Death to all carp!!

[Leon Roskilly]

Whilst we in the UK are accidentally getting rid of barbel and roach etc by turning them all into females, guess what the Aussies are up to!

 

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?...p?id=ns99992255

 

I know that Oz is a man's country, but male only carp. Isn't that taking it to extremes?

 

Didn't myxamatosis come from Australia? Imagine if someone decides to start illegally importing their genetically modified carp!

 

Tight Lines - leon

[chesters1]

i think mixy was a frenchmans invention ,i remember seeing it as a lad in the 50`s ,its a horrific way to kill fluffy bunnies ,the australians have a strange way of dealing with pests ,they make the worlds longest fence to keep the dingo`s out then wonder why

(on the otherside of it i presume) the wildlife the dingo`s would love to eat flourish :confused: i expect the dingo`s would sort the feral cat problem out as well maybe we should transport out to them foxes and all these lions we`re overstocked with to help?

[Alan Pearce]

A Brave New World eh!

[Leon Roskilly]

chesters1:

maybe we should transport out to them foxes and all these lions we`re overstocked with to help?

They've got foxes!

 

Imported by early colonial gentlemen who missed their Sunday hunt wearing pink coats. Running down kangaroos with a pack of dogs didn't seem to be the same thing at all!

 

We'd get £20 for a fox's skin, back when I was hunting the Australian bush with a rifle circa 1964.

 

Oz has long been isolated from the rest of the world's flora and fauna, and as a result alien plants and creatures can explode in numbers.

 

I remember trying to hack through paddocks of giant Scotch thistle outside of Melbourne.

 

Apparently some scotsman had passed that way by stagecoach, throwing thistle seeds to the wind.

 

If the thistles weren't bad enough, prickly pear made progress difficult.

 

Then there were the blackberry thickets, much taller and thicker than those in Britain. (As an aside, did you know that blackberries were spread in Britian during roman times? They spread out the distance of a days march per year. Legionnaires would eat blackberries for breakfast, and their seeds would be deposited when they next had a dump!).

 

Back to Oz.

 

The mimosa (sensitivity) plant sometimes made walking barefoot painful when I lived in Cairns, though it was fascinating to see my footprints plants 'squirming' behind me in the grass. Again Mimosa is spreading like wildfire, causing a lot of ecological damage.

 

Then there was the cane toads, imported to wipe out the alien cane beetles (hundreds of toads in my back yard when it rained. And boy did it rain during the wet!), not to mention wild pigs and camels. Signs in Victorian woodland warning you to be careful of the packs of wild dogs (Alsation/dingo crosses are nasty animals!)

 

And they were talking about introducing rhino, to help preserve the species!

 

Tight Lines - leon

[chesters1]

why dont the foxes eat the bunnies and mice? do they need more foxes? we could fit our foxhounds with rubber teeth so they could harmlessly grip the fox untill captsure which could then be transported to oz for being a bad boy ,solve the hunting prob straight away the huntsmen could hunt ,the fox would be besides getting a complex through hound bullying ( a councilor could be on the voyage out) unhurt ,which should placate the anti`s ,it seems the logical thing

[poledark]

Hi Leon, good reading, mullet fishing a bit slow??

 

Den

[Eddie]

Better than throwing them up the bank!!