Australian hostility to 'feral' animals again evident as councils mobilised into planning culls by strength of public opinion
Toni O'Loughlin in Sydney, guardian.co.uk 15 May 09;
Australia's hatred of the Indian mynah bird ignited this week, with local councils drawing up plans for community cullings to combat the pest.
Like another loathed invader, the cane toad, the bird was originally imported from Asia to eat cane beetles, but is now the latest target of Australians' complex relationship with its wildlife.
The mynah is estimated to cost east coast farmers in the vicinity of AS$300 million a year. Its fouling of lawns and clotheslines has propelled it into the top 10 most hated feral animals in Australia.
One caller to talk back radio, reacting to the council plans, gleefully recounted how her husband had built and deployed a mynah bird trap in celebration of their last wedding anniversary.
The irate residents have jolted councils into action, with one in Sydney's western suburbs reportedly spending $5,000 to catch just two birds.
The mynahs are also expanding slowly westwards, evicting native parrots and possums from their nests as they go.
Bird-hunting neighbourhood vigilantes have had some success. Canberra's Indian Mynah Action group, set up three years ago by dedicated bird watcher, have carefully documented all 27,500 Indian mynahs they have killed.
Founding member, Bill Handke, knows they will never eradicate the bird but says "it's not a reason to do nothing".
But scientists say Australian attitudes to invasive species, colloquially known as ferals, often have little to do with science.
"Hate isn't strong enough" to describe how Australians feel about ferals says Professor Tony Peacock, who heads Invasive Species Cooperative Research Centre in Canberra.
For the past 18 months he has tracked public opinion on a host of invasive animals including wild cats, dogs, brumbies, camels, and a swag of other detested creatures including the Indian mynah.
Consistently the cane toad rates as the number one hated pest, even though scientists say the damage it wreaks pales in comparison to other species.
The Indian mynah ranks at seven, though it has been as high as fourth. Rabbits have moved up to third place.
"Four out of ten people were saying they hated rabbits but its now five to six people because we have been doing a lot of publicity about them," Peacock says.
Peacock, who hopes to harness anti-feral sentiment to recruit volunteers to help map the resurgent rabbit population, says that older people particularly dislike the pest because they remember when it literally plagued the land.
"Even if you didn't come from a farm you would go to your uncle's farm for holidays, so you were aware that rabbits and foxes were a problem because your uncle had to go out and shoot them," Peacock says.
The detestation of alien species in Australia come in part from the importance of the country's unique wildlife in the national psyche. Although an increasingly remote experience, Australians continue to identify with the bush says Tim Low, a founder of the Invasive Species Council.
"It's definitely part of the national culture. We love the fact that we have strange animals like kangaroos, platypus and koalas. There's a lot of hostility to the idea that foreign animals can come in and destroy the native habitat," Low says.
Yet ironically this pride has failed to protect the dingo and the kangaroo, which appears on the national coat of arms, from being culled as pests.
They rank 15 and 17 respectively on Peacock's surveys.
So reviled is the dingo that Lyn Watson, who breeds the native canine in Victoria, is worried they are being pushed to the edge of extinction.
"Australia has a powerful rural lobby and when animals get in the way, we kill them," she says.
