An entertaining Blog by ecologist John Read reveals the dedication of researchers, sheds light on how rabbits sustain feral cats and foxes resulting in hyper-predation of native fauna, and shows how tricky it can be to understand why species are where they are. Follow the link to read John’s Blog, ‘Sharing the secret. Better than […]
In a recent contribution to The Conversation, Associate Professor Katherine Moseby (UNSW) refers to rabbits, cats and foxes as an unholy trinity. Rabbits competed with native mammals for food and became food themselves for cats and foxes – inflating predator numbers and adding to the predation of native mammals. Katherine has over 25 years of […]
Rabbits wrought untold damage to Australian landscapes, but rabbit bio-controls have been incredibly successful in triggering environmental recovery across massive areas of Australia.
An article by Michael Bode highlights the importance of fox and cat control for fauna conservation,and muses about how good it would be if methods other than fencing could achieve that. Rabbits must also be considered – as competitors and habitat destroyers – for fauna conservation. The biological control of rabbits has benefited whole landscapes, […]
Hugh McGregor is planning to study how cats and foxes respond to the arrival of RHDV2 at the Arid recovery research site at Roxby Downs, in terms of their numbers and diet. For more information see the Arid Recovery News.
Amazing increases in the distribution and occurrence of the dusky hopping mouse, plains mouse and crest-tailed mulgara have been attributed to rabbit control. RHDV suppressed rabbit numbers, reducing competition for food and the pressure from rabbit-dependent predators like cats and foxes. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cobi.12684/abstract