasing of more land, and maintenence of the existing land. From memory he aims to have 10% of australia set aside as native only reserves within 10 years.
This project should happen in Africa - not Austalia. Its not as if African land is expensive. I'm sure old megabucks Bill Gates could buy the Congo and ship out everything that threatens the wildlife if he wanted to. Those gorillas are so cool!
I'd like to see a grizzly vs a polar bear - my money would be on the polar bear. I also can't see a grizzly doing to well against a large salt water croc!
The Romans used to do the same in the colleseum - they not only pitched prisoners against lions, but would also match up various animals. Quite the specacle I guess, albeit rather grizzly (pun accidental).
...the hyena's will go straight for the cane toads and get stoned! Then they'll try to capture and sell the toads to other animals, but the first one's free you see - to get you hooked! That's how hyena's work, they'll devious buggers I tell ya!
Well, I didn't mean large salt water animals of course. Couldn't see one doing well against say a sperm whale (unless it was out of the water I guess). I wasn't sure about a polar bear; probably the polar would win, just because those things can get so damn big. But if they were equal size a grizzly bear would probably win.
The lives of 5% of the total of a rare species are obviousl more important than the lives of 4% of the total of a plague species.
I don't want Lions wandering around town ... heck you all heard about the dingo that ate the baby now there will be ones about lions.
Wouldn't this just be a dream come true for the big white safari hunters (and watchers) of the world; exciting African wildlife without the pesky african people to spoil the scenery.
As pointed out by many already, the conservation aspect of this plan is trite. Look at the actual percentage of conservation land in Africa (especially S. Africa, Zambia Kenya, Botswana, Zimbabwe and increasingly Mozambique) - its far higher than any western country. All of these places have viable stocks of elephant, rhino etc. The dangers of poaching are usually specific to an area (ie Reduced elephant population in Tsavo in Kenya). Having elephants in Australia is hardly going to solve this.
There are vastly more important conservation projects going on in Africa that make this look ridiculous - particularly the peace parks mentioned in another post.
If he wants to do something stupid like this - fine; but not by claiming some kind of moral imperative about saving African wildlife from the predatorial, poaching africans.
Matthew
P.S.Apologies for the invective; my currency (the South African rand has just fallen even further into the mire based, as far as I can see, on similar self-fulfilling racist (or more likely, cynical) fantasies of those that control the money markets.
...weaned, as it were, on the webs of ritual... (Mervyn Peake)
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
Inserting endangered species in an already endangered eco-system is the most stupid idea i've ever heard, even if they are in a reserve with the great wall of China as borders.
... )
Everyone knows the effect of inserting foreign species in a balance eco-system and that already happened in Australia during the colonial days. These species are now making it harder for the native Australian fauna. ( That happened with rabbits, dogs,
Those who watch the croc guy on discovery know what i'm talking about, and i would certainly like to hear from Steve about this idea.
Sometimes, i just want to hit people with a buick! I don't know why, don't ask.
It does seem fairly odd at first...but really, it's just like an extension on the "African Savanna" exhibit at your local zoo, right? If the "Park" is separate (and I'm quite sure it will be...lions are expensive...can't have them wandering off to Canberra to be hit on the freeway) they shouldn't alter the biosensitivity any more than the Bronx Zoo does. I do wonder what's being "displaced" in order to make this possible though. Protect endangered African wildlife--Kill Australian Wildlife!!! I agree, it must be a front for something. A four-acre Meth Lab masquerading as The Lion House? An underground nuclear weapons lab underneath the Giraffes of the World enclosure??
Soon to be seen on Animal Planet:
... CRYKIE TERRI, THAT LION JUST BIT ME DAMN LEG OFF ..."
"...and here we are in my native Australia, home to the koala, the kangaroo, and
The thing is that humans have already introduced many species of animals to Australia, volountarily or involountarialy. And some of these introductions have had disastrous ecological effects (still, since this is biology, scientists disagree whenever they can), for instance the introductions of rabbits, cats and foxes. Add to this various invertebrates and plants affecting local species.
Actually, there is an ecological theory called "the tens rule", stating that approximately 1 out of ten imported species escapes and becomes introduced to the local flora and fauna. In the next step 1 out of 10 introduced species manages to maintain self-sustaining populations. And in the final step, 1 out of 10 established species becomes a pest.
So, if statistics are true even down under, there is a slight risk that the Australians will end up with pest elephants roaming the countryside and eating peoples grapes (they produce much but wine there, do they?).
