Aussies Could Use Elephants To Fight Invasive Species

A type of invasive African grass is a major cause of wildfires in Australia. The giant gamba grass is too large for cattle and the native marsupial grazers to eat, but David Bowman, a professor of environmental change biology at the University of Tasmania has a plan. He says that elephants or rhinoceroses could eat the pest grass. "... the only other methods likely to control gamba grass involve using chemicals or physically clearing the land, which would destroy the habitat. Using mega-herbivores may ultimately be more practical and cost-effective, and it would help to conserve animals that are threatened by poaching in their native environments," he said. This plan makes you wonder just how big a Chinese needle snake can grow.

Comments

Gamba Grass was intentionally introduced ...

[sirdude]

Gamba grass first appeared under cultivation in Queensland in 1942 and trials and plantings in the Northern Territory occurred as early as 1931. It was bred as an improved pasture species and sold by seed merchants. Gamba grass has adapted extremely well to the seasonal droughts, fires and low-nutrient soils of Australia’s savannas.

From here [PDF].

Re:Need more dangerous animals

[Kierthos]

Let's see. The gestation period of an elephant is 21-23 months. The interval between calves is as much as five years. And female elephants generally don't even begin reproducing until they are 12-14 years old.

I somehow doubt there will be a plague of elephants. What I imagine would happen is a lot of poached elephants.

Re:End game

[agentgonzo]

+5 insightful? Funny I could understand.

Kruger park has a massive over-population of elephants. It has a carrying-capacity (the number that the land-mass can sustainably support without being detrimental to the ecosystem) of about 8,000 elephants and now has over 20,000 (and still rising) causing major problem (both ecologically and politically as to how to reduce the numbers without resulting to a mass-cull).

Contraception is not exactly feasible on a large-scale (it's been tried successfully on small reserves such as Makalali) but the problem of finding and contracepting all/most of the animals in the wild and making sure that you've not contracepted the same animal twice in one period (major health issues for the animal) is almost impossible.