Feral Thoughts

The old dingo joke - apparently NOT an urban myth

I must admit I was in the camp that believed the old dingo joke was an urban myth.  You'll know the one when it's repeated below.

When the joke was featured in a recent newsletter, dog researchers around the country started an email exchange questioning its validity. Too many had heard it attributed to too many politicians. However, Queensland researcher Lee Allen has demonstrated the truth (once again!). He has supplied the Hansard record showing that legendary Queensland politician Russ Hinze gave the response. The record shows:

Mr BURNS: Listen closely to this. In the Government party room, during a debate about dingoes killing sheep, the former Liberal member for Salisbury, Rosemary Kyburz, suggested that dingoes should be castrated. Hinze's response—and I have cleaned it up a bit—was, "They're killing the sheep, love, not stuffing them."

There's still some room for doubt as this is a second hand account, but it is given with sufficient authority that I think we'll chalk the comment down to Mr Hinze. Russ Hinze of course was a very large man, whose neck had disappeared over the years. I remember the joke (which I kind of doubt is true) of the young veterinarian trying to give an injection to a turtle which had drawn all its limbs into its shell. A guy in the waiting room offered to help and came round the counter and immediately inserted a digit into the turtle's bum. The turtle stuck his head right out in total surprise and the young vet gave the injection.  "Gee you must have worked with animals before" she said to the man.  "No" he replied, "I was once Russ Hinze' valet and it was the only way to get his bow tie on".

Pygmy hippo shooting shows stupidity of advocating live game reserves

The mistaken shooting of a pygmy hippopotamus in the Northern Territory highlights the sheer dopiness of those advocating live game reserves in Australia. The animal in question was probably living alone in the wild for years before its demise, most likely left over following a game park failure. Advocates falsely claim a conservation benefit for African species from keeping breeding herds in order to shoot the offspring for fun. I don't buy it.

The key to conserving African animals is preserving African habitat. The argument that live game reserves outside Africa can contribute to conservation is nothing more than a thin veil to allow hunters the opportunity to hunt exotic wildlife nearer to home.  Nothing more. I don't think the public is fooled by these silly claims, but let's have a look at them anyway:

• It's an exceptionally expensive way of conserving a species. Private game parks have a notorious habit of going broke. It's usually the animals that end up paying the price of the folly, but sometimes taxpayers pick up the scraps or the environment is left with a new invader. The business model of charging for shooting the surplus exotics never measures up - especially in Australia where lots of free ferals are available to shoot. 
• It "conserves" the wrong species. It doesn't make sense to only conserve species that make good targets. Conservation is about much more than that. I'm always reminded of the Gary Larson cartoon of of the unfortunate deer with a target on him: "Bummer of a birthmark, Hal" says his mate.
• Animals escape and have an impact on the environment. Exotic animals have almost zero chance of repatriation to their native landscapes. But they do end up discarded or escaping and causing environmental problems in their new environment. In legislation before the NSW Parliament at the moment, there is not even any penalty for the live game reserve operator if (read "when") birds escape the reserve. This is a recipe for new invasive species establishing and has many precedents.

I'm neither anti-hunting or anti-gun. I think the hunting lobby is much better off to stop making outlandish claims about the possible conservation benefits of hunting and simply be more upfront. Hunting is a necessary part of managing a number of feral species, particularly herbivores where there are few, if any, alternatives. But spouting conservation outcomes from canned hunting operations erodes credibility very quickly.

Hippo shot in outback

A pygmy hippopotamus. A pygmy hippopotamus has been shot dead during a pig hunting expedition in the Northern Territory. A pygmy hippopotamus has been shot dead during a pig hunting expedition in the Northern Territory.Nico Courtney, 27, was out spot-lighting for pigs with mates in the Douglas Daly region on Saturday night when he accidentally shot the vulnerable African rainforest dweller.Stories about sightings of African wildlife wandering the NT outback have long been shared among locals.But it wasn't until Mr Courtney stumbled on the dead hippopotamus, after shooting what he believed to be a wild pig, that he realised the campfire yarns about free-roaming exotic animals were true."From the tail end it looked just like a big pig," Mr Courtney said."We got out and had a look at it and thought: that's not a pig, it's a hippo."Then we thought: you don't get hippos in Australia."Mr Courtney went to bed hoping to reassess the situation in the daylight, but woke to find it was, in fact, still a pygmy hippo.The station hand's boss, Gordon Coward said he suspected the animal had come from what was formerly known as Tipperary Sanctuary."I heard all sorts of funny stories of breakouts and people kept saying, 'look out for giraffes in the paddock', but I didn't think much of them," he said.If the hippo did come from the sanctuary, it has survived in the NT outback without the help of humans for several years.Tipperary Station, near Douglas Daly about 200 kilometres south of Darwin, was turned into an exotic wildlife sanctuary by its former owner.Warren Anderson, a millionaire property developer, eventually tried to sell the animals after being wrongly accused by the state government of animal cruelty in 2003.Some of the animal transfers were reportedly delayed and confused by the legal battle which ensued between Mr Anderson and the NT government in 2006.A spokesman for the Douglas Daly Research Farm, where the hippo's body was stored on Sunday in a cold room, said the Darwin Museum had expressed an interest in the animal.It was sent to the taxidermist on Monday.However, it is believed that the carcass may have been left unrefrigerated for too long and, as a result, may be unsuitable for display.The hippo, whose species is not far from being classified as extinct, is normally native to the swamps of west Africa, in Liberia.Mr Courtney told ABC Radio on Monday he would never have shot the hippo had he known what it was."It is not really a trophy or something you would brag about, it makes me feel sick," he said.AAP

via www.theage.com.au

Most people seem to have seen this story but I keep getting asked about it - the dopiness of live game reserves in my view.

