Feral Thoughts

Australian Wildlife Conservancy - doing some amazing stuff

Australian Wildlife Conservancy continues to amaze everyone.  They announced in the last couple of days that they've purchased Marion Downs in the Kimberly, next to their Mornington Sanctuary.  A couple of weeks ago, AWC's founder Martin Copley was listed as one of Australia's "most inspiring" by a national paper and a couple of years ago the organisation won the Prime Minister's Environmentalist of the Year Prize.

So what's the secret of this private conservation group?

Last week, I was privileged to tour their Scotia Sanctuary in far west New South Wales and get a peak into the group. (Better declare a conflict on interest - AWC's Chief Executive Atticus Fleming is on my Board).  It was immediately apparent to me that AWC has some fantastic things going for it:

• Committed staff that are knowledgeable and feel part of something important.  I'm not sure who selects AWC staff, but they shouldn't change a thing.  Pest Animal Control Officer at Scotia, Tony Cathcart addressed my Board and is one of those guys with a rare combination of field skills (we got a brilliant account of the 187 traps days to get the last cat on Scotia), record keeping, scientific knowledge and an ability to relate the whole package to others.
• A business approach to wildlife.  I'm not sure that I'm describing things correctly but the largely business-skilled Board at AWC obviously requires high levels of monitoring and performance review.  The measurement of performance goes past what is normally possible on public lands.  But the business model is a not-for-profit one (Scotia and a few of the other Sanctuaries were bought after the collapse of the for-profit Earth Sanctuaries) - so it is business-like with a view to costs and performance but with the purpose of conserving wildlife, not making money.
• Good sanctuary selection.  AWC has gone for large sanctuaries, usually in fairly good condition on purchase and usually with key species for conservation.  Many of their sanctuaries link national parks.

I got to see my first Bilbie's in the wild, as well as boodies (Burrowing Bettong) and mala (Rufous hare-wallaby). I missed seeing the woylies (Brush-tailed Bettongs) and only saw the nest of the Stick-Nest rat, which was surprisingly large.  As horrible as it sounds, I can understand an exhausted explorer or drover being grateful to find a stick-nest at the end of the day and building a fire on it - it really looks like someone has got the kindling together.

Australian Wildlife Conservancy is funded by private donations.  Having visited and seen their work first-hand, I feel terrific about my small monthly donation.  Scotia is not open for public visits, but some of AWC's other sanctuaries are - see their website www.awc.org.au/

What's on the menu?

Imagine a line of trucks from Sydney to Grafton on the New South Wales north coast.  More than five hours driving at the speed limit hurtling past truck after truck lined up bumper to bumper.

Now fill the back of every one of those trucks with wildlife.  Feathertail gliders, Mountain Pygmy Possums, dunnarts and New Holland mice.  Wonga pigeons and little penguins.  Green tree frogs and frill-necked lizards.  Fill those trucks to the top. (Yes, they'd be rabbits and black rats and a few Indian mynahs too).

A line of trucks from Sydney almost to Queensland filled with wildlife.  Unique wildlife.  Wildlife you don't really get anywhere else on earth.

That's the diet of Australia's feral cat population.  For one year.

It's hard to believe but there may be as many as 18 million feral cats in the country, each eating about a hundred and twenty five grams of food each day.  For a single cat eating only Mountain Pygmy Possums, that would be almost 800 possums a year.  If each cat eats 125 grams a day, that's a daily diet of 2250 tonnes, or 820,000 tonnes a year.  At an average payload of 25 tonnes, that's close to 33,000 truck-fulls.  And at 19 metres a truck (I rang the Australian Trucking Association), bumper-to-bumper they'd run for 622,440 metres.  Sydney to Grafton.  My goodness.

Of course those figures are based on a 3.8 kg average feral cat size.  If cats get bigger with new genes into the population (as we now know dogs have), they'll need to eat more.  The convoy of trucks would then be on the outskirts of Brisbane.

Thanks to Tony Buckmaster, PhD student with the CRC and Sydney University, for helping with these figures.

Under-ice aggregations might teach us about carp behaviour

Ten days ago I was in Minneapolis, Minnesota looking at a range of carp behaviours that we will never see in Australia.  The Common Carp that is the number one pest fish in Australia is also a major pest in the United States, and our Cooperative Research Centre has worked with the University of Minnesota for a few years on carp behaviour.  Specifically, we are interested in how carp communicate via chemicals that initiate certain behaviours.  In Minnesota's iced-over lakes, the carp group together, most likely in the warmest parts of the lake or where oxygen content is highest.

Commercial fishermen exploit this behaviour to catch the carp, usually sonar to locate the fish.  They surround the fish with seine nets, sending them under the ice with submersibles.  In the picture, a commercial fisherman is drilling a hole through a metre of ice to then use a sonar to find the fish.

Obviously in Australia we don't have lakes that ice over like those in Minnesota.  But we are interested in how the fish are communicating and whether we can use this information to target them.  University of Minnesota research, Professor Peter Sorensen and his colleagues are also finding that carp can be relatively easily conditioned to food or other signals.  Carp are a long-lived species and seem to be able to remember events or rewards for long periods and use that information in responding to similar situations in the future.  Peter is conducting simple food reward experiments to determine whether large numbers of carp can be trained to come to particular areas in a lake and then be trapped out.

We may have very different weather conditions in Minnesota and Australia, but it is still worth sharing our knowledge and finding better ways to approach our common pests.

Another Year of a Feral

The Chinese Year of the Rat, the first in the lunar cycle, begins 7 February.  Rats are arguably the most damaging invasive animal, doing massive damage to crops and biodiversity and carrying many zoonotic diseases.  Most famously they are associated with the pandemics of bubonic plague, responsible for wiping out maybe a third of the population on Europe in the Middle Ages.

