Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Rupert of Oz wrote:
Carp in our rivers, cane toads, rabbits... are just a few instances...
+1.... hear..... hear

All part of globalisation

Kiwi's at Bondi ???

cane toads - wheres the harm?
theyve been in qld near on 100 years
theres been no extinctions attributed to it. Wild life seems to die off in the short term, then learns how to avoid the poison and then populations recover
Crows, quolls and other species have learned to flip them and eat them bottom up
Frogs are in decline mainly because of pollution of the environmnet, because of the chytrid fungus and because of the disgusting state weve let our waterways get in with siltation and erosion
its easy to blame the cane toad. its actually hard to make teh accusation stick
people say they are ugly. i think the are a marvel of biological precision.
right now they are a valuable part of the food chain.

Carp
carp didnt make the river murray the cesspool it is today. They just survive it.
They breed in polluted low DO still water - unlike most of the native species
The biggest problem with the murray after overextraction and too much salt
is the weirs
the river is constipated
and these weirs are highly eutrophied with low DO deadzones
there have been instances on the river where normal flows are restored
what happenned was the golden perch started breeding again and the guys who fished commercially could start catching them again. guess what the major food source was for the perch? Young carp
Again not one extinction attributable to the carp. and its is a valued food source for native piscivores

Rabbits
Rabbits were introduced several times. and failed.
it wasnt until a large scale shooting and baiting program wiped out all the native quolls, dingo , eagles etc that the population got away.
It was further helped by the mass slaughter of native carnivores as the pastoral system (particularly sheep) expanded. eagles and dingos. Its no coincidence that the areas that are still most rich in native wildlife are cattle country, not sheep country because native carnivores still occur there and perform their top down health check onb the system.
likewise the native anmals that depended on aboriginal burning practices were diapppearing very fast as aboriginal people died off or were moved from their land.
The rabbit didnt outcompete anything, it just fills a niche in a post holocaust landscape.
Now it is the main foodsource for the few remaining dingos and wedgetails, the quolls are all but gone. a wedgie eats something like 200-300 a year.
they are one of the few animals that can tolerat ethe exposed positions on our broad acre grain farms, the naitves evolved to have more cover.
The Rabbit may have caused some extinctions, but not without our continuing assistance
It is also a vital part of the food chain for native predators. the RCD release showed how native carnivores starve when the rabbits are removed

my message is that youve been lied to. None of these species is responsible for our environmnetal devastation, and in some ays they are making it bettwer than it might otherwise be by filling a niche of missing natives. Their dominance is related out our land managemnet practices past and present. If we treated the land and its ecology differently we could shift the elective pressure to favour the natives. Until we do these will fill the vacuum, and we shouldnt blame them but instead undertand that it is OUR behaviour that has put us in our current state.

Cane Toads are poisonous, when threatened, they squirt this stuff on anything. You're telling me they're not harmful? Also we didn't have Cane Toads in Western Australia 10 years ago... not even across the North. Now they move right across our Kimberly ranges and already moving down our coast... this is less than 10 years spread... please don't tell me this isn't bad.
As for the horrible Chytrid Fungus... it only affects frogs. Cane Toads are not totally dependent on water, which is another reason why they appear so aggressive. and besides, my zoo contact's already told me that the fungus has absolutely no relation to the climate changes.

Carp may only have "survived it" but they filled in the good spots, therefore not letting other native animals to grow into the best spots. In this instance, they use up all the resources in the area and nothing grows back so they move on to another better area... this really ok to you?

Gotta agree with you on rabbits... no argument there... other than most farmers aren't that stupid. My mum sees lots of rabbits and she does get the occasional dead one lying around - partly eaten... which I doubt an eagle or any predator would do, they usually polish off the whole animal, leaving behind only bones.

We HAVE been lied to, but who's to say YOU haven't been lied to either? we don't really know anything other than popular belief. And then again, they're often called popular beliefs because they happen so often and people do see it...

what im saying regarding cane toads is that if you take qld and NSW as an example
the toads have been here a long time
and the wildlife has adapted to them

heres another site to read
http://www.canetoadsinoz.com/evolutionc ... toads.html

they are new to the NT and WA and you see the wave of death and displacements charcteristic of a new arrrival. But then you will see the system recover to the way it was, plus toads
again qld is the proof. still plenty of wildlife here! that is where the sprays on cane or fruit fields doesnt poison everything out!

ive heard they can spit poison. but ive never seen it
i routinely grab them by the legs, i just never play with the poison glands
they are edible im told.and taste like smoked chicken

The Carp. I think theres a lot more going on out there than is yet in the public consciousness.
i wont argue it now but ill try and find supporting evidence to support my theory that the carp is a symptom of river health and not a cause.
If we are going to treat the river as our irrigation dam, and as an open sewer, then its better to have carp for teh sea eagles and cormoranmts and water rats to eat than no fish at all.
The boolara carp strain didnt proliferate until the 60s/70's? looking back we can see that coincided with greater control over the river, higher extraction and greater inflow of herbicides pesticides etc - a linear relationship with declining river health. we didnt know about all that then..we just saw the menace of carp. now we can look back and see aaahhh! the relationships!

some of what ive been told may well be untrue. But im absolutley sure a lot more of what is common knowledge is untrue. The book cited has galvanised certain thoughts but ive alays been ill at ease with the nativist position, even while i espoused it.
Just taking into account the use of language, the hypocrisy (Sheep good:goat bad thing)
the high emotion (not objective science or journalism at all)
and emerging case studies
(ie RCD, removal of Horses from alpine areas causing blackberry proliferation, restoration of river flow restoring native fish, Antifoulants being the cause and sustainer of marine ballast 'invasions', the low impact and high global conservation value of naturalised camels and banteng cattle)

but im a bit off topic now
all this probably deserves its own thread

lol one more thing
we've got another toad on its way too
Bufo melanostictus has been naturally island hopping through indonesia
its reached irian jaya/West papua
so without doubt itll populate PNG, then island hop the torres strait
to Australia.
And this is a natural process
so within some of our lifetimes get ready to meet your newest Australian!

cool... you really do have an interesting perspective..