Furthermore, even though insects are not the most important savannal grazers, they are still numerous enough to be of ecological significance. So they'll probably have to import them as well.
Ehh, not to mention the savanna itself of course.
:o)
ESPN used to broadcast "footy" games to America. That is one cool game. I wish they would bring it back.
If the gun grabbers didn't make it so fucking difficult and introduce a labrynthian process for applying for the fucking gun permits in New York City. I could have gone deer hunting this season. But noooo,for the sake of the children, we shouldn't let honest law abiding citizens have guns. Rather, we should only allow criminals, who obtain their guns illegally (because they're fucking criminals!) have guns. Additionally, I somehow doubt I will ever be mugged when the police are present, because they tend toserve as a deterrent to aspiring muggers. I rather think one day I'll be innoccently walking to my home when some faggot with a shiv tries to jack me for my wallet. Unlucky for him, I still carry a weapon, a big fucking knife. Yes, it's illegal to do so and it won't help too much against a gun, but until my ever extended license application gets through the system (at which point I will be rejected for a CCW, because us "regular" citizen's with advanced degrees can't be trusted with a gun, but some jock wannabe starsky and hutch with 5 college credits from CUNY can pack heat and play cop) I'm stuck with either carrying my knife or nothing at all.
But I am digressing.
Hunting in the past few years has been so drastically reduced do to yahoos and idiotic gun control measures that we are going to see a huge deer population problemin New York state real soon now. Thanks Chucky Schumer and Hitlery you communist fucking pricks! Afterall, it's for the children right?
Gun control is racist, elitist and targets the poor and the minorities. God forbid the people ever get guns...ohhhh my! Yup, just look at Vermont where there is no gun control other than the federal laws on the books. A veritiable wild fucking west!
GYAH!
I ran for the bus
To see, BUS NOT IN SERVICE
Dr. Fazulli
Austrailians do not have thr right to bear arms.
I suppose lion hunting with a spear might be fun for the aborigines, but give me a fucking semi auto please.
I ran for the bus
To see, BUS NOT IN SERVICE
Dr. Fazulli
Other studies, however, point to the fact that the rare freebsd is naturally imune to the widely known linuxhypeix-A strain of virus, as well as the dotusbombed-B strain. It is also much better suited to cope with harsh environmental changes such as the K1d33-effect and is much less frequently effected by the kerneldumpage effect, and the filesystemwhipeage effect.
The most interesting situation of note is the rare freebsd mating with the highly effective macos species. The result has resulted in the death of many, many penguins.. ur.. I mean, kangaroos.
Hippies smell.
This is starting to remind me of the one about what would win - a rottweiler, or a rottweiler's weight in chihuahuas?
Just buy a country or two in Africa. It would be cheaper and make more sense. He seems to have enough money to do it, and he couldn't possibly do a worse job than many of the "governments" already there.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Lions, Tigers and Bears(Kuala) ... Oh My...
Now I know that this 'magnate' guy has his own Oz-centric (eccentric?) plans for the wildlife, but hey, these animals can go most anywhere where there's grass and water to consume. Even Ohio. Check it out.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
Would you choose the Americans if one of them included your son? Daughter? Parents? Significant-Other? The children playing at the park?
.. where would you draw the line? Are you now a judge on which Americans are fit for your ideological utopian world?
If not
We are modifying nature, but there is nothing more resilient than nature itself. If it doesn't want to be modified, it won't let it happen. We are forcing it to breed creatures that aren't easily hunted by us, and some possibly quite dangerous to us.
Killing 250m Americans to save a tiger is not the answer. We can't fix nature with science. We fix nature by letting it fix itself, in due time.
Well at least they'll have a winning submission for Fox's "When Animals Attack 27" if a lion attack on a kangaroo counts that is.
They're called homo sapiens sapiens. Now whether or not that has worked will be up to history to decide.
My other sig is extremely clever...
...but in some regions in France, the imported Bullfrog is slowly starting yet another ecological disaster. Read more about it here . So, yes, the frogs are having a frog problem...sorry, bad pun :-)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
It is the nature of life to strive to become as robust as possible. (see the example of rabbits in Australia that has been continually referenced as a part of this discussion for an example of that) This applies to insects the same as it applies to Sumatran Tigers. Things that humanity considers vile and indecent happens everyday in nature. Did you know that Lions will routinely search out and kill lion cubs that are not their own? They do this to protect their own bloodline. Humanity as repugnant as it in general views this activity, has still engaged in it. Of course, we just call it war.
