Posted by
Dave Perkins on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 7:46:56 PM
GREAT story. In Thailand, an island with exotic birds was deemed to have too many feral cats on it, threatening the birds. Thai government concluded the next step was to remove the cats. Which they did.
And then the natural PREY of feral cats exploded into unchecked reproduction. Namely rabbits, rats and mice.
And they ate all the vegetation that the exotic birds called home.
So what's the Thai response to this awkward and clumsy failure of enviro-planning? Well, they're going to kill, trap, remove all the rats, mice and rabbits.
The word SHOOT appears prominently in the story. :-)
This reminds me of a couple of previous incidents.
Liberals in Florida decided to use old tires to construct a new artificial reef to attract and shelter breeding fish near shore. Their tire reef came to pieces in the first full season, and tides and waves and storms scattered old tires for HUNDREDS of miles up and down the beaches. The cleanup took years and cost millions.
The second incident is actually ongoing, as the response has not changed even though the outcomes have been repeatedly tragic. In California, it's illegal to clear out underbrush in wild woodlands. This means the underbrush grows thicker and thicker, eventually choking itself and dying and leaving KINDLING on the floor of EVERY FORESTED AREA in California.
Every time there's a lightning strike or a malevolent teenager with a Zippo, half of California burns, and homes and lost and lives are ruined.
If the underbrush were to be cleared regularly, the odds of catastrophic fires would diminish radically. Trees would be farther from each other and would be green and healthy, with no KINDLING laying around to burst into flame after the odd lightning strike.
But California is liberal to the core, and government there refuses to permit any kind of 'timber management' on the specious grounds that someone might profit from pulling out wood, and that would be somehow offensive to mother nature.
Now the Thais have killed the cats to save the birds, and the rat/rabbit/mouse population explosion which resulted has destroyed the habitat for the birds. Answer? KILL THE WABBITS.
Government almost never gets it right in this kind of situation, and it's showing no signs of getting any smarter, no matter where on the planet you look.