Australian friends have told me about the problems with non-native animals on their continent, the rabbit problem being the largest and most famous of stories. In Ontario, it is the Zebra Mussel (which has killed out a lot of lake life but really cleared up the water) and the imminent threat of the Asian Carp, spotted miles from Lake Michigan and making their way north – slowly but surely.

The International Herald Tribune had an article on the Macquarie Islands today titled ‘The unintended consequences of changing nature’s balance’. A fascinating read on man introducing new animals and then attempting to unravel the mistake with unintended consequences:

In 1985, Australian scientists kicked off an ambitious plan: to kill off non-native cats that had been prowling the island’s slopes since the early 19th century. The program began out of apparent necessity — the cats were preying on native burrowing birds. Twenty-four years later, a team of scientists from the Australian Antarctic Division and the University of Tasmania reports that the cat removal unexpectedly wreaked havoc on the island ecosystem.

With the cats gone, the island’s rabbits (also non-native) began to breed out of control, ravaging native plants and sending ripple effects throughout the ecosystem. The findings were published in the Journal of Applied Ecology online in January.

"Our findings show that it’s important for scientists to study the whole ecosystem before doing eradication programs," said Arko Lucieer, a University of Tasmania remote-sensing expert and a co-author of the paper. "There haven’t been a lot of programs that take the entire system into account. You need to go into scenario mode: ‘If we kill this animal, what other consequences are there going to be?’ "

With our World Is Flat reality, one has to wonder if this really is just the beginning?