Stupidity knows no boundaries

I had mentioned before in the blog ‘Down Under’ that Australian’s ecosystem is very sensitive; therefore Australians make sure that nothing destroys it. That was not always the case. In 1859 Thomas Austin a sportsman imported rabbits from England. He released them at his farm in order to hunt. That caused a catastrophe. It seems that he was not a good hunter at all. The rabbits became more and more and they expanded their territory to whole Victoria. From there they took another 100 km new territory every year so at one point they were in entire Australia. They started eating the grass for the sheep. It seemed nothing could help to eliminate them till someone found a remedy coming from South America. It was a virus, which only killed rabbits no other animals or people. This virus managed to kill 99,9% of the rabbit population. Only 1% of the 300 million rabbits of that time survived. Believe it or not after a short period the rabbit population grew again. The trend is going up…

There are terrible consequences. Some parts of Australia, which were green meadows, became forever deserts and the ecosystem, which worked for millions of years, is destroyed.

Thomas Austin was probably one of the biggest destroyers of the environment in the history of Australia. However, for sure he was not the only one. In the course of the years there were not only rabbits, which were escaping into Australian’s wildlife. Other animals escaped which never existed in the country before. Take camels for example, which were used to build the railways. When the railways were built and the animals not needed anymore, they were released right into nature. Now there are almost 100.000 camels in Australian’s deserts – btw the biggest amount of camels living in nature worldwide.

Then there are 5 million wild donkeys and 1 million wild horses. Moreover, buffaloes, cows, goats, and sheep. At the end the kangaroo, which was once, the biggest population of Australian wildlife ranks now on place 13.

Now have a guess which animal, which was imported into Australia, is the biggest killer? The cat – the domestic cat!









Nowadays 12 millions of those cats live as wild cats and kill small animals so that these are endangered. Therefore the Australian government has declared cats as a plague. Cheers to the Australian government who realized a fact which I preach since years… :o)