Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Published online 13 January 2009 |
Nature
| doi:10.1038/news.2009.20
Updated online: 13 January 2009
News
Ecosystem devastated after predators wiped out
Island rabbits boomed after the cats that controlled their numbers were shot.
Australia's Macquarie Island, a severe-looking but biologically rich outpost of land between Australia and Antarctica, had too many cats. They were eating the island's bird life.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email webadmin@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
However well intended, modeling a 'whole,' desired future on a mostly reputed past is a doomed exercise in applied nostalgia. What Macquarie Island was like before humans, cats, rabbits, fleas, Myxoma and whatever else arrived on the "currents of commerce" (or consequently disappeared from it) is mostly a matter of conjecture. Unimagined, unintended, unexpected outcomes are the most likely products of simple ecosystem arithmetic. How many replications of this result are required before we accept uncertainty as a corollary of human agency?
I think that this is probably an excellent time to rid the entire island of all rabbits. Just think about it. Few rabbits were initially introduced onto the island in the first place - which set a limit on the genetic diversity. Then having gotten rid of 1,000's of rabbits by using the myxomatosis virus, the gentic diversity was made even narrower. All they need to do is experiment on just one of the island's rabbits and find a potent mix either of the myxomatosis virus or the calici virus that kills this one particular rabbit. If they then release this virus on to the rest of the population on the island you'll probably find that the entire population should succumb to the virus.