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Tasmanian devils wipe out thousands of penguins on tiny Australian island:
An attempt to save the Tasmanian devil by shipping an "insurance population" to a tiny Australian island has come at a "catastrophic" cost to the birdlife there, including the complete elimination of little penguins, according to BirdLife Tasmania.
Maria Island, a 116-square-kilometre island east of Tasmania, was home to 3,000 breeding pairs of little penguins around a decade ago.
Their populations have dwindled since Tasmanian devils were introduced in 2012, but according to BirdLife Tasmania, the most recent survey conducted by the parks department showed penguins had completely disappeared from the island.
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Tasmanian Devils Wipe Out Thousands of Penguins on Tiny Australian Island
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(1)
Agnes' Law:
Almost everything in life is easier to get into than out of.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @05:28AM (13 children)
Every time we humans meddle, Nature pays a price. Not the first rodeo for Oz though - they and the Kiwis have a long record of eco-mishaps. Rabbits, stoats, (feral) cats, possums. Introducing a predator for a pest, which goes on to wipe out several other species - this is BAU (business as usual) for AU/NZ. Its the standard "She'll be right." followed by "Oh oops, we didn't see that coming." You can bet the eco-experts who advised on this all got 6 figure incomes...
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @05:39AM (4 children)
Of course, all those mistakes are predicated on the first mistake: Letting the fucking Brits in!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @07:25AM
Let? One could wish. More like they barged in with their Navy, often with guns blazing.
https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-did-the-British-empire-kill-worldwide [quora.com] [Quora]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARSNaSeT9hw [youtube.com] [Youtube - some Irish humour]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @12:18PM (1 child)
The "native" aborigines wiped out the large marsupials when they arrived, leaving only smaller animals for the Brits to inadvertently kill.
(Score: 1) by js290 on Tuesday June 22 2021, @03:16PM
@joerogan Experience #961 - @Graham__Hancock, #RandallCarlson & @michaelshermer Hunted to extinction or cataclysm? [bit.ly]
The Extinct Ice Age Mammals of North America - Professor Donald Grayson... hunted to extinction? [bit.ly]
"Why are hunter-gatherer women hunting/foraging?" Talebian Barbell strategy [bit.ly]
(Score: 1) by js290 on Tuesday June 22 2021, @03:12PM
Redesigning Civilization Toby Hemenway Clash of cultures HG vs agriculture: [bit.ly]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday June 22 2021, @12:57PM (4 children)
> Every time we humans meddle, Nature pays a price.
Sounds good - but demonstrably not true. For example, locally to me, consider the reintroduction of the red kite into UK which has been a huge success with currently hundreds of breeding pairs.
https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/red-kite/conservation/ [rspb.org.uk]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Tuesday June 22 2021, @02:36PM (3 children)
Is it really so surprising that reintroducing a species didn't cause problems? The ecosystem had already evolved to support them there.
Versus introducing a species into an area it's not native to, then it has no local competitors and goes crazy.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @05:49PM (1 child)
It wasn't really re-introduction in the case of Maria island (pronounce Mor-i-ah). There were never devils there before (the island is too small to have a sustainable population). The devils on Maria are human raised rescue animals. They have different behaviors than wild devils, e.g., they are much more social with members of their own species (female with young will allow males in burrow-- not seen anywhere else AFAIK) as well as less reclusive.
Maria island is an amazing place to bring the family to be certain to see wildlife in a setting that is not oppressive like a zoo. Essentially, a large free range zoo. Wombats are nearly tame, and come out during the day (normally nocturnal). Free camping too (7km from the ferry landing IIRC), so just need to pay the round trip ferry fare. Or, cheap camping close to the landing.
It is a former prison island. The cells have been converted into hotel rooms if camping is not your thing.
As for the devils, Moria has cancer free devils. There aren't many of those left, since the cancers they have are transmissible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday June 22 2021, @06:08PM
I was referring to PiMuNu's red kites in Britain thing.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday June 22 2021, @07:35PM
But GP said "Every time we humans meddle, Nature pays a price". It's a defeatist statement that doesn't match the facts.
(Score: 2) by SpockLogic on Tuesday June 22 2021, @02:27PM
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you "Cane Toads: An Unnatural History"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_Toads:_An_Unnatural_History [wikipedia.org]
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 1) by js290 on Tuesday June 22 2021, @03:08PM
Mark Shepard on Restoration Agriculture: [bit.ly]
How Wolves Change Rivers [youtu.be]
(Score: 2) by NoMaster on Wednesday June 23 2021, @01:16PM
> Rabbits
Introduced to Aus & NZ by idiot rich people so they could hunt them
> stoats
Introduced to Aus & NZ, against the advice of scientists & naturalists, by idiot politicians to control the rabbits. A pest now in NZ, but never successfully established in Australia.
> (feral) cats
Introduced to Australia & NZ, initially as ship's cats and later by rich free settlers as pets.
> possums
Native to most of Australia. Introduced to NZ from Australia by businessmen to develop a fur trade.
Seems the historical examples in your rant don't really have much to do with this particular situation...
> You can bet the eco-experts who advised on this all got 6 figure incomes...
FWIW, the Tasmanian DPI did predict this outcome before the devils were introduced there. But Little Penguins are almost ubiquitous around the coast of Tasmania & southern Australia and their IUCN status is "Least Concern". Maria Island also already had a number of other local introduced species (pademelons, wallabies, and roos) that were effectively 'pests' there, and it was felt at the time that the risk to a small penguin population was outweighed by the much larger risk that Devil Facial Tumour Disease posed to the whole of the devil population.
Live free or fuck off and take your naïve Libertarian fantasies with you...
(Score: 5, Informative) by mrpg on Tuesday June 22 2021, @05:40AM
"… Beverly, the Prime Directive is not just a set of rules; it is a philosophy… and a very correct one. History has proved again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous."
"It's hard to be philosophical when faced with suffering."
"Believe me Beverly, there was only one decision."
"I just hope it was the right one."
"And we may never know."
- Picard and Crusher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppykquyAUyY [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @11:35AM
A quick survey of the literature would have shown that Looney Tunes was warning us for decades about the destructiveness of Tasmanian Devils.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @01:43PM
What sort of shape the little penguins are in as a species. ("Little penguin" is the actual name of the species). It turns out it's a species with a somewhat small habitat range, but isn't threatened. There are hundreds of thousands of them. This represents at most 1% of the population. A disaster to be sure, but less ecologically destructive than previous misadventures, unless it turns out there is a more endangered species on the island.
While this particular meddling may not have been beneficial, it is not as bad as it sounds.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @04:17PM (2 children)
WHY do they keep doing this? They never learn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @03:31AM (1 child)
We. Humans did this. WE never learn.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 23 2021, @03:55AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @05:07PM
Must have been some Saturday morning in the seventies.
(Score: 1) by arcade on Tuesday June 22 2021, @05:20PM (1 child)
Red foxes, Rabbits, Camels, Cane toads, cats, feral pigs ..
And then there is the cacti ..
Of course, Australia hasn't learned, they released the myxoma virus to fight the rabbits. Which they adapted to. So, they released a calicivirus in '91 to give the rabbits haemorrhagic disease.
I mean, what could go wrong?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 14 2021, @02:00PM
Oh, so that's the influence for The Long Drive! :)