Invasive Species: A Cautionary Tale
.jpg)
Some conservationists are looking into assisted colonization programs to save endangered species. The process involves relocating an endangered animal from one area of the world to another that is deemed more suitable. The reasoning is that the climate change is happening too quickly for these animals to adapt. Animals selected for assisted colonization have included shipping polar bears to Antarctica and camels, elephants and cheetahs to North America to "rewild" the landscape.Catastrophic tales about the introduction of a non-native species to a new habitat are easy to find. Hollywood has even taken the theme and adapted it to the silver screen with aliens and viruses in such movies as I Am Legend and Signs. In real life we have the tale of the cats of Macquarie Island.
When the sub-Antarctic island of Macquarie was discovered in 1810, sailors immediately saw the potential to capitalize on the fur of the island's residents: seals and penguins. Unfortunately their sailing vessels were overrun with mice which ate their grain. The best solution for them was to take a few felines on board. Cats, being what they are, found the island more interesting than the hull of a ship and moved ashore.
Simultaneously, the sailors filled their penchant for fresh meat by carrying live rabbits with them on the voyages (why they couldn't eat seal or penguin carcass I don't know). The rabbits were set loose on the island.
Over time, the cats happily ate the rabbits until 1968 when a deadly rabbit disease called Myxomatosis was introduced to try to curb the rabbit numbers. It succeeded but the cats then turned their claws on the native burrowing bird population.
Attacks on the cats began in 1985 and took fifteen years to kill the very last cat on Macquarie Island.
During those years, the rabbit population rebounded and ravished the local vegetation.
The entire mess is expected to take $15 million to clean up -- and that's not including any inevitable human bungles along the way.
The moral of the story? Invasive species bad. Don't mess with Mother Nature.
It's Energy Independence Day! 
Green Your 4th of July Celebration
The Importance of Pollination - It's Not Just Bee Sex
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-15-2009 @ 10:54AM
Baron said...
Oh, I forgot the real reason I even posted! I have read that seal and penguin meat is really disgusting due to their diets + the cold (blubber does something to the meat). I forget where I read it exactly online, but it was from an account of old explorers there and it did not sound like something you would want to eat.
Reply
1-15-2009 @ 11:22AM
kelly.leahy said...
Ah ha! Well that explains the rabbits. I guess cats probably don't taste good either :)
1-15-2009 @ 1:43PM
Baron said...
Well, I found my source and it isn't quite as bad as I thought, but it sure sounds like rabbit would be much, much better:
http://ask.metafilter.com/53331/What-do-penguins-taste-like
One of the quotes though:
Frederick A. Cook, surgeon on the Belgica expedition ... :'It is rather difficult to describe its taste and appearance; we have absolutely no meat with which to compare it. The penguin, as an animal, seems to be made up o fan equal proportion of a mammal, fish, and fowl. If it is possible to imagine a piece of beef, an odriferous codfish, and a canvas-back duck, roasted in a pot, with blood and cod-liver oil for sauce, the illustration will be complete.'
Which, I suppose if all that sounds good to you, then you would be set! haha
1-15-2009 @ 1:45PM
kelly.leahy said...
Oh yuck. This is probably why there are still penguins in existence. If they tasted any good to humans they would have been extinct a long time ago.
1-15-2009 @ 11:21AM
Baron said...
You are exactly right; creatures are where they are for a reason. Now, I think some things can be moved to other parts of the world with little trouble, but only in a very well controlled environment that should be used only for breeding and then moving the animals back to their original environment (assuming it is still there). Also, client change is certainly happening slowly enough to allow animals to adapt, where as native populations that hunt or clear these animals for whatever reason (amazingly enough, the majority of American hunters, farmers, etc. are very involved in conservation, where as a poor native in *insert country* doesn't really care as it, many times, means survival or non survival for them).
Anyway, you don't want to mess around!
Reply