There’s been a lot of discussion in the media this week around an article in Nature by David Bowman calling for the introduction of elephants into Australia to help with the control of weeds and fire. Not surprisingly, David’s suggestion has sparked much conversation among ‘normal people’ and ecologists alike.
Photo source: The African Wildlife Foundation
Below are some initial responses solicited by the Australian Science Media Centre. My personal opinion is that while there’s no doubt that we need to be thinking outside the square in terms of restoration ecology and the approaches we can take to address the problems that we face, we as scientists need to be careful about how and what we suggest, as well as be clear about the contexts in which those suggestions are made. We’ve all heard of and maybe even seen the damage that can be caused by foreign species introduced to Australia – the rabbit, fox and cane toad are perfect examples. The suggestion to bring elephants here to control exotic grasses seems somewhat simplistic to me – I can’t help thinking that the side effects of such a move would easily and quickly outweigh any benefits. And as to whether or not they’re a necessary management tool, I particularly appreciated Dr Aaron Petty’s comment that the state of the environment in Australia’s savannahs is more a reflection of the lack of political will to take the conservation of our natural environment seriously than it is a lack of knowhow or ability to make change using proven existing methods. I can only hope that David’s article sparks a debate that comes to a similar conclusion, and that common sense prevails.
Australian Science Media Centre – 1 February 2012
ROUND-UP version 2: Bring elephants to Australia? – Experts respond
An Australian scientist has written a provocative opinion piece which looks at the impact of grazing on bushfires, as well as the problem of feral flora and fauna in Australia. It suggests considering all potential solutions, including the introduction of wild elephants to keep introduced grasses under control.
Below the author explains his intentions while other experts in the field respond to the piece, which will be published in the journal Nature on Thursday.
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Dr Aaron Petty is from the Research Institute of the Environment and Livelihoods at Charles Darwin University, Northern Territory
“I will speak mostly about Gamba grass, as it is the major focus of this piece and his only rationale for why elephants are needed. What Professor Bowman suggests is that “the usual approaches…are not working”, but the fact is the usual approaches have not even been tried effectively. As far as I know Gamba Grass has not yet been declared a weed of national significance, although that status is pending. In the Northern Territory, Gamba Grass was only recently, in 2008, declared a controlled weed and its sale as hay banned. This came only after the tireless work of a dedicated and small group fighting against intense pressure and lobbying from the cattle industry.
Prof. Bowman is quite correct in his concern about Gamba Grass as it has the potential to irreversibly alter the structure of our northern savannas. He is also correct that only chemical treatment and physical clearing of the landscape can control it. However, the proportion of the landscape at present invaded by Gamba grass is large, but a tiny proportion of our northern savannas. Containing the spread of Gamba grass will be costly, but tiny compared to, say, recent money applied to prop up the car industry.
Likewise, Prof. Bowman claims that efforts to control buffalo are ineffectual. Yet this is not so, the Brucellosis and Tuberculosis Eradication Campaign (BTEC) was immensely successful in eradicating buffalo from Kakadu National Park, rapidly repairing wetlands that were severely damaged from buffalo overpopulation. So, in short, we are not out of ideas, we merely lack the political will to implement the steps needed to control our environmental problems.”
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Professor Richard Hobbs is an Australian Laureate Fellow with the School of Plant Biology at The University of Western Australia
“Dave Bowman has rightly suggested that we need to consider new and varied approaches to tackling Australia’s ecological management conundrums. He points out that existing approaches have largely failed to make an impact on the massive problems of wildfires, feral animals, weeds and so on. I agree that we need to think broadly about alternatives – but we need to do this sensibly and with an eye on the lessons of the past.
Dave provides a wide spectrum of potential strategies, some of which have more merit than others. The Nature article contains some interesting contradictions: in one sentence Dave highlights the importance of controlling the ad hoc release of non-native animals and plants, but in the next advocates the introduction of predators to control feral animals and herbivores to graze the flammable grasses.
Does bringing elephants and komodo dragons into Australia make ecological sense, given the unforeseen circumstances generated by earlier introductions (usually carried out with the best of intentions)? Species introduced to solve one ecological problem frequently end up causing more and often worse problems themselves. The Nature article mentions fire in both the north and the south of Australia but doesn’t differentiate between the different systems and factors at play. Elephants are unlikely to make any difference to the occurrence of forest fires in Victoria, even supposing Victorians were happy to have elephants running around their state, but they do have the potential to wreak ecological havoc in any ecosystem they are introduced to.
Maybe we need to come to terms with the fact that some of our ecosystems may remain changed because of the species we’ve already introduced, rather than introducing more in the hope that they can fix things for us.