The main difference between us and lions is that we're prolific enough for our conflicts to take place over large areas, not just an African plain, and we've developed weapons that are far more effective than a lion's claw and tooth.
However, I suspect that you are really calling humanity a cancer due to our seeming disregard for the ecosystem. We take advantage of our ecosystems; we don't merely co-exist with it. But such is the nature of being the 800 lb. gorilla. Our decision is whether to be a benevolent caretaker and to manage our resources in a way where every species benefits, or to be ruthless about it and horde resources for ourselves. In either case, you can rest assured that humanity's collective decision to this dilemma will be resolved by what benefits us the most at the time. It won't be because there are only 20 cats left in the world somewhere. The only reason we would save those tigers is so we can lock them up in a zoo so people can pay money to look at it.
Personally, I think we should be more responsible about how we treat our natural environment and resources - but only because we will be royally screwed if we don't.
My only problem with your argument about saving tigers versus saving all of America is this: you only want to save the cute animals. But you don't seem to have the first bit of sympathy for cancer cells. No... viruses, mold, mildew, maggots, fungus, weeds, e coli, bacteria, the crabs... none of those would make your list of the top 20 things to save. But then again, you wouldn't want any of those as pets.
I can sympathize with your conservationist leanings, but when your examples lean towards the cute, I have to wonder just how sincere you are.
Other words that come to mind include Drongo, Wanker, Wally, Sepo, and Rubber. In fact, anyone that wants to see African animals roaming Australia should go away. Australia has been damaged enough by foreigners. The native Australians had the right idea (live with the land without destroying it). Everyone else needs to tread lightly.
I am sure Kerry has good intentions - but please consider the impact on the hosting nation.
For those that do not know, America has recently had a large problem with it's deer population growing to the point that deer are now commonplace in most suburban areas in the east and north.
m l] with 8.4 million people. There's an estimated 2 million deer in the state, leading to something akin to 275 deer/sq mi.
New Jersey for example is a very developed area with (afaik) the highest person/sq mi at ~1150 [http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/34000.ht
The problems aren't so much that 2 million deer eat alot, but that in a highly suburban and developed place, they wander onto highways and buildings.
New Jersey's solution has been to expand allowed hunting, especially bow hunters. Last year 77 thousand deer were 'harvested' [http://www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/hunting.htm]. This does not count the thousands killed every year by Joe Cardriver.
And what are they going to do when mammalian parasites from the African animals start infecting the Australian wildlife? The Aussie critters will have no defenses to tsetse flies and the like. And there's no way they're going to get enough animals to Australia to make a stable population, but make sure they're all free from parasites, too. It's just going to make another big mess...
If I recall correctly from Guns, Germs & Steel, Australia was the extinction ground of a few types of animal because by the time Humans spread to the continent, they were advanced enough to kill things pretty expertly but hadn't yet gotten to agriculture or domestication.
Maybe this is just returning the favor...
This type of thing is still going on. There is a plausible theory that BSE did not suddenly jump from sheep to cow but was introduced by a particular wilderbeast at a safari park that died with BSE type symptoms and whose body was sold for rendering. Wilderbeast in their natural habbitat are subject to a prion type disease similar to BSE.
The theory is still controvertial, the MAAF are ridiculing it. Unfortunately they have little credibility after it was discovered that three years of research into 'sheep brain' turned out to have been examining cow. The MAAF theory was used to reassure the public that BSE was the bovine form of scrapie, a disease of sheep that people have been eating for centuries without contracting CJD, the human form. However people have been contracting CJD so the 'scrapie' theory requires the emergence of a new form of scrapie prion while the wilderbeast theory does not.
Whether or not the 'wilderbeast' theory is true the risk of introducing exotic diseases is significant.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
This will never happen. Australia is the extremely strict in what it allows in the country, plants or animals. When I moved to Australia from the US my wife's cat had to be quarantined for over 4 months before they would allow our cat in the country. If there is any risk of hurting the ecosystem in Australia I doubt the government would allow such things as African beasts.
Drawing parallels is fine, but it's no substitute for thinking and analysis.
The rabbit, like the rat and the cockroach, is pretty much unexterminable. The large mammals this would be about, OTOH, are already threatened and by definition easy to exterminate, should the need arise.
