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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."
That, and the fact it's quite forbidden to 'import' any live animal or vegetal stuff downunder.
I mean, how are they going to contain the area? Even if you put high fences, they'll be eventually destroyed by rabbits or kangaroos, possibly resulting in yet_another_ecological_disaster. Australia has no natural predators for intruders, any introduction of a foreign animal has huge consequences (see rabbits).
The idea's nice on a species conservation point of view, but one has to make sure they don't ruin the host ecosystem.
/max
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
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"....
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 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)
My initial reaction was the same, but if you really think about it, as long as they only introduce K-strategist species such as the big mammals tourists are most interested in seeing, they shouldn't be too hard to contain. If the elephant species gets out of control, we can wipe them out easily, as we've seen all too well.
Rabbits reproduce quickly and don't have body parts that sell for 50,000 each.
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...
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.
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