elephants northern australia – Bing News
HAVE YOUR SAY What do you think about Prof Bowman’s elephant idea? Tell us in the form below. His comment piece in the science journal Nature published today…Weekly Times Now· 9 hours ago
From the sublime to the ridiculous. Elephants, for a start are browsing animals, not grazers. Feral grazing animals like water buffalo have been in huge numbers, but were drastically reduced due to brucellosis testing. Their numbers in places like Kakadu are increasing again.
Then there are other grazers like the wild cattle, donkeys and horses. They are certainly not reducing in numbers, but are increasingly threatening wetlands instead. Elephants smash trees to eat the new shoots and fruits, adding to the fuel.
Professor Bowman should know better. More research must take place first, using the many under-employed indigenous inhabitants and a return to a comprehensive burning regime, as well as modern methods of weed removal. The Government could be more productive by paying them as rangers, ‘looking after country’.
The original inhabitants used a fire-stick patchwork burning method almost every day of the year. Now wild fires burn uncontrollably for weeks or months, while the original inhabitants stay away.