There may be problems with the plan, but the chance that the introduced species will overrun the local fauna and be impossible to control isn't one of them.
Some things you might not know about deer hunting:
"Sport hunting" is a legal term, which includes all legal hunting other than "market hunting" (i.e. hunting to sell the carcas or its parts). While it does include those hunters who hunt "for the fun of it" or for the trophy, most hunters are hunting to put a seasonal meat on the table. Most "trophy hunters" use the meat also - or donate it to some feed-the-hungry program. (Hunters consider anyone who "wastes the meat" of a non-vermin animal to be scum.)
(Unfortunately, many "food banks" won't accept hunted meat - out of political correctness rather than any practical reason. The sickos would rather let the meat rot and the poor starve than do anything that might be mistaken for "encouraging hunting".)
Being shot by a firearm is about the easiest death available for a deer. A good life, a sudden pain, typically dead of blood loss before the shock wears off. Indians switched from bows to firearms because they considered them less cruel - dying from an arrow generally takes longer. But both are much more humane than the "natural" way of death for a deer: Being eaten alive over hours by peredators, painful starvation over several months, disease over weeks, infection from wounds incurred in deer-deer battles or escape from peredators.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Is it me or is it just kinda funny that the article following "African Animals to Roam Austrailia" is "Thermal Solar Plan to Be Erected in Austraiia."
Perhaps we'll see many fried rabbits and extinction of species.
python >>>
reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))
- G.K. O'Neill to his students in 1969
I don't think so.
Seastead this.
Look, the rabbits got out of control because it's impossible to exterminate them. Big African animals are an entirely different situation. There could be a million elephants in Australia and if it was decided to wipe them out, it could be done completely within a couple of years. This is simply a factor of the size of elephants. Rabbits aren't going extinct anywhere because they are small and breed fast. Elephants, rhinos, etc, are huge and breed slowly. Humans can wipe them out anywhere, any time. In fact we are close to achieving that in Africa.
Cane Toads-Unnatural History
1 08 597&loc=14577
http://www.us.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=40
I received this movie some years ago as a birthday present. I've watched it about 7 times, most with friends. It's hilarious and definitely worth seeing.
Hmm, boomerangs, Foster's, Crocodile Hunter, Mel Gibson, Rupert Murdoch. Could idiocy be Australia's main export? That's a rather clever solution to a problem that plagues all nations.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
It is ridiculous to spend so much money and valuable land recreating Africa when Australia has so many of its own native species endangered. While having a wildlife park full of exotic african species will certainly be a tourist drawcard for western Australia I would have thought that a legacy to Australia should focus on Australia not turning it into another country.
The Australian government lists hundreds of threatened or extinct fauna and flora species most of which are found only in Australia. They may not be as exciting as elephants and griaffs but an appropriate legacy would be a conservation park filled with thriving Australian species, not exotic ones.
I mean, let's face it: the continent is heavy on desert with a little croc-infested marsh thrown in, a real sand-lover's delight. What little ecology there is is inhabited by a bunch of loser marsupials which would've been wiped out a long time ago by *real* mammals if Autralia weren't isolated. Hell, look how well the stupid marsupials stand up to *rabbits*, for chrissakes.
And the people - oh yeah, the people. Let's talk about an entire nation which has given us just two real 'treasures': Crocodile Dundee and the Crocodile Hunter. Real masters of the intellect, those Australians. I mean, does anything scream LOSER more than having your two biggest screen personalities go by a name with the word 'Crocodile' in it? Christ, if ever we needed proof that the genes of convicts are a bad basis for generating a population, Australia is it.
I say go ahead and introduce the African animals. Without fences. We'll get rid of all those stupid-looking kangaroos and maybe a few stupid Australians along with them. With this plan the end result can only be a better world.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
YES!
I can't wait to see Steve Irwin tackle elephants!
/poke poke/
"Oh, its grumpy!"
You can't take the sky from me...
Steve Irwin taken and eaten by escaped Lions in the outback of Australia?
Maybe there is some justice for us Australians.
Seriously,
What natural predator does the Kangaroo have? Who the hell is going to argue with a big red? I can just see poor ol' kitty going for a big red, only to get the front half of its body caved in by a good solid kick.
Okay fellows, enough of the lessons learned from watchin' Jurassic Park III. It's really not so big a deal to introduce select foreign species on a limited basis. I did a very basic study of bamboo lemurs (http://www.duke.edu/web/primate/labamb.html) at the Duke University Primate Center (http://www.duke.edu/web/primate/) some years ago. The guys were hanging out in a fenced enclosure with a couple of other species of lemur and loving it.
