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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 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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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.
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.
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.
It's almost as if he just finished watching Jurassic Park for the first time, thought it was a good idea whilst remaining ignorant to the problems and issues and decided he had nothing better to do with his money!
For starters, I think the environment/climate would be very different. Even though at first glance Australia appears similar to Africa in that it's hot with large planes and fields of dry grassy areas, Africa is much more moist than the harsh, dry Australian desert.
There's no way a Hippo could survive in oz, for example.
Well.. if some species become extinct because of humans.. it's natural selection aswell. In history there were millions of species exctinct because of other species. Why would now be any different? How will extinction of Lions affect the world? If for the better or not affect at all.. then we do not need to preserve them
We only have to be cautious.. because our own dominance might kill us. We might someday make globalwide disaster, which will make roaches a dominant species...
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.
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.
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".
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
Some of these species are very close to extinction; isn't it worth it just to create another breeding population to be on the safe side? Besides, while I'm all for helping African countries develop, what's best for people in Africa (more land brought under cultivation, better infrastructure) could be very different than what people need. You also have to take into consideration cultural factors; you have had a rise, for example, of native middle and upper classes in a couple of countries. All well and good, but this has created a profitable market for "bush meat". So the gorilla and chimpanzee populations have seen a substantial hit because these middle and upper classes feel that chicken is a remnant of imperialism.
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.
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)
Probably better protection for the animals. >There probably won't be any hunters try to hunt >them down. If I am an animal, I would rather >living down under than in Africa, no offense of >anything
only mild offence taken.
I couldn't work out exactly what the proposed size of this would be, but even at say 100 000 hectares, this would still be tiny compared to the completely safe environment of SA's Kruger park (+- 2million hectares) a superbly managed wildlife park that has a surfeit of elephants every year. Not to mention Botaswna's Okavango, Moremi and Chobe, Namibia's Etosha, Zambia's South Luangwa, and even Zimbabwes Hwange is not seriously at risk despite the political situation there.
Similar places exist in other countries. A crude assesment that Africa's wildlife is at risk in untenable. Specific habitats, and particular fragile ecosystems are at risk, but a wildlife park in Austalia is hardly going to save a Rwandan rainforest is it - no matter how many elephants are in the outback.
It would NOT be better for such animals to be in Australia. It would be worse for african wildlife in general if people visited this la-la land because they have irrational attitudes about to going to see the real thing.
Matthew
...weaned, as it were, on the webs of ritual... (Mervyn Peake)
But the risks of a safari are much greater than that of a zoo. Do you want to create and maintain a huge fence that is probably a few hundred if not thousand km long? And what do you do when an animal escapes? Remember that there are probably very few natural predators for any of the animals in the safari.
If you really want to breed African animals, do it in Africa! The only reason Kerry Packer wants to do it in Oz is to manage his media image, "as caring about Oz as your man next door". But it shows how little he thought this one through and in his desire to bolster his image, he will end up hurting the Australian flora and fauna much more than he will benefit it.
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.
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