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hare brained conservation scemes.
Topic Started: Oct 20 2014, 03:09 AM (1,863 Views)
Meerkatmatt2
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Well, here we discuss any crazy or impractical ocnservation schemes that we come up with that could work.

For example, today my dad and I were discussing the idea of introducing persain leopards to a fenced reserve in Australia's outback to eradicate pests and to rebuild their numbers, like the tigers in south Africa.
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Jannick
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Papua merdeka!

Meerkatmatt2
Oct 20 2014, 03:09 AM
introducing persain leopards (...) to eradicate pests
Past experiences teach us that this literally never works. xD
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Furka
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The persian would hunt the invasive species, but also the endangered native ones.
You'd need a predator that hunts specifically the alloctonous ones, but such specialization is extremely rare.
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Meerkatmatt2
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yeah, though most of Australia endangered mammals are in fenced reserves or on offshore islands.
I didn't call it hare brained for nothing!
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Mathius Tyra
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Rat snake is love... Rat snake is life

It will still cause problem to native species that never live along side such exotic predator before. To my knowledge, Australia hasn't had any feline liked predator since the extinction of masupial lions, which I am not even sure having the same hunting behavior to leopard.
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Posted Image Azrael
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Why not use dogs? Train/raise a specific breed of dogs to hunt purely goats since they do have the intelligence to specialize and depending on breeding, would have the speed and power to kill said invasive species.
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MightyFan217
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OH YESSS!

Kohana
Oct 20 2014, 08:50 AM
Why not use dogs? Train/raise a specific breed of dogs to hunt purely goats since they do have the intelligence to specialize and depending on breeding, would have the speed and power to kill said invasive species.
My question about that is what will become of that new Dog breed that was made once the invasive species it was designed to target and hunt down had been eliminated?
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Posted Image Azrael
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It remains a dog breed just like any other and can be a choosen pet? That's like saying what Irish Wolfhounds when most people stopped using them to hunt and kill wolves.

It's still a dog breed that people buy as pets to this very day.
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stargatedalek
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I'm not slow! That's just my moe!

and then what happens when those dogs inevitably become invasive and start killing off native species

I can think if literally 2 times in history that this sort of scheme of ""introduce new animal to fill empty niche" has ever worked
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Stephen
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Stuck on Earth

I don't think Kohana meant to actually release these dogs in the wild. It's like the dogs who are trained to hunt foxes, together with humans.
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Posted Image Azrael
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Seriously? The dogs would be trained hunting dogs like all past trained hunting dogs have been. Have you guys never researched breeds like Golden Retrievers, Spaniels, Coonhounds, Bloodhounds, Irish Wolfhounds or anything of that nature that were bred to find/kill or retrieve very specific wildlife (usually waterbirds, small-medium sized mammals).

Or the Argentina Dogo that were bred to go after dangerous game such as Boar? I've never seen any of these breeds go completely feral and decimate the rest of the wildlife because most of them while being bred to hunt specific game are also bred to be loyal to their handlers.

Why you would even think that I meant purposely letting a breed of dogs loose in the outback? It's never been done with any other hunting dog breed and I don't see why it would happen now.
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stargatedalek
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I'm not slow! That's just my moe!

I didn't mean on purpose, but looking at things like dingos or just feral populations in general shows that theres still considerable risk involved
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Posted Image Azrael
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Dogs and cats do cause a bit of damage to ecosystems when they become feral, true. But not as large as things like the goats would, if anything I would imagine Dingos - who took the place of the Thylacine as a large mammalian land predator, would compete with the feral dogs, if not kill any of the feral dogs if they came in contact with. Or if nothing else - the feral dogs would breed with the Dingos.

Of course, the pros or cons to that are unknown but as far as we know right now, the invasive goats are causing tons of Australia's wildlife to become endangered and the pros outweigh the cons in this situation.
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Stephen
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Stuck on Earth

What? So, in every country where people hunted with dogs (which is pretty much every single country), there are populations of feral dogs, which can be traced back to those who were used for hunting? I don't know about Canada, but here in Belgium we have quite a few hunting breeds but there's no such thing as a feral dog population (certainly not in rural areas. More urban ones have a few stray dogs.)
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Posted Image Azrael
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Here in the states, I've heard of some packs of feral dogs, and they will kill things like coyotes, foxes, deer fawn, rabbits etc. and add competition. But considering that most feral dogs can still be "tamed" again in the right hands, feral dog populations are not really an issue, IIRC cats tend to do more harm in a sense because they aren't fully domesticated and more or less only tolerate humans - they breed and spread out, and they can prevent bird populations from increasing by raiding nests (catching adults with leaping abilities) and can also hunt small or young mammals.

Once cats have gone feral, they can be retamed but the success rate with that is much lower than dogs who have literally changed their entire psychology and brain development to look to humans for guidance.
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