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Originally Posted by 14+kitties
Oh hell, while we're at it why not just start culling humans too? After all, we are the biggest vermin for damaging the ecosystem, the earth, the air, the skies. If we go far enough back I'm sure we'd find we weren't native to a lot of places too but hey.............
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Think how different it would have been if only something with greater intelligence had been around to keep us in check on our meteoric rise!
Of course, North America would then be off limits... rats! I kinda like it here.
But I agree, it's a human problem, not a camel or other invasive animal problem. However, once humans let it get out of control, the best choice if you really want to fix the problem is usually extirpation. It's sad, but true. And it's usually not attainable because by the time humans see a problem (crisis-oriented thinking--don't see the potential problem till it blooms into reality and demands action) it's so out of control that you can't eliminate it. Norwegian rats are a case in point. How many countries have been able to totally eliminate the problem of introduced rats?
And how many people even know these rats aren't native anymore? Just like humans... They've been around so long that no one even realizes neither species is native.
Prevention is so much more efficient, and so much less brutal--don't introduce exotics in the first place! (Which brings us back around to the thought that wouldn't it have been nice if there had been something that prevented us from expanding off our native continent?
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Unfortunately, Pandora's box is open and we face the choice of which species do we preserve? In the camel case, how many native Australian species are at risk due to the camels' (and other exotics') presence? Do those native species deserve extinction because we haven't the stomach to take care of a problem of our own making? It's a tough, tough question and all the answers have deep moral dilemmas built into them...