Invasive Species: A Cautionary Tale
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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.
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