9/24/2023 0 Comments Foxes attacking chickensOn South Australia's Eyre and Yorke peninsulas, in Western Australia's Warren and Jarrah Forest, throughout the Blue Mountains in NSW, and much of Victoria, more than 1,000 animals per square kilometre are killed each year by foxes. Last year, research published in the journal Diversity and Distributions, found foxes were taking a particularly large toll on forest animals. Today, researchers estimate there are 1.7 million foxes here, and they're having a detrimental impact on Australia's biodiversity. Since 1845, when European colonisers brought foxes (and cats) to Australia, the species has spread across 80 per of the mainland and can be found on 50 of Australia's islands. "If you remove them from a landscape, you get migration of other foxes," he said. While lethal measures like shooting, trapping and poisoning have long been used to try to control fox numbers, Dr Blencowe said these had proven counterproductive. This indicated the foxes had consumed the baits containing levamisole, fallen ill, and learnt not to go back for seconds - even when the chicken bait did not contain the nauseating substance. Subsequently, when chicken baits were laid without the substance that could make the foxes ill, the number of baits taken fell by 30 per cent. Using a tactic known as conditioned taste aversion (CTA), the experiment involved laying chicken baits containing the chemical levamisole, which induced nausea and vomiting. "When the fox consumes the bait and becomes unwell, it becomes ill, has diarrhoea and vomiting, and associates the taste or smell of that bait with that illness and wont go back for another bite," Dr Blencowe said. One of the study's researchers, polymer chemistry professor Anton Blencowe, said invasive predators were responsible for almost 60 per cent of all bird, mammal and reptile extinctions globally, so it was critical to find ways to mitigate their impacts on native wildlife.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |