FERALS

boof

boof

Well-Known Member
20+ year member
I just got home from a 12 hour shift working 3pm to 3am. DUring this time I was patrolling around the Lake Illawarra area just south of Wollongong in New south Wales. During the shift I seen about 6 foxes. For some people that might not be many, but I was in residental areas all night, not out in the bush.

Since I started working in that area, just after christmas, I reckon I have seen over 50 foxes, 100's of rabbits and about 20 to 30 rusa deer around the patrol. During this time I have seen 1 bandicoot and maybe 5 wallabies.


This time last year I was in the Northern Territory on a shooting holiday. While I was up there , again, I saw more ferals than natives.

The point I am trying to make is that this country is being over run by ferals.

If nothing is done the only birds we will see will be india mynas, spotted turtle doves and pigeons. The only animals will be foxes, goats and cats.
 
Meanwhile a certian forestry company is allowed to poison thousdands of native animals in Tasmania
 
umm .

I have had that too glyn staying half of monarto is covered in rabbit sh*t
 
It is a pity there is not a way of legaly dispatching foxes in a built up area (other than traps). I have only seen 2 wild bandicoots, both were on fishing trips.
 
i live about 20 mins walk from the centre of melbourne city and as i drunkedly devoured some microwavble crap at 2am, i have seen a fox walk casually down the middle of the footpath, check for traffic, cross a major road, past the bright lights of the service station at which i was sitting in the gutter of, and continue along his merry way, checking some garbage in a lane as we went.

it was the biggest, healthiest fox i have ever seen too!
 
anyone really interested in this topic should read feral future by tim low, an australian scientist. or the 'new nature' which is even better.
whilst predation by foxes and feral cats has directly caused catastrophic extinctions in the past, id actually argue that the habitat modification from cattle and sheep has led to more species declines overall, in the past and into the future. not just fauna but flora too. i mean, the foxes and cats have already eaten about as much of our natives out as they can, but the continuing and widespread decline of birds across much of south-east australia's agricultural belt to me signals a new wave of extinctions.
just a thought...
 
i was wondering how long it would take before someone mentioned " feral future". I bought it a few years ago. I haven't read the other book you mentioned. I will keep an eye out for it.
 
lol boof, its a better read than feral future. the new nature puts a completely different slant on lots of things, eco-systems etc. raising the ecological IQ it says on the back, and thats about right!
 
in todays newspaper, NPWS released information that ferrets are turning up in the Blue Mountains national park. this is a world heritage listed environment, and corn snakes are also being found too. what a problem, alot of it stems from inexperienced people taking these animals on as pets, illegally in the case of the snakes. there needs to be tighter regulation of the pet industry i think...
 
defintally, but it is hard to control.

reptiles nare managed well currently, but exotc birds need more licencing, my boss collects birds, and he said he wished there was tighter restriction, cause he has seen birds kept illegally, and in sub-standard conditions

i should say my ex- boss hehe ( i wasnt fired lol, just better opportunty arises)

CARPE Diem
 
i disagree about the reptiles. it might be second hand information, but its second hand by blood if that makes sense, that even people working in NSW for specialist reptile institutions are keeping exotic reptiles as pets. theres not really a high level of scrutiny, in fact, the exotic reptile amnesty just sent it underground...and an ilegal reptile collection is much more discreet than an illegal bird collection. you only ever hear of illegal reptiles being found when theres a drug bust...the two dont always seem unrelated either ;) in short, i think that exotic reptiles pose a big problem, particularly freshwater turtles and snakes.
with birds, i honestly believe that the price and licenscing scheme are the two biggest out of a whole range of factors that make the likelihood of another foreign species of bird becoming established in this country seem remote. ironically, native bird species like currawongs ad noisy miners are considered a greater threat to biodiversity by authorities and id have to agree. substandard conditions are a welfare issue that i guess effects all pet species.
i think ferrets, some aquarium fish, exotc turtes and other herpes are ticking timebombs
 
glyn said:
you only ever hear of illegal reptiles being found when theres a drug bust...the two dont always seem unrelated either ;)
Click to expand...

ha ha, so true. stoned bogans breed the best dogs, aquarium fish and reptiles. but they do love their aerican pitbulls, piraha and boa constrictors.

i agree that exotic herps in australia is ticking timebomb. just look how bad the situation is in the states. and look at how well our northern warm climate is suitable for exotics like the cane toad (can you imagine what anacondas could do in kakadu?). for me legalising them seem not to be the right attitude. the licencing system for natives is a bit of a farce so i don't see how an exotic one would do much.

but its only getting bigger. and unfortunately the whole reptile-trade explosion that happend a about 15 years ago, when they legalised so many native reptiles as pets only made the situation so much worse..

ferrets were always gonna become established eventually...
 
and even native reptiles are a potential translocation nightmare.
more resources need to be commited to regulating this industry, cracking down on illegal reptiles, etc. of course, we will probably only see this sort of action when a species becomes feral and starts causing an economic impact.
but i do worry about these exotic reptiles passing on new diseases to our indigenous herpes. in california, gopher tortoises released in the 1980s from captivity killed more than 40,000 tortoise as they carried a new lethal virus with them.
 
patrick said:
ferrets were always gonna become established eventually...
Click to expand...

I've always heard that introduced cats and foxes were largely responsible for the demise of so many of the small and middlesized marsupial natives. So if you now have ferrets on the loose too, they should be able to get into many of those places(smaller burrows etc) where foxes and cats can't reach and cause even further damage. So this sounds pretty much a disaster unless they can quickly be eradicated?
 
they are and have long-been legally kept as pets here (at least they are in victoria) though never have been common. whats worse is they are used primarily in the country to chase rabbits out of their warrens. many just stay down there and fall asleep after dining on rabbit kittens - making for a pretty high chance of being left in the bush..

but for that reason i have always been supprised they are not as established here as ferrets, weasels and stoats have become in NZ...
 
It is strange how ferrets have become established in NZ and not in Australia. They have probobly been used in rabbit hunting here for over 100 years and hearing about them surviving in the wild is unusual.

On cats and foxes, I find much more of a chalenge to shoot a cat than a fox as cats will not move and remain hidden if they think they have not been spotted. If they think you have spotted them they usually bolt and quickly find a better hiding spot.

Are there foxes in NZ, if not mabey that is the reason ferets survive there.
 
Ferals in NZ

No there are no foxes in NZ , not even in zoos . I have never seen a fox before ( anywhere )
The biggest pest problem ( by FAR ) is possums -- the Australian variety , not the American ones .
NZ has a temperate climate , with a fair bit of rainfall throughout the year
I wonder if this is a reason why ferrets , weasels , stoats do better here than Australia ?
 
at night my local park is FULL of ferals!

they play bongos and twirl firesticks. then in the afternoons (after they wake up) they are usually found down at centrelink....
 
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