Playing parrot politics

'The whole idea of a highly endangered rainforest species being considered an urban pest in Hong Kong is truly bizarre'

THERE'S LITTLE ecologists detest more than species that are artificially introduced to an ecosystem. Such 'exotic species' often imperil native flora and fauna, with disastrous consequences.

On fishing outings in Colorado in the United States, a biologist friend would reel in carp to the river banks and bludgeon them to death in the name of the endangered greenback cutthroat trout.

His was a personal piscatorial crusade but even entire nations are capable of marshalling malice. Exotics have crippled the Australian continent. Rabbits, introduced by the British in the 1800s for hunting, have become such a monumental pest that the Australian Government has introduced diseases to kill off the vermin - in which they go blind, convulse and die agonisingly slow deaths. So pervasive is the dilemma Down Under that the public has heeded the ecological war cry: it's nearly a national fixation rather than a pastime.

The toxic cane toad, introduced by farmers to eat the cane beetle which was decimating sugar crops, has so thrived at the expense of everything else that town councils organise fun-for-the-whole-family events aimed at stamping them out.

Some twisted locals try to out-do each other by devising the most ingenious method of termination. One winner put a cigarette in the toad's mouth and forced it to inhale by poking its stomach, then watched the tobacco smoke slowly distend the stomach until it exploded.

If it sounds like introduced species elicit humanity's dark side, perhaps it's because we're ultimately shocked at our own propensity to play God, to upset nature's balance formulated over millions of years.