{"id":226335,"date":"2010-01-25T12:56:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T17:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.metasd.com\/?p=786"},"modified":"2010-01-25T12:56:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-25T17:56:00","slug":"the-side-effects-of-parachuting-cats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/226335","title":{"rendered":"The side effects of parachuting cats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I ran across a nice factual account of the fantastic &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/catdrop.com\/\">cat drop<\/a>&#8221; story of ecological side effects immortalized in <a href=\"http:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/album\/whole-lotta-shoppin-goin-on\/id292160587\">Alan Atkisson&#8217;s song<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It reminded me of another great account of the complex side effects of ecosystem disturbance, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/02\/17\/science\/17isla.html\">from the NYT last year<\/a>, supplemented with <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Macquarie_Island\">a bit of wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In 1878, rabbits were introduced to Macquarie Island<\/li>\n<li>Also in the 19th century, mice were inadvertently introduced<\/li>\n<li>Cats were subsequently introduced, to reduce mouse depredation of supplies stored on the island<\/li>\n<li>The rabbits multiplied, as they do<\/li>\n<li>In 1968, myxoma virus was released to control rabbits, successfully decimating them<\/li>\n<li>The now-hungry cats turned to the seabird population for food<\/li>\n<li>A successful campaign eradicated the cats in 1985<\/li>\n<li>The rabbits, now predator-free, rebounded explosively<\/li>\n<li>Rabbit browsing drastically changed vegetation; vegetation changes caused soil instability, wiping out seabird nesting sites<\/li>\n<li>Other rodents also rebounded, turning to seabird chicks for food<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>An expensive pan-rodent eradication plan is now underway.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>But this time, administrators are prepared to make course corrections if things do not turn out according to plan.\u201cThis study clearly demonstrates that when you\u2019re doing a removal effort, you don\u2019t know exactly what the outcome will be,\u201d said Barry Rice, an invasive species specialist at the <a title=\"More articles about Nature Conservancy\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/organizations\/n\/nature_conservancy\/index.html?inline=nyt-org\">Nature Conservancy<\/a>. \u201cYou can\u2019t just go in and make a single surgical strike. Every kind of management you do is going to cause some damage.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I ran across a nice factual account of the fantastic &#8220;cat drop&#8221; story of ecological side effects immortalized in Alan Atkisson&#8217;s song. It reminded me of another great account of the complex side effects of ecosystem disturbance, from the NYT last year, supplemented with a bit of wikipedia: In 1878, rabbits were introduced to Macquarie [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}