I had to take readings every five minutes and record their actions, and I had several interactions with squirrels and the like. Really pretty interesting to see two disparate species like this have face-to-face "showdowns". There's no real worry that these guys are going to transmit anything.
The point, in brief, is this: Zoos do this all the time in the US, from San Diego to Asheboro, North Carolina. Believe me, they keep a very close eye on the animals. The biggest hurdle for many zoos is finding a climate that suits the animals. Australia fits the bill for many African hoofed mammals almost to a T, I'd bet. The only real concern is what happens if a large habitat is cleared of rare indigenous animals to make room -- that could potentially have some obviously bad repercussions.
This isn't a case of kudzu, African "killer" bees coming up from Mexico, or rabbits running rampant around Australia. In this case, hopefully, the goal is to breed rare animals in a land well suited to the task (stable government and good climate). The whole purpose is to breed animals that have a hard time making more, not to give range to wascally wabbits. Assuming the intentions are sound, good luck to them, and don't worry about us playing god.
One final point -- if you're worried about this guy making money, don't be unless animals are being hurt or exploited. We won't have conservation without placing worth on healthy animals, and, for better or worse, money is the way we seem to measure worth in this "first world".
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
There are currently *hundreds* of AUSTRALIAN animals that are endangered, unfortunately they don't have the high visibility that some of the African animals have.
For example, there are estimated to be around 100 northern hairy nosed wombats left alive, all in one national park. 10% of them died in the last 18 months.
As a grandiose gesture, Mr Packer's proposal doesn't seem to do much for his "home".
Australia also had a close call with the opuntia cactus. It spread rapidly, and was finally brought under control by importing a species of moth that was a natural pest of the cactus.
Unfortunately, Australia seems to have a history of both accidental and deliberate environmental destruction. Many of the planet's most unusual species are found in Oz, but the locals don't seem to appreciate it.
Nice to know African animals will be freer in Australia than Afghan and Iraqi humans seeking asylum...
Of course we have a much older example of what happens when a placental top carnivore enters an area dominated by marsupials - the introduction of the dingo thousands of years ago by aborigines. It exterminated the Thylacine, which occupied the same ecological niche, on the mainland. In Tasmania they killed them off last century using Tasmanians instead of dingos :-)
Of course dingos are best known in Australia now as the only known predator of human babies... Best T-shirt I've ever seen, during the Azarian Chamberlain case, showed a dingo vomiting in front of Ayres' Rock, with the caption: "It's a great place to bring up children"!
"If you create user accounts, by default, they will have an account type of Administrator with no password." KB Q293834
they can open an Australian animal preserve in Tanzania. Wonderful how nature always seeks the leve, in'nt?
I love the idea! Let's recreate Africa in Australia, hell they re-created New York in Las Vegas, why the hell not. While we're at it, let's set up an area in Africa for alll the endangered aboriginies. I'm sure that after a number of years they would become quite comfortable. Oooh ooh, what about Native Americans, maybe we can set up some land in Europe some place, you know, give 'em some land they can call their own where they can breed and prosper. Oh the possibilities are endless.
I can't wait to see those pussies get their asses kicked!
I don't imagine that the lions will have much of a chance against the kangaroos. Besides their superior speed, kangaroos can also kill predators with a single kick.
Though, I wonder how the cheatahs will fare.
Personally, I think that this won't solve the problem. Species will become extinct, period, in one fashion or another. When there isn't sufficient habitat, species suffer. The only one that doesn't seem to suffer is the human species. We seem to be able to sufficiently adapt and destroy whatever environment we're put in.
Ah, human nature.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I'm LMAO at all the posters saying this won't work. There are dozens of exotic animal ranches, some quite large, in Texas. Admittedly most of them are for herbivorous trophy stock, not free-ranging carnivores. As for ecological disasters, eland haven't overrun the state yet. Personally I'd be more concerned about micro-organisms hitching a ride over on the exotics, although there are no (publicly admitted) plagues yet. Actually the local fauna hold their own quite well; for example, in counties with signifcant coyote populations (where the ranchers haven't killed them off), the Indian black buck can't make it past next Tuesday (just ask my brother-in-law, who lost all his black buck in one season to coyotes). As for doing the park in Africa instead of Australia, most investors prefer to sink money into countries where property laws actually mean something (as compared to most of Africa, where they only mean something if you're related to whatever dictator is in place).
