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  This, thought Hardy, was the way to develop a national park.

  No time was wasted. Seven miles of wire fence 8 feet high were strung. By 1912 twenty-one red-necked wallabies had been freed, along with a couple of kangaroos, five wombats, twenty-six opossums, two bandicoots, six emus, three lyrebirds and five satin bowerbirds. Supplying animals was one of the ‘chief objects’ of the Committee of Management. Wallaroos, malleefowl, ibises, bellbirds and long-necked turtles were soon freed. By 1923 a total of 252 animals had been let loose. Some of the choices were ludicrous. Tree kangaroos from Queensland’s tropical jungles found themselves up against the bracing winters of southern Victoria, in the company of Outback budgerigars and red kangaroos, and wallaroos from north-western Australia. Birdwatcher John Leach was confident by 1925 that ‘our National Park at Wilsons Promontory promises to be a great national asset, when Lyre-birds, Emus, and other birds introduced there become common and tame’.

  Plants formed part of the scheme. When a party of naturalists visited the park for Christmas 1912, Professor Alfred Ewart and colleagues later wrote: ‘The main object of this trip, so far as the National Herbarium was concerned, was to fulfil a promise made long ago to establish as many native plants as possible in the National Park, particularly those which are in danger of extinction.’ He busied himself sowing seeds along streams, on peaks, in sheltered glades and along tracks. Into the sour soil went seeds of gum trees, tea-trees, wattles, kurrajongs, cypress pines, sweet pittosporum, native hops – sixty species in all, none of which were rare. Ewart left a choice chore for his colleagues to complete, as one of them, J. Kershaw, recalled:

  After tea we found a pleasant surprise awaiting us. Small plots of ground had been prepared on either side of the track in the vicinity of the camp, and it was arranged that each member of the party should plant one of the young trees provided. It was also insisted that each member should stake, label, and water their own particular plant. Mr. Pitcher acted as master of the ceremony, and supervised the proceedings. The leader of the excursion was invited to plant the first – a Sunshine Wattle, Acacia discolor – immediately opposite the camp. As each planting was completed the chief actor in each case made some appropriate remarks suited to the occasion, which was followed by three hearty cheers. In this way thirteen young native trees were planted, and the unique ceremony, which naturally occupied some time, closed with an extra volley of cheers for Professor Ewart and Mr. Pitcher, who, by their happy forethought, added so much to the enjoyment of the camp.

  By 1930 Professor Ewart was writing proudly of his work: ‘Many native plants, formerly absent from the Park, have been planted there and, in the course of time, it will probably represent the only large area where the native flora will be seen in its primitive condition and natural relationship.’ Plants in a supposedly ‘natural relationship’ included eucalypts from Western Australia and silky oaks from rainforests 1000 miles north.

  Introductions to the park went on right up until 1941, when David Fleay furnished three tiger quolls. In all, twenty-three mammal species, nine birds and forty-three plants were introduced. They included pygmy possums, greater gliders, bettongs, rock wallabies, Tasmanian barred bandicoots and possums, and one Major Mitchell’s cockatoo. Some of the animals released were already in the park, wombats, possums and koalas included. Fortunately very few introductions survived: only the kangaroos, emus and a few cabbage palms (Livistona australis). Wilsons Promontory is an invaluable park today, but only because the meddling failed. No tree kangaroos browse its groves of lilly pillies.

  Kangaroo Island became Australia’s second ark, with much more serious results. In 1892 the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science urged that the western end ‘be reserved for the protection of native fauna and flora’. The island then was fox- and rabbit-free. After a thirteen-year campaign, a 1919 bill set aside Flinders Chase as a wildlife sanctuary on the island. Captain White, a member of the board of control, noted: ‘It is the object of the Board to place in the Chase specimens of those animals which are likely to become extinct upon the mainland.’ He added, ‘The prospects of the Chase are unlimited. As a health resort, it is simply perfect; but, above all, it is an ideal reservation for our wonderful plants and animals.’ By the time he wrote this, in 1925, a few malleefowl had already been freed.

