Timeline of Introduced Species in Australia.
Firstly, I must preface this with a vital piece of information to put this in context - not accepted as truth by everybody, but indisposable for the sake of the argument - that the self-realised sage sees the soul in all living creatures as equal, being a small fragment of the Supreme Being, pure in quality. Christians argue that animals don't have souls, but Christians in this instance are limited by a poor fund of knowledge due to portions of the Bible being removed (it is the only main religion on Earth without a doctrine of transmigration of the soul - although some unorthodox sects embrace metempsychosis). Technically, the amount of sin in killing any form of life is proportionate to the degree of suffering inflicted. Lower lifeforms have less developed central nervous systems and don't feel as much pain as higher forms that scream, wail, and whimper.
Circa 40,000 to 120,000 years ago tribes from South East Asia migrate. Compare ancient tribe of Sri Lankan Veddhas (photo);
c. 4,600 to 5,400 years ago, futher migration introduces the dingo;
c. 230 years ago, Europeans are introduced, and bring with them horses (brumbies) and pigs (now feral);
c. 175 years ago, foxes, camels, cats, water buffalo, goats, rabbits;
c. 80 years ago, cane toads, ten-pound poms, Marvel comics Superheroes.
Blackberries, prickly pear, thistles, mice and rats, bamboo, fennel, wild parsley, pine trees, various birds, fish, insects (European bees and fleas, dung beetle, Monarch butterflies), germs, viruses and other foreign diseases; the list goes on and on. Most are here to stay, because Mother Nature allows it. Interfering humans think they know better and try to play God in a kind of xenophobic war on non-indigenous invaders, as if declaring that the only truly blue-blooded royalty in Australia is... native.
(The information is not so much my ideas but rather what I've gleaned from authoritive literature, mostly scripture. It is pointless to enter debate with atheistic greenies who have no faith in Mother Nature. She isn't absent from her duties, it's just that we cannot comprehend Her workings.)
Interestingly, any species is by dictionary definition *native by virtue of taking birth in a particular land (Latin nativus: produced by birth). Therefore it is correct to say I am a native of Australia because I was born here. Similar definitions apply for indigenous (from *gene: give birth and *indi = in), but the distinctions become blurry with *autochthonous: from the land, *aboriginal: from the beginning, and *endemic: from demos = place, people, limited to and naturally occurring with a unique place or people.
Clearly the distinction is dependent on the time factor and often infers exclusivity. Sometimes it is impossible to pinpoint. For instance, curry is considered to be the "Traditional Cuisine" of India. Ok, so go and make a curry without using recently introduced foods such as chili pepper, tomato, potato, pumpkin, capsicum etc all of which came from the Americas, brought in by the Portuguese and Spanish a couple of centuries ago. Before then, black pepper, long pepper and various other spices such as ginger and mustard seeds gave curry its 'heat'; consequently it was much milder then than what we now know as 'hot' curry. So how long does a dish have to be eaten in a country or region for it to be classified as Traditional Cuisine? How long do you have to live in an area to be called a Local?
Lack of diversity is the only way any particular species becomes invasive because of the absence of its natural predator. In England, rabbits eat the tender shoots of young bramble bushes (blackberry), thus keeping them in check so that they never develop weed status. The rabbits are in turn kept in check by its natural predator, the fox. Foxes' natural predators are the automobile and Internet spam (I had to put a joke in there somewhere). The time has long since passed where geographically isolated continents were exclusive havens for endemic species. The natural course will eventually see most species inhabiting most continents as much as Mother Nature sees fit. She decides who can live where. There are no rabbits in Antarctica. There are no penguins in Hawaii. There are no polar bears in New Zealand and there will probably never be sharks in the Sahara Desert. If wild pigs and camels can survive in the outback, and feral dogs and cats are now doing what the dingo and Tasmanian Tiger did centuries ago, it is Nature taking its course. Just because we don't understand why Mother Nature would allow cane toads to devastate Northern Australia doesn't mean we know better and have to kill them all (fun fact: Meat ants are unaffected by the cane toads' toxins, and therefore are able to kill them. The cane toad's normal response to attack is to stand still and let their toxin kill the attacker, which allows the ants to attack and eat the toad). Every living thing on Earth is another's breakfast. Any species capable of survival has as much right to live as any other once it has taken birth. Personally I don't like pine trees, but somehow they must have their place here, or they wouldn't grow. See, Mother Nature isn't xenophobic at all, and our present-day bias towards what 'belongs' is only due to our narrow perspective based on recent history. Growth encompasses change.
Trying to keep things the way they are is madness.
