SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Tasmanian Devils Wipe Out Thousands of Penguins on Tiny Australian Island
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 23 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Agnes' Law:
Almost everything in life is easier to get into than out of.
(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...