

Australian Environmental Issues

A true-blue battler

Box jellyfish
How to avoid the stings and what to do if stung

So you wrestle crocs...

Unfairly judged in killing off the thylacine?

The wise little gnomes of Australia

Victors of the great Emu war

Shaping everything from how Australians speak to how they salute

Funnel Web spider
Yyou'll never leave your ugg boots outside


Kill less people than cows

Shark attack Australia
How to ensure you don't go by the name of Bob

Tasmanian Devil
The solution to mainland extinctions?

Tasmanian Tiger
A sad tale

Keg of muscle

The mainland's largest marsupial carnevore

Mythical creatures






The Koala Plague on Kangaroo Island


Australia has plenty of stories regarding silly environmental policy.One of the silliest was a plan to build a 1,833 km long fence to keep rabbits out of Western Australia that became obsolete once the single pregnant female made it to the other side before the fence was even finished. Not to be discouraged, the Western Australians built a second fence further west to do what the first one couldn’t do. When that didn’t work, they instead re-pursued it as necessary to stop the dingoes following the rabbits to the wheat fields. When they realised how stupid that sounded, it was repurposed again as being necessary to stop emus. When the emus knocked it down, the army was called in to fight the Great Emu War because by knocking the fences down, the emus were letting in rabbits. And through it all, money kept being made by fixing fences and policians patted themselves on the back for doing something about pests from the east.


Despite wildlife thriving and the tourists flooding in, scientists struggled to give any credit to previous generations. Because the koala had been introduced by humans, they felt it was not endemic to the island and therefore they were infringing upon the rights of the gum trees that didn't want to be eaten. In the words of David Paton, an environmental scientist from the University of Adelaide:



The ABC was on hand to report the damage that the koalas were doing. More importantly, the ABC also reported what a great job scientists-in-need-of-funding were doing as they protected the gums:


Scientists are picking up the pieces."  (2)

With the koalas eating the "precious" gum leaves and depriving other species of its sweet sweet "nectar", scientists demanded that something be done, or more accurately, that they be funded to do something. If manna gums were seriously at risk of extinction, the simplest solution would have been to identify some of the valued trees and then wrap aluminium guards around them, as is done in city parks to keep possums out of exotic trees. Admittedly, koalas would still starve to death but starvation is a fact of life in the animal world.


For reasons that could be debated, the cheap, simple and effective solution was not implemented. Instead, the scientists' strategy to "pick up the pieces" was to be perpetually funded to catch and sterilise some of the estimated 16,000 koalas on the island and run public education campaigns about the koalas infringing upon the rights of precious gum trees.


Needless to say, the remaining koalas kept breeding, the "precious" gum trees continued to have their rights impacted on the island, various species weren't getting their sweet sweet nectar and environmental scientists kept "picking up the pieces." Eventually a politician wised up and realised that sterilisation along with public education was a sustainable business solution but not a wise environmental policy. Not only was it expensive, it was interfering with natural selection and making South Australians look like idiots.








Invasive ferals


Carp and Trout
A tale of two ferals

New hope for Cane Toads
The many unknown predators of the toad


The Willow

To bait dingos?

Koala control
What to do about the "koala plague" on Kangaroo Island

Apex predator in Australia. Confined to urban areas in America.

Environmental values

Environmental problems
How money and ideology shapes environmental "science."

Australia's Stockholm Syndrome with gum trees.

The Kangaroo industry
Should we eat skippy?

Climate change in Australia
Australia was once covered in rainforest. Could it be again?

The dark side of sustainable environmental policies

Native pets
Why no pet wombats?




