Rabbit invasion in Australia
Everything starts in 1859 when an english Colomb by the name of Tomas Austin moved to Australia and release in the meantime 12 couples of wild rabbits for hunting. What he didn't think was that the rabbits would reproduce quickly:
each couple of rabbits can have up to 5 reaches a year. Each reaches can have up to 12 children wich make 60 rabbits multiplied by the 12 first wich make 720 rabbits only the first year! just think about multipling this number every year wich can reach enormous amount of rabbits!
To come has end of the disaster, everyways are opened: hunting, traps, poison. But nothing can stop them. Desperate situations call for desperate measures, authorties then decided to build a great fence in
order to keep the rabbits in an area twice as big as France. It then becomes the biggest fence in the world never built. Unfortunatly, it took too much time and the rabbits crossed.
A second much smaller fence was built then a third to become a total of 3000km of fence, or 3 times France. unfortunalty again, the fences where not enough to stop the mutliplied rabbits. Another idea took place: fox import but unlike we think, foxes are more likely to hunt little animals becauses rabbits are too fast. Creating once again a big echo-system failure.
It is in the 50's that scientists found a radical way to kill every bunny: the Myxomatosis virus, deadly for them. It was effective in the first place, 90% of all rabbits were killed but the 10% left built up immunity against it, making it weak in 5 years. Rabbits reproduce again more and stronger.
Continuing in the same way, scientists introduced more viruses. Once again, bunny were immunised and stronger than never before...
Australians found out the virus killed every other animals and decided to stop everything in order to slow down the reproduction of rabbits. Today, they are concidered as harmful animals like, foxes, cats or camels.
Fortunatly, we now are able to controle in a more efficient way reproduction of rabbits.
Sources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Austin
- https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_d%27esp%C3%A8ces_envahissantes
- http://www.linternaute.com/science/biologie/dossiers/06/0604-especes-invasives/lapin.shtml
- https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapin
- http://www.australia-australie.com/articles/les-animaux-envahisseurs-de-laustralie/
- http://www.australia.com/fr-fr/planning/planning-a-trip.html
- http://www.futura-sciences.com/planete/dossiers/zoologie-especes-animales-invasives-1093/page/2/