  The list of animals released reads like a recipe for topsy-turvy land:

  1923: 6 koalas, 2 Cape Barren geese, 2 malleefowl

  1924: 2 kangaroo rats, 2 malleefowl

  1925: 12 koalas plus young

  1926: 15 ringtail possums, 2 rat kangaroos, 1 wombat, 2 emus, 4 kookaburras, 50 stump-tailed lizards

  1928: 3 platypuses, 2 emus

  1929: 2 emus

  1932: 2 Cape Barren geese

  1936: 1 wombat (company for the first one introduced 10 years earlier!), 6 malleefowl, 2 Cape Barren geese, 2 scrub turkeys

  1937: 2 wallaroos, 12 crested pigeons, 12 zebra finches, 6 peaceful doves, 4 bronzewing pigeons, 4 diamond doves

  1940: 10 peaceful doves, 8 gang-gang cockatoos, 4 bar-shouldered doves, 2 pied geese, 2 spinifex pigeons, 2 crested pigeons

  1941: 6 platypuses

  1946: 6 platypuses, 4 wonga pigeons, 2 tortoises

  1948: 3 malleefowl

  1956: 16 gang-gang cockatoos

  1957: 3 emus

  What a blend! Kangaroo Island’s scruffy heathlands became home to rainforest birds from the east (brush-turkeys, wonga pigeons), spinifex pigeons from northern deserts, and pied geese from tropical wetlands. At first it went rather well. By 1948 some species had vanished, but the ranger could count a hundred Cape Barren geese, hundreds of koalas, and plenty of ringtails, stump-tails, and bronzewings. Wonga pigeons strutted about the dunes under wattles.

  Today, however, no-one is pleased. The koalas have become notorious pests, defoliating trees (see chapter 18). The geese are also bothersome, browsing pastures and soiling lawns. Platypuses have spread from stream to stream, and their effects on native crustacea raise concerns. Brush-turkeys have amazed everyone by thriving hundreds of kilometres from the nearest rainforest, although only two were ever released. A turkey was waiting on the national parks office verandah for a handout last time I was there.

  Elsewhere in Australia there was talk of creating other sanctuaries. In 1925 Albert Le Souef, former director of Taronga Park Zoo, proposed that Pulbah Island in Lake Macquarie be stocked with rare wallabies and bettongs. Endangered bridled nailtail wallabies were put there in the 1930s, and parma wallabies in the 1970s, but none survived. Le Souef also urged that Hinchinbrook Island be made a sanctuary for endangered species: ‘If specimens of these animals were placed on Hinchinbrook Island they would stand a good chance of multiplying, as since the removal of the natives from the island the fauna is dominated only by the 20ft python.’

  Tasmania became a sanctuary in a modest way in the 1930s after a bout of media publicity brought the superb lyrebird to national acclaim. Its story was told by naturalist Michael Sharland in 1944:

  When the Lyrebird came into public prominence about 10 or 12 years ago and was acclaimed by radio, press and films as something unique in the nation’s bird-life, there was an upsurge of sentiment on its behalf and a feeling that it must be given the protection which so celebrated a bird deserved . . . ‘Save it from extinction’ was the catch-cry, though with extinction it could not be said to be threatened.

  From such sentiments Tasmania gained a new bird. Foxes hunt lyrebirds, so Tasmania, full of ferny glens but fox-free, seemed the ideal sanctuary. In 1934 the first of twenty-one lyrebirds were flown in and released at Hastings Cave and Mt Field National Park. David Fleay, then at Healesville Sanctuary, captured some of the lyrebirds, setting hemp-string nooses in thick forests near Melbourne. His birds were despatched by plane in a tea-chest. The lyrebirds thrived in their new Tasmanian home.

  Today they are promoted as an asset. Mt Field National Park boasts a Lyrebird Nature Walk. But ecologists worry about the rakin
g they do and the insects they eat. ‘In some places it’s just incredible how much of the forest floor has been turned over,’ Zöe Tanner told me. ‘It looks like there have been hundreds of chooks running around.’ Her honours thesis makes them sound like feral pigs. ‘During feeding,’ she wrote, ‘lyrebirds use their powerful claws to excavate soil and litter, strip the outer bark from standing trees and logs, dismember rotting logs, shift rocks up to 2 kg in weight, undermine larger rocks and cause them to slump, uproot or break off substantial shrubs by excavation or by gripping them with their feet, and strip moss and lichen from rock surfaces.’

