Why New Zealand is releasing a rabbit-killing virus
bbc.com
bbc.com
Calcivirus has been released in the past to control rabbit numbers without any ill effects on the greater ecosystem in New Zealand. Rabbits should not be a part of the ecosystem in New Zealand, they are an introduced species with no natural predators (and very few introduced predators) that destroy the habitat for native birds and cause soil erosion problems.
RHDV1-K5 is not genetically engineered, it is a natural strain of the virus from Korea. Rabbits in New Zealand, having not been exposed to this strain before, have minimal immunity to the virus. The estimates for knockdown in Australia are up to 40%, they'll probably be more modest in New Zealand, due to the more varied terrain and isolated populations.
As cute as rabbits may look, they are a disaster for the environment in New Zealand, along with possums, stoats, ferrets, pigs, goats, wallabies, tahr, and to a lesser extent chamois and deer.
This is also a country which wants to eradicate rats, possums, stoats, feral cats, and several other predators by 2050. See New Zealand aims to become predator-free by 2050 , linked to from this article.
See also "The Big Kill - New Zealand’s crusade to rid itself of mammals." https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/22/big-kill ("mammals" here does not mean "all mammals").
Many Australian species are dying out because simply terrible at being animals. (It's not a matter of being overspecialized, because imported generalists like rats, mice and cats are outcompeting the native animals even in their specialized niches. They're just ineffective at surviving and reproducing.)
Also, if introduced/invasive species taking over a region is "evolution" etc, then the virus will just be another invasive species and the rabbits will have to face the consequences of evolution
It did work, but it was no where near as effective as if it was released at the correct time. It was released shortly before mating season so the rabbit kits apparently gained immunity.
So I went looking. The language is more considered. it tends more to 'unplanned accidental release' than 'guy goes off-piste and carries virus out the door bypassing security'
But.. maybe you can dig harder?
I predict that this second release will unwind even worst consequences that they will endure, while saying they couldn't have predicted it.
If you let a child play baseball in a museum, you can predict something will go wrong. That doen't mean you can say which statue or painting is going to be destroyed, or in what way.
The only similar species in New Zealand that it could spread to would be hares. If that did happen, that would be an added bonus. Hares are also considered a pest animal in New Zealand.
RHDV1 K5 is a strain of RHDV1. RHDV1 in all of its mutations only affects the European rabbit. As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_haemorrhagic_disease points out, it doesn't seem to affect other rabbits, like cottontails, black-tailed jackrabbits and volcano rabbits.
It also points out that birds, flies, rabbit fleas, and mosquitoes can spread the virus between rabbits, and those aren't "4 legged creatures."
The disease is endemic to most of Europe, so it's not like it doesn't have plenty of opportunities already.
Rabbits are a non-native species what were recently introduced and are causing significant damage. It's very well understood what a NZ without rabbits would be like; it would be like the NZ that existed before rabbits. That's the point.
(And also like the smaller islands that are already rabbit free.)
Then they do something really stupid.
Then they pay the price, and make their neighbor and children pay the price, saying "who could have known ?".
This is not only very arrogant, but also extremely ignorant of our history.
I mean, first you (well, your grand-grand-…-grandfathers) introduce new species to the land. They are absolutely harmless, you have plenty of them at home and would like to have even more. What can go wrong? When you learn the answer, you try to fix your fuck up while your parents don't see and introduce some more new species that apparently fought off these first species back at home. After all, you are smarter now, you know biology and stuff, you know how one animals eat the others and can play with this stuff knowingly. Well, this does the trick, your first little fuck up gets eliminated, but now that second animal dominates the whole new continent and overall situation got just much worse. You try this several times and it gets trickier every time, but you are so sure of yourself, so educated and smart that you just cannot let go, you are sure you can fix it this time. So you artificially construct a virus to wipe off the harmful population. It seems to help at first, but soon they get immune to that virus and really good at spreading this virus around. Then the virus mutates. Scrolling forward, there's no single kangaroo left alive on the continent, rabbits now can produce nuclear weapons and you still have a new, final solution that surely will fix the situation this time. Like artificial kangaroo immune to radioactivity or something, idk…
Rabbits were first brought to NZ in the early 1800s. They caused problems by the 1870s. http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-DruExot-t1-body... . In 1947 the Rabbit Destruction Council was formed. So this isn't a "when you learn the answer" but when your g'g'grandparents learned the answer.
It does not appear that any animals were introduced to NZ in order to kill the rabbits. Perhaps I'm wrong? Ferrets can be used to hunt rabbits, but from what I gather they are not effective as a population control method.
The RHDV1 K5 virus is not artificially constructed. "It is a naturally occurring variant of RHDV1, originally found in a rabbit breeding farm in Korea." - https://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/science/plants-animals-fu... .
More likely, you are thinking of Australia, since NZ isn't usually considered a continent and since it doesn't have kangaroos.
