This weekend, I saw a lot of creatures that
you can only find here in Australia. The culprit behind the fact that many of
these animals can only be seen in captivity is the rabbit. Apparently, someone from
Europe thought that Australia should have rabbits. It seems that he was English
and his intention was to hunt them. Anyway, 24 rabbits (2) were brought over to
the island continent (1).
Years later, in 1950, in order to combat
the rabbit problem (exterminate them), they introduced an illness which would not affect the other animals, but would affect the rabbits: myxomatosis. Well it did away
with nearly all the rabbits, but as it always happens in these cases, it made
the others immune as well as their future generations. And so, the plague returned.
(1) A word to the wise: don’t bring
up Oceania here: Australia is a continent. Period.
They were set free to run around the
countryside. And living up to the
popular saying, they reproduced. A lot. A few decades later, there were 600
million rabbits (3). And of course they
destroyed all the Australian vegetation and in the process, all the animals
that fed off it.
Years later, in 1950, in order to combat
the rabbit problem (exterminate them), they introduced an illness which would not affect the other animals, but would affect the rabbits: myxomatosis. Well it did away
with nearly all the rabbits, but as it always happens in these cases, it made
the others immune as well as their future generations. And so, the plague returned.
A while back, they tried to eliminate them
with a new virus (RDHV).It seems to be working well. But in anticipation of
some of the rabbits being immune, they should be already working on a solution
for future plagues.
We have the same problem in Spain with
pigeons. I’m not sure whether they have destroyed the eco-system somewhere or
just the street furniture (public
benches, phoneboxes, fountains, phone booths etc).
(2) This figure is like others that I give you on the blog; out of the varying figures that I find, I choose the figure that seems the most reliable from the ones that are the most similar.
(3) Perhaps what I am about to say isn’t strictly true but surely someone must have thought of it before- imagining so many rabbits on a small little thing like Australia on a map, makes you shudder.