  In one hour they can turn over 36 kilograms of soil and litter, and in a year they shift 45 tonnes of mineral soil per hectare. In Victoria they may play a key role in shaping landscapes by destabilising rich topsoil, which slides into gullies along with the rocks and logs they dislodge. The male display mounds, up to thirty-eight per hectare, also create a ‘significant amount of disturbance’. Zöe found that lyrebird-infested sites in Tasmania end up with fewer ferns and saplings. By scratching up young trees the big birds may impede rainforest succession and open the canopy. Zöe’s most eye-popping finding was that lyrebirds may bring extinction to the rare myrtle elbow orchid (Arthrochilus huntianus nothofagicola), which is known only from one site that happens to be close to lyrebird scratchings. This bird is an ecosystem engineer, Zöe concludes, and thus ‘poses a more significant conservation threat than it would if predation and competition were its only impacts’. By ‘cultivating’ soil – kicking up debris – lyrebirds may ‘farm’ insects by improving their habitat. But smaller plants drown under the debris.

  Although lyrebirds grow slowly and only bear one egg per year, they are spreading fast across Tasmania. Soon they will claim all the rainforests apart from a few isolated patches. Population modelling suggests there were 1000 in 1980 and 8000 by 2000. By 2010 they will saturate Tasmania. ‘They are a problem, but one that’s not really feasible to do anything about at this stage,’ Zöe told me. ‘It would be really hard to control or eradicate them because they live in the deepest darkest depths of the rainforest. Even if you had dogs it would be really hard to catch them because in south-west Tasmania you have hundreds of thousands of hectares of scrub with not many roads near them.’ She suggested that a targeted lethal virus might do the trick.

  A more substantial experiment in acclimatisation took place in the east of Tasmania. In 1966 the government decided to make Maria Island a sanctuary. ‘Historic and ideally situated Maria Island . . . eventually may be Australia’s first South African-type wild life reserve’, crowed the Hobart Mercury. Dr Eric Guiler, Chairman of the Animals and Birds Protection Board, proposed that Tasmanian animals not native to Maria be released there to live in their ‘natural state’. A research centre and tourist attraction would be created.

  From 1969 to 1972 a veritable Noah’s Ark of birds and mammals – 766 in all – were freed. In came cockatoos, ducks and rosellas, pygmy possums, native cats and marsupial mice. In 1971 alone the releases included 136 potoroos, 127 Bennett’s wallabies, 61 ringtail possums, 43 echidnas, 84 bandicoots, 45 kangaroos, 15 brushtail possums, 13 pademelons, 16 marsupial mice, 23 bettongs, and 28 wombats. (A few of these species – the wombats, echidnas and potoroos – already lived on the island.) There were hopes of introducing Tasmanian tigers as well. Guiler, funded by the World Wildlife Fund, set traps in north-west Tasmania and kept one open for two months beside a supposed tiger lair in an old boiler near Luina, but without success. Tigers were almost certainly extinct by that time.

  But many of the animals that were taken to Maria Island thrived. Grey kangaroo numbers went from forty-five in 1971 to more than 1000 in the 1980s. They crowded the cleared paddocks around the airstrip. Many looked ill. Vet Tim McManus told the National Parks and Wildlife Service in 1985 that numbers were excessive, noting that ‘grass was very short with practically no part of the surface free of kangaroo droppings’, and that ‘adjacent bushland had also been stripped bare with everything edible and accessible closely cropped’. Inside a dead roo he found a ‘spectacular’ number of parasitic worms. He recommended a drastic cull. Only emaciated and distressed kangaroos were killed at first – discreetly, because rangers feared a public outcry. But the roos kept multiplying and many were obviously starving. By 1987 the rangers had to act. The public reaction was predictable. A local ferryman claimed he saw a mass grave holding 1000 carcasses. The Parks service insisted only 671 roos had been buried, 200 of which had died of starvation. Today Maria Island still has too many roos.

  Other problems have emerged there too. A 1982 memo to the Minister for National Parks noted that ‘some of the older emus have become very aggressive and campers’ supplies are frequently taken by these large birds, even from inside tents’. Eighteen were culled. The barred bandicoots aroused concern when a lethal epidemic swept through. Maria today remains a mess. The old sheep pastures are cropped tightly by kangaroos and geese. I could not stroll among the dung and dead without soiling my boots. The shrubbery looks like topiary. Matters might be improved by bringing in Tasmanian devils as predators, but the National Parks service has wisely lost its taste for translocation.