It actually feels weird to explain that and, no offense, but I think the fact you are taking it so literally is actually the essence of what I'm trying to say here. The details don't change the general fact we have a history of fucking things up, because "we know science" and "have verified all the details". And the silliness of all the mistakes of the kind I'm talking about here is essentially the same — while fully admitting we don't know all the details, some people are too eager to ignore that and to feel self-righteous on the basis of checking all the known details and not seeing a problem.
This isn't about RHDV1-K5 — if I had some serious educated concerns about it, I wouldn't voice them over here (at least not only here). Maybe there won't be any problems this time, I don't know and I surely hope so. But we have a solid track of proving otherwise and, I'm sure of that, we are not done with making mistakes yet.
Abstractly, what you say makes sense. It's been the heart of much of the opposition to ecosystem intervention for decades.
But when it gets down to the details, the question is, when should we try to intervene?
Your comments appears to be "never, because we don't know the consequences."
Which is fine. There may be good reasons against it. But if you justify it with a story line better suited to a science fiction movie then how much weight should we place in your opposition?
Or, going the other direction, what sort of response would you want which would make you feel more comfortable about the plan to use RHDV1-K5?
The only problem though was that they found it a lot easier to go after native birds and largely ignored rabbits as a consequence. I did see a weasel chasing after a rabbit once though.
They apparently considered introducing mountain lions to keep deer and goat numbers down in the 40's. Thank the gods someone stopped and though about how much of a bad idea that would be.
Once the mountain lions get out of control the next step is to introduce elephants, at least according to my childhood readings.
Australia also introduced ferrets and foxes to keep rabbit numbers down. Ferrets don't seem to have had as much of a negative impact as in NZ, but foxes are a big problem.
At least that's what some old guy told me when I was walking through the South Island on the TA.
> Pasture competition prevents new plants from establishing, though established plants are very competitive. Rabbit infestations have helped the spread of sweet brier by reducing pasture vigour. Cattle, possums and birds spread the seed by eating the fruits ("rose hips") produced around the seeds.
I haven't had rabbit since I was very young but I do remember it being absolutely delicious.
We would need orders of magnitude more hunters in order to eradicate rabbits from NZ. That's expensive. Rabbits simply aren't tasty enough to justify that effort.
If the market demand for rabbits were to increase drastically, one market response would be to raise more rabbits on rabbit farms, which is cheaper than game rabbit.
An increase demand would also result in increased rabbit hunting in Australia. So long as Australian rabbit meat is cheaper than hunting down the last of the NZ rabbits, NZ rabbits will remain in the ecosystem, ready to, ahem, bounce back once the economics changes again.
Nor are people stupid. If rabbit hunting brings in huge amounts of money, landowners in NZ are not going to eradicate all of their rabbits for the sake of short-term profits.
The introduction of a virus is not something that is done lightly here. Bear in mind that NZ has one huge advantage compared to most countries here in that the only native land mammal is a bat, so there's not a big risk of the virus spreading across to other native species (this is the reason why 1080 is effective too as it generally only kills mammals). Note that the myxomatosis virus was introduced (illegally) by farmers to NZ in 1997 and it proved pretty effective at reducing the rabbit population for the next 10 years or so, until resistance built up.
The claim is that it is all but impossible for this strain to mutate to infect another species. Not that it's impossible for the strain to mutate.
RHDV1 is already endemic in Europe and elsewhere. There are plenty of opportunities for that virus to mutate.
None of the mutations affect anything other than the European rabbit.
Certainly there are diseases which can cross the species barrier.
Foot-and-mouth disease, quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot-and-mouth_disease , can infect "cattle, water buffalo, sheep, goats, pigs,[4][5] antelope, deer, and bison. It has also been known to infect hedgehogs and elephants;[3][6] llamas and alpacas may develop mild symptoms, but are resistant to the disease and do not pass it on to others of the same species.[3] In laboratory experiments, mice, rats, and chickens have been successfully infected by artificial means, but they are not believed to contract the disease under natural conditions.[3] Humans are very rarely infected."
On the other hand, some diseases are species-specific. Smallpox and polio are two humans diseases which are not transmitted to other animals, which has helped us eradicate (or nearly so) those diseases.
RHDV1 K5 appears to be in the latter category, in that it has not been seen to infect even other species of rabbit, much less more distantly related animals.
I'm not at all advocating killing rabbits for food or fur, but it's at least more human (and less wasteful) than sickening them and having them suffer 2-4 days before they die.
You don't understand the sheer scale of the problem. Not only are the numbers of rabbits just astounding, they're spread over some of the most inaccessible terrain in the world, covered in dense forests and steep mountains.
To give you an idea of the scale. Over Easter, there is the Great Easter Bunny Hunt in Otago, a district at the bottom of the South Island. They shoot 10,000 rabbits over 24 hours.