Not learning from the Americans when they need to, and learning from them when they don't, Australia strikes again:

http://www.animalsaustralia.org/take_ac ... ld-horses/

Please sign (I did with some modifications and further advice) and let any of your Australian friends know!

Jane

I signed, hopefully it makes some sort of difference.

This is going to sound callous but those horses are an invasive species. Being non-native because some stupid person introduced them they are doing damage to an eco system they do not belong in. 5,000 horses is too many to sterilize, where is all that money going to come from? If this group is so concerned about the horses they should have done something at an earlier stage. No one cares when frogs are being culled for being invasive but put a cute cover animal and its omg omg omg.

To me native species is just a term. Whereever the animal lives, thats its home. Regardless of how it got there. Should we kill all rats in America/Canada because they origionally came over from the UK on boats and such.
The people likely didnt do anything because the horses could survive there easily. Over population could also be blamed on the fact natural predators have been driven to the brink of extinction by man and other sources. Rather than groups just didnt do anything. Im sure as soon as the problem became apparent, it was already well progressed.
Those horses would be worth something to someone. Im sure they could get like $25 a horse at least... I know spay and neuter isnt an option, but there are other alternatives.

I am not disputing that there are thousands of invasive / non-native species everywhere, but if a species is displacing the native animals, and was put there by man then something needs to be done about it. Many many many places take AGGRESSIVE stances against non-native species. If you ever get a chance read the book "out of eden" which talks about the battle against invasive species, specifically snakes but it also touches on everything from birds to fish to flowers. A really big example is the everglades in Florida right now. The python got introduced, they can grow HUGE, the natural predator is the alligator there. Because of having BOTH predators and no one to take out the pythons since they are pretty evenly matched they are destroying the bird populations. This has nothing to do with man hunting down the natural predators. What predator in Australia do you suggest that man killed that would take care of these horses?

Another example is right off the coast of BC and while it may not be a huge problem yet it could be. Farmed Atlantic salmon are spreading lice to our native pacific salmon. They also have been escaping and have the potential to cause huge problems with our pacific salmon stocks.

http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/wld/aliensp/al ... uence.html

rats DO get culled every day, its called Alberta. If a rat is found there is destroyed, period. Its an alien species, it does damage to their industries so they deal with it.

That is disgusting! So its okay for billions of people to inherit the earth and trash it with filth but when some animals ruin it a bit and still dont cause as much damage as people they want to kill them..... THATS AWFUL! NOT RIGHT!

Signed and I hope it makes a difference...

How can they justify this if they never even tried to control the population? This is a bandaid solution and a very sad one at that.