  The era of arks is an embarrassing chapter in conservation history. Nothing but ill was achieved. Island arks are still created today, although the principles have changed. Animals are seldom moved beyond their original range. In South Australia rare bettongs and stick-nest rats have gone into several small island national parks. And in Western Australia two arks were recently made by fencing off two peninsulas in Shark Bay: Peron Peninsula (1050 square kilometres) and Heirisson Prong (12 square kilometres). Malleefowl, bettongs and bilbies went into Peron, the first two because they once lived in the area, and bilbies because subfossil bones were found only 80 kilometres away. National parks officer Colleen Sims said the decision to release bilbies wasn’t taken lightly. ‘There were certain people who disagreed with that.’ Certainly no-one is contemplating introducing tropical tree kangaroos or palms.

  Island arks have come about in many other parts of the world too. Almost a hundred years ago Sir William Ingham purchased Little Tobago island in the West Indies as a sanctuary for the greater bird of paradise, thought to be threatened by the Paris and New York fashion trade’s insatiable demand for hat plumes. He obtained forty-seven birds from islands off New Guinea, and their descendants survived on the island until the 1970s – albeit in minuscule numbers (a dozen or so) because Little Tobago was so small. More recently, bushman rock paintings in southern Africa are guiding reintroductions into fenced parks. The renditions of antelope and rhinoceros on granite outcrops are often very accurate.

  New Zealand’s birds are very vulnerable to possums, stoats, rats and cats, and small islands without these predators have proved pivotal to their conservation. I was lucky enough to see at night a translocated kiwi on one island. But relocated birds are wiping out rare flightless insects. Extinction looms for what is apparently the world’s heaviest insect, the wetapungu (Deinacrida heteracantha) – at risk because endangered predatory birds, saddlebacks, were placed on the only island where it lives.

  All of these tales about island arks remind us yet again that nature in Australia (and everywhere else) is not as it used to be. We can’t assume that a koala up a tree or a bird on an island truly belongs. All too often they point to changes in ecosystems instituted by people. It’s a reality even conservationists have helped create.

  ‘Big fish eat little fish’

  Chinese proverb

  Lake Eacham, on the Atherton Tableland, is a dainty little crater lake ringed by rainforest. Protection inside a national park has not served it well. Until recently it boasted its very own rainbowfish (Melanotaenia eachamensis), a silvery little thing with orange stripes that shoaled in the shallows. In 1983 the Lake Eacham rainbowfish was abundant; then, as some things do, it vanished. Biologists who came four years later with nets, traps, searchlights and snorkels found plenty of archer fish, b
ony bream, barred grunters and mouth almighties – but no rainbows. The species they found were north Queensland fish, but not fish that belonged in the lake. Someone had put them into the national park, illegally, for no good reason. A sign by the lake tells you not to feed the fish. Barred grunters wait there for hand-outs. If you come at night with a light and scan the inky depths, you see darker fish, mouth almighties (Glossamia aprion), peering up from below. They are the villains in this tale. They evidently ate up all the rainbows, robbing a lake of its namesake.

  But Eacham rainbows did not go extinct. In the early 1980s some fish fanciers had illegally scooped up a few of them for their aquariums. The species survived in anonymous lounge rooms and garages. After a concerted breeding program it was made secure in captivity. Then in 1990 Queensland Fisheries returned 3000 rainbows to the lake.1 Four months later they were gone. A workshop was held, with talk of more releases, but with what hopes? Meanwhile some rainbows found in a stream and crater nearby proved to be Eacham rainbows. The species had survived in the wild after all, although tenuously. Trout gudgeon (Mogurnda mogurnda) once lived in Lake Eacham and they also vanished from this spot (while remaining plentiful elsewhere). A little hardyhead is the only original fish still there. Most visitors to this World Heritage site never guess that the fish they see don’t belong.

  Translocated fish are a worry for Australia. More than twenty native species (and four crayfish) now live in waters where they don’t belong. Many major catchments are affected, their ecology skewed. Governments have promoted most of this work, on behalf of fishing enthusiasts. Queensland is the worst-affected state.

  Queensland is a target because her waters are warm. Rivers and lakes in the southern states were stocked long ago with trout and salmon brought from Europe and North America (see my book Feral Future). These fierce predators devour native fish, tadpoles, crays and insects, turning trout waters into wet deserts. They seriously threaten seven fish species and three frogs. Even though most of Queensland is too warm for these fish, they were released in places – Lake Eacham, for instance – but failed to survive. Frustrated fisheries officers had to look elsewhere. They wanted something big and tasty that would do what native sport-fish won’t do: breed in the big dams that were rising all over Queensland. They turned to Africa.