Wool: wearing your own, comfortable, carbon sink and keeping important bits cool

You learn something new everyday.

Yesterday I learned that wearing wool is like carrying your own little carbon sink around. I gave a presentation on the impacts of rabbits and wild dogs on wool production at a meeting of fine wool producers at Yass, about an hour from Canberra. I also got to hear about the latest in wool fashion and marketing.

I knew that the range of wool clothing products had changed over the past decade or so and that next-to-skin wool clothing is now exceptionally comfortable. The materials passed around the room had a terrific feel to them. But when Australian Wool Innovation's Chief Executive Brenda MaGahan spoke, she taught me a few new things. Wool is composed of grass, sunshine and water so it is 42% carbon. When you think that the sheep has worn it for a few years and then you might wear it for a decade, that's not a bad place to store a bit of carbon. Driving home to the solar-paneled house in the hybrid, I resolved to wear more wool and carry more carbon on me.

Camels making news everywhere - a very cool African interpretation

Those pesky camels are making news around the world.  This is an African interpretation of a BBC story.  I'd say it's gone from English to another language and back again.  I'm calling those animal welfare groups animal gratification groups from now.

By Nick Bryant BBC News, Sydney

Camels were brought to Australia to be used for dried ride

The Australian supervision has due a bill to exercise a long-standing devise to winnow the country’s camels by sharpened them.

Animal gratification supporters reject the plan, but people pity the rural area with the camels call them a menace.

Unlike the kangaroo or koala, the camel is not an animal automatically compared with Australia,

They were initial brought there in the mid-19th century to assistance explorers span the desert.

But there have been right away suspicion to be over one million in motion the outback.

That is rounded off one camel for each twenty people, and the race is set to stand in over the subsequent decade, unless a little form of movement is taken.

In remote communities they have been seen as a heavy menace, trampling foliage and spasmodic ripping up H2O pipes, as they poke for food and water.

So the Australian supervision has set in reserve $16m (£9.7m) to enclose the complaint and one offer is to fire the camels from helicopters or on foot.

Animal gratification groups have been against to a mass slaughter.

They have referred to an additional some-more benevolent alternative: bieing born control, giving animals a drug to describe them infertile.

Feral Peril: foxes, devils, cats and scats. Tasmanian issues explored on ABC1 16 July.

As Tasmanian devils disappear at an alarming rate and Governments spend money on a fox eradication program in the island State, a number of characters emerge: those saving devils, those trying to get rid of foxes and those that have their doubts.  Feral Peril, showing at 8.30pm Thursday 16 July on ABC1 explores these characters.

The documentary tries hard to intertwine the devil and the fox stories, using a murder-mystery approach, including a smoking detective figure that appears mainly in the fox bits but adds little to the devil bits of the program. The show ends up a bit schizophrenic trying to have fun with the elusive fox but then struggling to make a gross-looking ecological disaster like the demise of the devil look either fun or mysterious.  One gets the impression that there wasn't quite enough material to make a full-on fox mystery story nor a full hour of nature documentary, so the film makers have tried to do both.

The joys of working in the Aussie Outback

Dingo researcher Ben Allen from South Australia sent me this lovely shot, warning of the occupational hazards of working in remote Australia.  Where's President Obama when he's really needed?

Mating call of the Peacock leads to woman bashing it to death with baseball bat

The Honolulu Advertiser is reporting that a woman beat a Peacock to death because of his noise.  The woman appears to have been upset by lack of sleep due to constant noise from a flock of feral Peacocks that inhabit the Makaha Valley.  They were introduced around 1860 and found favour with Hawaiian royalty.

Peacocks are beautiful birds but they can be pretty irritating to people.  During the day they can rest on the hood or roof of cars, leaving scratches and large faecal deposits.  They roost in the top of the tallest trees available to avoid predators at night and the call of the Peacock has been likened to the air-horn blast of a large truck.

The odd habits of rabbits

Rabbits have some odd habits.

Induction of a new employee into our feral animal office unveiled her surprising lack of an intimate knowledge of the rabbit's coprophagy.  Er um, their, er, how should I put it? um, their requirement to eat their own poop.  It's like chewing your cud without the need for extra stomachs.  I put it this way in an email:

A rabbit's number one is wee,

Up against some small tree.

In a loo,

Goes number two.

But he has a special ability:

Down the mouth goes number three!