The rabbits by the side of the road, the camels ruminating in the desert, those poisonous toads that scare everybody—none are native to Australia, but they are very common and are usually a pest. Those cute button-nosed bunnies were imported by a farmer from Britain because he wanted to have something to shoot at in the back garden.
Not many years later those 20 or so rabbits had produced uncountable new generations that literally changed Australia’s landscape from shrubby undergrowth to desert. The introduction of the myxomatosis virus decreased the numbers, but only for a while, until new generations had become immune to it. The camels were imported because they suited the large desert regions in Australia, and now they have gone native and are so prolific that they are exported to the Middle East. The cane toads were introduced to combat an epidemic of beetles that were munching on the sugarcane harvests, and while they managed to get rid of the beetles, they are now a pest themselves without natural predators.
Even the iconic dingo didn’t initially belong here, introduced thousands of years ago by the aborigines, who had dogs. Since then, the dingoes have thrived; they thieve from farmers to such a degree that a 5,400-kilometer-long dingo fence, reportedly the world’s longest fence and one of the world’s longest structures, was built between South Australia up to Queensland, trying to keep the dingoes and farm animals apart. Probably the best-known nonnative species is sheep, brought from South Africa by some of the first British settlers to establish the wool industry. And where would we be today without the famous Australian sheepskin boots and Australian lamb?
Excerpted from the Second Edition of Moon Living Abroad in Australia.