Outlook bleak in pest war -- Global Warming, Climate Change

From: Psalm 110 (Melchizedek_at_USA.com)
Date: 06/20/04 

Date: 19 Jun 2004 17:22:46 -0700

http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,9883106%255E953,00.html

 Outlook bleak in pest war
Shane Wright
19jun04

CANE toads are continuing their march across Australia, with native
animals unable to come to terms with the poisonous invader.

Evidence to a Senate committee yesterday painted a bleak picture for
Australia's continuing fight against pests such as the cane toad,
crazy ants and weeds that now cover much of the continent.

Assistant chief of CSIRO Entomology Mark Lonsdale said the threat
posed by invasive pests to Australia was just below that of global
climate change.

"It's not just climate change in some decades to come, it's change
here and now to our ecosystems," he told the inquiry.

"Massive economic and ecological impact is happening already as a
consequence of the movement of species."

One of the biggest threats is the cane toad that was introduced to
Australia in the mid-1930s to control pests in north Queensland sugar
plantations.

The toads failed to control the pests, but established themselves to
such an extent that they are sweeping across the Northern Territory
and approaching Western Australia.

Senior scientist with CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems Tony Robinson said
goannas had learned not to eat the poisonous pest, but other animals
such as quolls had not.

Cane toad tadpoles were also wiping out native frog populations, as
their tadpoles ate the native frog tadpoles.

Dr Robinson said that as they moved further west, freshwater
crocodiles were falling victim.

He said although the impact in frontier areas was obvious, cane toads
continued to kill and destroy in Queensland.

"It's much more obvious (the impact), but there is a background effect
still there in Queensland," he said.

Dr Robinson said scientists were looking at a virus to control the
cane toad.

He said this would affect the metamorphosis of the toad as it
developed from a tadpole, but at this stage the virus could have an
impact on other animals.

Scientists were looking to weaken the virus to make it cane
toad-specific. "It's the only proposal that looks as if it has legs,
but it is high-risk in terms of success," he said.

Tony Pea***, chief executive of the Co-operative Research Centre for
Pest Animal Control, said Australia needed a national strategy to cope
with invasive pests.

He said foxes were the No. 1 pest, causing hundreds of millions of
dollars worth of economic and environmental damage.

Mouse plagues caused untold social turmoil. "If you've got to shake
mice out of your children's beds at night, it's just another thing to
make farming unattractive," he said.

The CSIRO has warned that some insect pests operate as one huge
organism, causing widespread damage. Crazy ants, which have threatened
Christmas Island's famous red crabs, have now established themselves
in the Northern Territory's Arnhem Land over an area of 350ha.

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