Well certainly the wildlife that hasn't been killed or squeezed out of the habitat... could be said to have "adapted" to them...



Yeah.... but there'd probably be a lot more and a lot more diversity if the canetoads weren't there....



Bollocks... the carp have an ability to survive the degraded health of the river... whereas most native fish can''t.... and it's well known that carp stir up enormous amounts of sediment which has a direct affect on oxygenation levels within an ecosystem...

Which probably doesn't overly affect the native fish species... because the carp have probably eaten all the native species eggs anyway... or destroyed the environment in which they would have spawned...

Carp were introduced to our river systems by dickheads releasing them...



I certainly agree that we have degraded our river systems with herbicides and pesticides to grow our introduced pastures, cotton and other crops and various livestock... and that the carp can tolerate such degraded conditions....

That's the relationship....



Another great example of natural adjustment... the introduction of blackberries have provided a wonderful and safe habitat for rabbits... but fark all else...

Although due to the propensity for blackberry to grow on marginal land ... it has meant that morons, developers and the unconcerned have only had to contend with raping the good, viable and easily accessible land...

Still, this has resulted in another great adaptation for native wildlife... and personally I think zoos are a great idea...

regarding the blackberries

im not speaking out in favour of blackberries in that instance
(though they are almost solely responsible for the survival of the quokka in patches of mainland SW WA)

in that scenario you had alpine areas
with horses

people with good intentions saw the horses and thought - well theyre exotic and they dont belong there so lets get rid of them.
Even though again theyd been there 100 years + and there was no evidence of extinctions.
perhaps they were overstocked, but thats not the same as requiring complete removal.

the problems was that the horses were keeping the blackberries undercontrol so when removed these engulfed the alpine vegetation.

now thats what i call a failed restoration project
and its a good example of simplistic ideals coming before careful consideration

the simplistic notion of taking away non-natives ignores the complex interactions that have already evolved between the natives and newcomers. nature moves fast.

a similar scenario is occurring in north qld with cassowaries and the exotic pond apple (Annona glabra?). The endangered species using the exotic as a food source.
This also happenned in NNSW during drought when the native jungle birds switched from the all but exterminated rainforest fruit trees to camphor laurels. all the 'worst weeds' of that area now are jungle bird dispersed - Camphor, privet, guava, cherry guava, ochna, asparagus, lantana. all re-forming a new hybrid type of rainforest along with hardy pioneer natives that supports at least some native species. A lot more than the devastated ex dairy country left behind before it anyway.
yes we should replant native foods, en masse, but until and only if the wildlife weans back on to them the existing foods shouldnt be removed.

im putting forward radical rethink for most people. Its highly unorthodox. i expect most will reject it outright.
but i also think that in time this new position will gain acceptance as evidence accumulates, so for now at least its out there and people are thinking. thatws good enough.

I like tortoises too

so re john canns book

i looked on amazon and second hand copies are $300 canadian dollars

so if someone keeps them and wants to query the entry for a certain species im happy to facsimile the information.
theres some useful information on breeding native tortoises in there, including some discussion of incubation times

Long necks 130 days up to nearly 2 years
short necks 3 to 6 months

Turtles eat fish.

I'm with you juicemonkey, i see so many people hate things like rabbits, tilapia, ferl pigs and things like that, i see that as misplaced, these are incedibly tough adaptable creatures that are doing what they are ment to do, survive! and some of them do a good job of it to there credit and to our regret prehaps, but in the long run with some management it will make for a more divers environment, I think if we could learn to work with our invironment we would be better off and that would mean looking at some contries that do a great job of it with game managment strategies and the like. dont get me wrong i do see some of the devistation from things like cane tods, fox's and cats, but even in my life time i have seen animals that were once thought to be doomed to extinction over here like the bandicoot and the brush tail waliby both heavely preyed apon by both fox and cats come back in good numbers when fox's and cats are still abundant.

game managment is exactly that! and is not about eradication! the animals that are here are here and have found there place by now no point hating them or the people that brought them here, there dust now so no point calling them names, we know better now about introducing animals into new environments so now its all about education! isnt it? lets make the most of what we have and use it as a resourse 'wisley'

just for example, there was a whole industry based on the "Australian" wild rabbit populations worth milions and thats not the only one!

just something to think about

my 2c worth.

I forgot to mention "my wife and i like turtles to!" we are hopping to get a pair soon!

i have seen way to many of these iteresting creatures get shot and killed and yet you can pay $100's for them from pet shops!

could that be another example of a wasted resourse??? and a native one!

Wouldn't have had the akubra without them....