In the highly developed network now, we have realized the importance of the ecological environment to human beings through various sources of knowledge on the Internet, but decades ago, some people's unintentional actions brought major disasters to the local ecological environment, for example, can you imagine dozens of pairs of rabbits actually related to the survival of the country? How many sheep nearly ruined the origins of evolution?
In recent years, biological invasions have become commonplace, and when biological invasions are mentioned, we have to say that there is one country, that is, Australia, after all, Australia's rabbit invasion is world-famous, and the impact of these rabbits on Australia is still continuing.
At the beginning, there were no rabbits in Australia, but there was a boring guy, a farmer from the United Kingdom came to Australia by boat during the big voyage, felt that life was too boring to do, and brought 24 pairs of rabbits from England to Australia, ready to find some fun in their own lives, the result of these rabbits breeding wildly, and even by 1926, the number of rabbits in the whole of Australia has reached an astonishing 10 billion, and now, human beings are only more than 7 billion. So you can imagine how much harm such a staggering number of rabbits can bring to this land.
Goat invasion of the Galapagos Islands
But today the same biological invasion also occurred on another equally famous offshore island, the goat invasion, and they all have one thing in common, which is man-made.
And this famous island is the origin of the theory of species evolution, the Galapagos Islands, between 1831 and 1836, Darwin followed the British Royal Navy expedition ship Beagle to sail around the world, and then arrived in the Galapagos Islands in 1835, the island's unique ecosystem and biodiversity shocked Darwin, gained a lot of inspiration, and finally came to the world-famous "theory of evolution", and the island is also famous as the place of origin.
In 1959, a group of fishermen moved to the Galapagos Islands to live, and for the needs of life and diet, they also brought a few goats, a mother and two males, also to prepare for future breeding, where can the fishermen at that time think of how great a disaster this docile and lovely three goats can bring to this island with a unique ecological structure.
At first, the fishermen kept the goats in captivity near their own neighborhood, but the island's fresh vegetation and no natural enemies made the goats begin to grow.
After a few years, these sheep have bred generation after generation of descendants, the size of the flock has expanded to tens of thousands, fishermen do not have so much energy to carefully take care of the goats, so some goats have escaped from the fence, run to the wild to become wild goats, and in the wild these goats are even more unscrupulous, the breeding speed is extremely fast, but at this time it is not possible to see the impact of these goats, so people have not really paid attention to these things.
By 1990, the combined number of all the goats on the island had reached nearly 250,000, which was a terrible number on such a small island, and people finally began to realize that things were out of control, and the impact of these cute goats on this small island was gradually revealed.
First of all, the food problem of these goats, they are like a bunch of lawn mowers, wherever the grass plants disappear, and this brings a devastating crisis to some unique animals on the island of Galapagos, the first is a giant turtle, galapagos island is named after this unique giant turtle, it is the Galapagos tortoise, the largest tortoise on the earth, the Galapagos tortoise is a plant-eating animal, usually eat some low plant leaves, cacti, grass and the like, And these foods are exactly like the goat's recipe.
Originally, the tortoise lived well on this island, and no animal would go to grab food with it, and the number was basically maintained at tens of thousands, but since the goat came, with such a strong competitor, the food that the tortoise could get was greatly reduced, and even to the extent that many tortoises could only starve to death, and the harm brought by the goat to the tortoise was not only this.
Goats will also step on the eggs laid by tortoises, tortoises take about 20 years to reach sexual maturity, and only lay a dozen eggs at a time, their reproduction is already very difficult, coupled with the behavior of goats, seriously destroyed the living conditions of tortoises, so that the number of tortoises plummeted, only a few thousand remained, has reached the level of endangered species.
And the plants on the island are also persecuted by goats, especially some plants with shorter lifespans, which rely on the continuous alternation of old trees and new shoots to survive, but the goats can't manage so much, all of them are nibbled by you, so these plants are wiped out before they can react. The explosive growth of these goat populations has completely destroyed large areas of grassland and forests everywhere they go, resulting in large-scale degradation of ecological species. The number of unique species in the Galapagos Islands has become precarious, and these species that have survived tens of thousands of years of evolution to survive on this small island are vulnerable to the invasion of exotic species such as goats.
Goat removal program
In order to protect these rare species and the island's unique ecosystem, the local government began to find ways to solve these goats, but it was easy to ask the gods to send them.
In 1999, the government launched the Isabella plan, that is, the plan to eliminate the goats on the island, the first government used a helicopter equipped with machine guns, while flying, while strafing the goats on the ground, this plan was very effective at first, shooting most of the goats, but the surviving goats learned to be smart, they will hide in rock crevices and caves to avoid pursuit, if it takes manpower to find out and shoot again, then the cost is too high, the government has to give up this method, That is the "espionage law" that applies to all wars, so how can sheep spy on them?
Finally, people thought of a way, they found a bunch of female goats, and injected drugs to keep it in heat for a long time, and then released back into the forest, in order to lure those hiding goats out, and then shoot, not to mention that although this method is lacking in morality, it is really useful.
But even with so many methods, it was not until 2006 that the goat herd was completely removed from the island, although the goats were cleared, but the serious damage caused by the goat invasion to the island was not eliminated in a moment and a half, and the local government brought the remaining tortoises back to the local breeding center, and then put back on the island after the newly hatched baby tortoises passed the dangerous period, and at the same time put a large number of seeds of native plants on the island, although people are already trying to save it. But I don't know what year and month this indisputable island will return to its former form.
This disaster brought about by the inadvertent mistakes of human beings not only consumes a lot of manpower and material resources to solve, but also makes this peaceful island look beyond recognition, which is sad.
From the above two cases can be seen, human beings may be unintentional, but the damage to the natural environment is indeed visible to the naked eye, I hope that everyone can learn more about how to protect the environment, do not let yourself inadvertently become a "murderer" that endangers nature, we may wish to think, if everyone does not understand these things, indulge in the destruction of nature, then decades later, or even hundreds of years later, what will the environment of human life become?
Author: Michitomo Fungus School Draft: Kawakawa