In amongst the more outlandish suggestions lurk ideas that are less risky and can work – indeed some are already being implemented, such as the reinstatement of Aboriginal fire management in the north. Programs such as the Australian Wildlife Conservancy’s fire management in the Kimberley are having great success. These in themselves are radical innovations, but ones based on sound ecological understanding.
While I agree that the full spectrum of options needs to be canvassed, discussion of bringing elephants to Australia is probably more of a useful ploy to get people’s attention than a serious option for the future.”
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David Bowman, author of the Comment piece, is Professor of Environmental Change Biology at the School for Plant Science at the University of Tasmania
“This piece is intentionally challenging. We are going to be driven, whether we like it or not, to think outside the square, because current approaches to land management in many of our landscape settings – in protected areas and unprotected areas, productive landscapes and outback Australia – are not working. Or the approaches we’ve got are not sustainable. We’ve got some big challenges ahead, that’s the point, and we have to be honest about it. Humans are a very important part of Australian ecology.
What I’m saying can be completely misconstrued and that will be sad if it’s put into a polarising debate. What I’m saying is that these challenges open up really fresh thinking which is what we need.”
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Dr Ricky Spencer is a Senior Lecturer with the Native and Pest Animal Unit at the University of Western Sydney
“Professor Bowman is obviously trying to raise some very important issues that we face in Australia; the problem is that his comments are careless given recent proposals for the establishment of game reserves in NSW and introduction of new potential feral animals into these reserves. His comments about introducing more dingoes to control other feral animals are also irresponsible because the science behind meso-predator release or suppression is in its infancy and at best correlative. If we did go down the road of introducing elephants to Australia, we had better develop the technology to clone saber-tooth tigers to eventually control the elephants.”
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Professor Patricia Werner is a Visiting Fellow at the The Australian National University’s Fenner School of Environment and Society
“Professor Bowman is the same fellow that made the headlines in the Northern Territory News about two or three years ago when he advocated introducing African large grazing mammals to rid the place of introduced grasses (i.e. gamba grass, mentioned in this article). So, this is not new.
As for elephants and rhinoceroses, these are browsers, not grazers (as are various types of antelope, cattle, etc.). They eat not only grass but leaves, twigs, fruits, roots they dig up, and even bark. An adult elephant can eat 150 – 300 kg of vegetation a day, only about half of which is grass. They digest only about 40 per cent of what they eat, so have to rely on volume to get enough food to sustain themselves.
There are countless studies in Africa showing that when elephants are removed from an area, tree cover increases. That is, elephants reduce/keep down trees, eating juvenile trees, stripping bark, etc. Are we in Australia prepared to try yet another landscape-scale “experiment” as we did with foxes, rabbits, etc, and merely hope that the elephants don’t find our native Australian trees tasty? Can we somehow command them to eat only introduced African grasses? And would we mind seeing our wooded savannas turn to a more grassy-savanna such as those that dominate in Africa – match any rainfall area to ours and you will find less woody cover than we have.”
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Dr Don Driscoll is a Fellow at The Australian National University’s Fenner School of Environment and Society
“Professor Bowman makes two critical points in his paper with which I agree. Australian ecosystems are in a desperate state of degradation due to invasive plants and animals. Invasive species have wiped out much of Australia’s natural heritage, they continue to destroy what we have left, and international trade combined with pressures to increase agricultural productivity worsen the problem. The second critical point that Bowman makes is that, because of this ongoing environmental catastrophe, we need to put all of the management options on the table to try to find ways of reducing the rate at which our biodiversity succumbs to the impacts of invasive alien species.
We should therefore consider introducing elephants and rhinoceros to Australia. We should also reconsider widely implemented practices such as culling dingos or burning forests to reduce fuels in southern Australia as an asset-protection measure. Introducing elephants to Australia would likely be rather quickly rejected as a method for controlling invasive gamba grass. The cost of fencing, the effectiveness of controlling the problem (think cane-toads and cane-beetles), and the risk of adverse impacts (e.g. elephants have a tendency to push trees down) would, I suspect, quickly render the elephant option less attractive than alternative actions for controlling gamba grass.
On the other hand, evidence is mounting that dingos have enormous environmental benefits with little increased risk to the cattle industry, and wide-spread fuel reduction in forests has negative environmental and water quality impacts, while having little influence over the risk of house loss in wildfires. It is crucial to consider all of the management options for dealing with invasive species (even ideas that might seem crazy at first), and it is just as crucial to consider their cost and the evidence of the kinds of impacts that each option will have on a range of societal objectives.”
Well, that’s a wrap. Until next time…