By my reckoning nine of the 12 Chinese horoscope animals are feral somewhere.  What do you think?

Rat: ricefield rats in South East Asia eat the equivalent of the caloric intake of Indonesia every year!

Ox: regeneration of native trees in Hawaii can be completely stopped by feral cattle.

Tiger: I don't know of any feral tiger reports - never a species we think of as overabundant.

Rabbit: Australia's worst Christmas present, arriving 1859.

Dragon: I don't know of any but still 280,000 hits on Google

Snake:  the brown tree snake is Guam's worst enemy

Horse: Wikipedia lists 13 different feral horses from Portugal to Namibia to Nova Scotia to new Zealand.

Goat: the "Judas Goat" technique is very effective in tracking down goats and is widely used in eradication programs.

Monkey: rampant monkey populations aggressively demanding food are Hong Kong's worst feral species.

Rooster: this was one of the three I left off the list but Google gives me 36,000 hits on "feral rooster" - mainly keeping people wake on Hawain islands.

Dog: rabies still kills over 50,000 people annually with feral dogs a major source.

Pig: we might have five times more feral pigs than domestic ones in Australia!

So let's make it 10 out of 12.

Birds cost horticulture $313,000,000

A new book Managing Bird damage to fruit and other horticultural crops launched today by the Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation, Senator Eric Abetz indicates that the cost of birds to the industry is $313 million per annum.

Authors John Tracey, Mary Bomford, Quentin Hart, Glen Saunders and Ron Sinclair have done a brilliant job pulling together a mass of information on birds, the damage they do and what can be done to reduce their impact.  What was clear from the seminar leading up to today's launch was that (1) the cost of birds is much higher than most people expected and (2) research into new methods of control has been largely overlooked.

Data indicates that in the nut industry, up to 22% of crops can be lost to bird damage. It seems extraordinary to me so little research has been supported by industry over the years, given the levels of damage reported.  Discussion at the seminar tended to indicate that other problems are occupying the attention of horticulturists, most notably at the moment being the lack of water.  The problem is also highly variable and caused by a mix of exotic and native species.

The biggest message coming from today's speakers was to take a strategic approach.  Simply killing birds is rarely effective. For example, in Africa a billion Quelea (pictured) maybe be killed annually with no discernible impact on the population or the damage they do.  This species has been kept as a pet in Australia by the way, although it is thought that none are left in the country.  It is certainly a species that import risk assessment should keep out, now that better processes are in place for assessing risk.

Growers should get a hold of a copy of the book, which can obtained for free from the Bureau of Rural Sciences.

Time to look for new rabbit controls

At one time the European rabbit was by far the worst environmental and agricultural pest in Australia.  Biological control in the 1950s and 1990s gave the country massive relief.  In fact, myxomatosis still kills more than 40% of the rabbits born in the country today, some 57 years after its release.

Rabbit haemorrhagic disease (RHD, formerly called rabbit calicivirus in Australia) gave further relief in the 1990s.  The 2001 State of the Environment report noted its importance in restoration of vegetation and there is no doubt had a better starting point for the drought that is still affecting much of the country.  These two examples are effectively the only big wins in vertebrate pests for biological control, although it is so important in weed and insect management.

There are two reasons to start looking seriously for new biocontrols now.  One is that rabbits still cause massive damage to biodiversity when they are in low numbers.  it takes very few rabbits to cause serious damage to plants - see the photos by Dr Brian Cooke that I've just posted.  Secondly, we know that rabbit numbers are beginning to build again.  It is always better to try for a solution to a problem before it is overwhelming you.

A bloated toad

Download P9020207.JPG The Kimberley Toadbusters are out every weekend (at least) removing toads from the invasive front in the Northern Territory.  They can now bring dead toads back into Western Australia and tare making interesting specimens available to researchers.  This toad was found highly bloated and was preserved for interested researchers or pathologists to examine.

Perth lawyer Sandy Boulter is passionate about the Kimberley environment and runs Friends of KTB.  Her email is sandraboulter@westnet.com.au if you are interested in learning more.

Biodiversity report shows impact of ferals

A new report published by the Invasive Animals CRC makes it clear that feral animals represent one of the major threats to biodiversity.  The threat posed by pest animals to biodiversity in New South Wales by staff from the Pest Management Unit in the Department of Environment and Climate Change quantifies the specific biodiversity at risk from invasive animals.

Pest animals are the fourth greatest risk to biodiversity in NSW, behind land clearing, altered fire regimes and weeds.  They threaten 40 of the threatened biodiversity in the State.  This extensive report contains a wealth of information of interest.  Copies can be obtained from the Editor, Dr. Wendy Henderson in the CRC office wendy.henderson@invasiveanimals.com

Managing Bird Damage - 20 September launch

Canberra

The Invasive animals CRC will be hosting a workshop and launch of a new book - Managing Bird Damage to Fruit and Horticultural Crops - on 20 September 2007.  The Minister for Conservation, Senator Eric Abetz, has kindly agreed to launch the book and will speak on a packed program.

John Tracey from NSW DPI (senior author of the book) will speak as will starling guru Dr. Ron Sinclair from South Australia, Brad Wells from Horticulture Australia and David Lowe from the NSW Wine Industry Association as well as a number of others.

The program is cohosted by the Bureau of Rural Sciences who produced the book, and is at 9.00 for 9.30 at the Theatrette of Parliament House.  Everyone is welcome, but you must register with diane.holloway@invasiveanimals.com on 02 6201 2887 for catering purposes.  It should be a very useful networking event for anyone with an interest in bird issues.

It's been a while since a big mouse plague

On average we have a mouse plague every four years or so in Australia. I wonder how long before the next one.