Aussie Greens Poison Everything: The Macquarie Island Disaster
EVER managed to sit through one of those excruciating low budget Aussie/New Zealand immigration factumentries without having the blood boil just a little?
You know the type of thing; Customs and Immigration officials making life a living hell for paying travellers who have brought an apple core or the wrong type of insulin into the country. This while travellers are still smarting from the after effects of the mandatory application of a delousing spray applied to the entire passenger list of every aircraft landing in Australia before being tipped into Border Control humiliation rooms…with the TV crews.
The attitude and perverse pleasure some of the clearly new Australian officials have while making life difficult for travellers rankles more than a little as the claims are made that this is the front line in defending the flora and fauna (and genetic and criminal purity) of Promised Lands.
It’s cheap to make and demeaning to both passengers and sanctimonious officiousness.
Australia has a lot to moan about. The introduction of cats, rats, rabbits, foxes and Cane Toads have all created problems. To the point where officialdom has made it an offence to kill any sort of venomous snake in your house or gardens without all sorts of protocols being adhered to.
In my experience most Aussies kill the snake and lob it into the new – Greek – Australian’s back yard then call the cops and the cheap-skate factumentry tv crews.
You can’t help feeling a great delight to see Oz officials really stuff it up.
Macquarie Island, left, is a sub Antarctic sanctuary around a thousand miles south of Tasmania and the Tasman Federal Environment department decided poison had to be laid to kill rabbits, cats, mice and rats to protect the bird populations.
One slight problem. The birds began to die in large numbers. When admitting the cull had backfired and over 2,000 bird bodies had been found the officials claimed the deaths were due to birds scavenging on the dead bodies.
They proudly claimed the rabbit population had dropped from 150,000 to less than 30.
One alert Tasmanian Senator asked if that was the case why were ducks dying?
Red-necked environmental staff had to admit it was unlikely ducks would rip apart a dead rat, mouse or rabbit.
The officials have also overlooked birds fly away and die at sea…eventually poisoning sea life and the rodents are actually part of the bird population food chain.
The Age has the unhappy tale.
The rabbits are not thought to be too concerned: one doe can produce 800 descendants in a single decent season and the ducks should polish off the 3oo tonnes of poison before the Environmental staff are made to eat it.
Posted: 18th, October 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
