THE rabbit population boom ravaging Macquarie Island, halfway between Australia and Antarctica, is providing an urgent reminder of why conservationists need to analyse all aspects of an eradication programme.
A plan to save the island’s birds by ridding it of its 160 feral cats has gone disastrously wrong, with the rabbit population now at a whopping 130,000, up from just 4000 in 2000. Clearing up the world heritage site is expected to cost AU$24 million (US$16 million).
“The rabbit population is now at a whopping 130,000, up from just 4000 in 2000”
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“We need a culture change,” says ecologist of the University of Queensland in Brisbane. Environmentalists “are often averse to maths, and so avoid quantitative risk assessments”, he says.
The rabbits have trashed the vegetation on 40 per cent of the island, according to an estimate by Dana Bergstrom of the in Tasmania and colleagues (Journal of Applied Ecology, vol 46, p 73).
The (TPWS), which eradicated the last cat in 2000, expected myxomatosis to limit rabbit numbers. But Bergstrom believes that had the TPWS “done their calculations” it could have avoided a population explosion.
A spokesperson for TPWS, however, told 91av that it was a “conservation achievement” to remove one of the island’s main pests. It is now for next year. This time, TPWS says, it intends to conduct a quantitative risk assessment first.