Some of the inventions us dopey aussies threw together...
refrigeration
the heart pacemaker
aircraft inventions:
the `black box' flight recorder
Interscan aircraft landing system
aircraft radar distance measuring equipment
inflatable escape slide
the photocopier (liquid xerographics)
the utility truck (i.e. the pickup truck)
interactive computer systems
the torpedo
the bionic ear (cochlear implant)
the wine cask
permanent press fabric
microsurgery
differential gears
atomic absorption spectroscopy
the (military) tank (concept only)
the car radio
Police car radio
ready-mix concrete
the lawn mower
in vitro fertilisation and frozen embryo implantation
the clothes hoist
the orbital engine
the Favco crane
the wave-piercing catamaran
self-twist yarn spinning
speed packer garbage collector
Michell thrust bearing (for screw propeller)
artificial rain
mechanised brick production
snake bite antivenene
Owen machine gun
Mills cross radiotelescope
laser lighthouse
sports ergometer
contour farming
agricultural machinery:
harvester
sunshine harvester
stripper harvester
sugar cane harvester
stump-jump plough
chaff cutter
drill cultivator
rotary hoe
shearing machines
infra-red chicken brooder
guided anti-aircraft weapons
Ikara anti-submarine torpedo/missile system
furniture castors
sound-proof windows
beamed radar
snail killer
modern milking machine
tubular sheet metal
periscope rifle
Totalisator betting system
processes for extracting precious metals:
Lister's zinc/lead process
bromocyanide process for extracting gold
water meter (direct measurement)
spun concrete pipe
exploding bullets
automatic lid for jugs
superefficient solar cell
optically variable plastic banknotes
superlightweight fabrics
superlightweight composite machine parts
rare earth supermagnet motors
3D prototyping
BTW, you DO know that Crocodile Dundee and the Crocodile Hunter wouldnt get the time of day in their own country, while Americans fall over themselves to throw money at em....
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
In keeping with our hospitable nature, Australia already has detention camps for human refugees littered around the most arid, isolated and inhospitapable parts of the country.
Kerry is simply proposing we extend this refugee detention policy to include animals. We will of course have to quarantine all the animals on Nauru first...
a sheep?
A: a woolly jumper (ba boom)
What do you get when you cross a kangaroo, a sheep and a lion?
A: the king of the woolly jumpers (ba ba boomshka)
And what do you get when you cross a sheep, a kangaroo, a lion and CmdrTaco? (tough one)
A: Anne Tomlinson
cunts have nuts?
The 4 most important things on this planet are:- Air Water Topsoil Biodiversity"
Again and again I see people criticizing this line. Are you all really that stupid, or just trolling on a collective basis?
Air - we breath it, you see. Water - we drink it. Topsoil - we grow food in it. Biodiversity - oh for crying out loud - anyone who doesn't understand this needs to go back to school. The air you breath is made by living things. Ditto the food you eat. It all exists in a rather complex relationship with...
Oh forget it. What a bunch of twits.
The story hints that the virus was accidentally spread around New Zealand.
Not the case.
There were ideas of importing it and releasing it, but there were also fears that immunity would be quick in appearing. They wanted to do tests to check that the virus would be effective before releasing it.
However some eager, peed off with the rabbits, can't wait for the silly Government, types from the upper South Island got a hold of some "Rabbit Calitrivirus" and let it loose.
Big stink in the papers at the time.
Australia has a violently different ecosystem due to long-time seperation from other continents. Bees are not allowed to be imported as they could completely decimate the entire ecosystem.
Kangaroos can travel at very fast speeds and jump very high and far. Australia wins again
Steve Irwin's new TV show: FERALS IN AUSTRALIA
Steve: Im gonna stick my thumb up this elephants butt hole now and its gonna get really pissed off!
.
Which would lose is hard to predict and would depend
on the environment. For example Kangaroos are an
extremely hardy species. Yes, a lion could kill
one easy I guess. But would have a hard time wiping
out kangaroos as a species.
This is a mistaken conception, precisely because desertic ecosystems are so harsh the forms of life there are rarer and worth preserving as much as species in the rain forest (or even worthier of preservation for their uniqueness). When one goes into the desert without the respect and knowledge required one can cause damage that could last for many years to come.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I'm glad you told me all of this. Because your oppinion really matters to me. It really does.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.