SYDNEY LETTER:While sharks get the bad press, an army of rats, mice and rabbits gnaws away at the edges
ONE OF the things that often surprises people about Australia is the ubiquity of its wildlife. An average suburban backyard will be home to lizards big and small, and several species of birds.
Lizards are welcome because they keep rats and mice away and keep the cockroach population under control. The beautiful songs of both native and non-native birds are an absolute joy to hear, though such birds do swoop at people when breeding. Australian magpies are the worst for this and seem to think humans are all out to get their eggs come spring. Handwritten signs on city lamp posts warning of swooping magpies are not unusual in September (the start of Australia’s spring).
But it is a more traditional foe, the shark, which is making news at the moment. In the past three weeks there have been three severe shark attacks in waters around Sydney.
First, Paul de Gelder, a navy diver, lost a hand and a leg after being mauled by a 2.7m bull shark while on pre-dawn manoeuvres in Sydney harbour.
A day later, Glenn Orgias was surfing alone at the world-famous Bondi beach at dusk when a 2.5m great white shark nearly severed his left hand. Though surgeons were initially able to reattach his hand, they subsequently had to amputate it as the blood circulation could not be maintained.
The third victim, 15-year-old Andrew Lindop, was attacked by a great white last Sunday while surfing early in the morning with his father at North Avalon.
Though the shark bit him on his left thigh and calf, his full-length wetsuit kept the deep wounds closed and may yet prove to have saved his leg.
With three attacks in as many weeks, the New South Wales (NSW) state government is under pressure to do something about it. Its advice that dusk and dawn are the most dangerous hours to be in the water is borne out by the times of recent attacks, but there has been some criticism of its continued reliance on shark netting.
Since the nets were introduced to NSW beaches in 1937, the number of people killed by sharks has plummeted. Before 1937, there was an average of one death a year but, since 1970, there have been just three fatalities, the last in 1993.
It is by no means foolproof though – the net at North Avalon was checked the day before the attack there last weekend.
Cate Faehrmann of the Nature Conservation Council of NSW says the continued netting of beaches provides “a false sense of security”.
“Sharks can easily swim over or around nets, and about 40 per cent of sharks caught in nets are found on the beach side,” she said.
But Barry Bruce, shark adviser to Surf Life Saving Australia, says swimmers have a much higher chance of drowning than being mauled by a shark and that there is no evidence to suggest shark numbers or attacks are on the rise.
“It is important to recognise that there is always some inherent risk when using an environment inhabited by sharks,” he said.
A recent report on fatalities involving animals by the national coroner’s office found that humans were four times more likely to be killed by horses and twice as likely by cows as they were to be killed by sharks.
Dogs, bees and snakes also cause more fatalities than sharks.
It’s not just humans being attacked by animals at the moment in Australia – the World Heritage-listed Macquarie Island has become overrun by rabbits that are endangering other animals and plant life.
Halfway between Tasmania and the Antarctic, the island became infested in the 1800s when whalers and sealers left goats and rabbits there, along with the usual rats and mice that jumped ship.
Cats were brought in to control the rodents but they also got a taste for native seabirds. A cull was decided upon in 1985 and 15 years – and 500,000 Australian dollars (€250,000) – later, the last feral moggy met his maker.
But while the cat’s away, the mouse, rat and rabbit will play.
The 10,000 rabbits on the 128 sq km island before the last cat was killed have grown in number to more than 130,000, and are increasingly immune to myxomatosis.
They are eating their way through the island’s rare megaherb vegetation, while the rats and mice are destroying flowers to take the seeds. The loss of vegetation is also causing landslides which are killing penguins and ground-nesting seabirds.
Scientists have belatedly concluded that getting rid of the cats was a bad idea. They had been keeping other pest numbers down all along.
A new plan to eradicate rabbits, rats and mice with teams of hunters and poisoned bait dropped from helicopters is set to cost about $24 million.
