‘Introduced’ doesn’t mean not important

When the first settlers arrived in Australia in 1788 they began craft their surroundings to suit their needs. Massive areas of land were cleared for agriculture, and animal and plants were introduced to allow the settlement to become self sufficient.

At this time, according to the History of Cats in Australia, either Dutch or British explorers brought cats to the country as working companions, who then escaped into the Australian wilderness. These cats found an environment that suited them very well and by the 1850’s there were many cats established in the wild. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, more cats were released to control the plague numbers of another introduced species, the  rabbit. And so the cat was cemented as part of the Australian landscape, even adapting to suit the environment;

Black and grey feral cats are most commonly found in scrub or where wood cover is denser. Ginger coloured feral cats are more likely to be found on the desert plains and the red-soiled grasslands. ‘Tabby’ coloured feral cats are more common on rocky slopes. This is due to the feral cat being able to camouflage into its surroundings. If a feral cat cannot blend, then the animals it stalks will see it and the cat will go hungry, this is referred to as ‘natural selection’. The result of this is that you get an area that has similar coloured feral cats. ref

So, for over 200 years cats have been living in Australia alongside our ancestors doing what cats (and essentially all wild animals) do; eating and breeding.

Fast forward to today and our environment is in crisis. The expansion of housing, the loss of habitat due to clearing for roads and grazing animals, road accidents and severe weather caused by climate change, sees many native animals endangered. Cats are obviously playing a part and they’re much easier to target than some of these other things so it seems like a good idea to eliminate them doesn’t it?

Not on Maquarie Island;

Removing cats to protect birds backfires on island

It seemed like a good idea at the time: Remove all the feral cats (around 400-500) from a famous Australian island to save the native seabirds.

But the decision to eradicate the felines from Macquarie island allowed the rabbit population to explode and, in turn, destroy much of its fragile vegetation that birds depend on for cover, researchers said Tuesday.

Removing the cats from Macquarie “caused environmental devastation” that will cost authorities 24 million Australian dollars ($16.2 million) to remedy, Dana Bergstrom of the Australian Antarctic Division and her colleagues wrote in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Applied Ecology.

“Our study shows that between 2000 and 2007, there has been widespread ecosystem devastation and decades of conservation effort compromised,” Bergstrom said in a statement.

The unintended consequences of the cat-removal project show the dangers of meddling with an ecosystem ‘even with the best of intentions’ without thinking long and hard, the study said. ref

So what’s a government department whose meddling has caused an enormous upheaval in the ecosystem to do? Meddle some more obviously! But this time more intensively with bigger and better poisons! There was an old lady who swallowed a fly…

Liz Wren, a spokeswoman for the Parks and Wildlife Service of Tasmania, said authorities were aware from the beginning that removing the feral cats would increase the rabbit population. But at the time, researchers argued it was worth the risk considering the damage the cats were doing to the seabird populations.

The parks service now has a new plan to use technology and poisons that were not available a decade ago to eradicate rabbits, rats and mice from the island.

The project to be launched in 2010 will use helicopters with global positioning systems to drop poisonous bait that targets all three pests. Later, teams will shoot, fumigate and trap the remaining rabbits, Wren said.

Now, obviously we should be doing things to help the wild birds on this island. But this persistent and ham-fisted idea that ‘eradication’ is always the way forward,  is really just us jamming our fingers in our ears and singing; ‘la la la… we know better than nature’.

Seriously, given the history of our success in meddling so far *cough*canetoads*cough*, you’d think we’d have learnt by now that we can’t carve up the environment to suit our whims (no matter how well meaning) without unintended consequences. If only simply because we humans can never outsmart mother nature.

No matter what our personal feelings are about cats in our environment, after 200 years, they’re not only here to stay but are contributing to the ecosystem in millions of ways we cannot even begin to fathom. They are very much an Australia animal.