Pests
One man’s pet is another man’s pest. I have known people to keep pet snakes, but in another context snakes are feared. Spiders can be both pets and pests. So are pit bull terriers, rats and cats. It is all in the eye of the beholder. A pest is an organism that is unwanted. So an animal may be a pest in one setting but a pet in another. At different times, ants, spiders, fleas, cockroaches and mosquitoes have also made the top of the list of pests but quick action and they are eradicated. These will always be pests.
This got me to thinking about the pests I feel like destroying. Termites are at the top of my list. Living on acreage, surrounded by trees, in an area where termites abound, we are always finding they have tunnelled underground and come up underneath the house or barn or shed. They can so quickly eat out the timber in a home, and there is no insurance against their damage. Even huge trees are not immune, and I have had large dead trees removed because of their little jaws. So twice a year the pest man crawls over everything, digs down beside every foundation, and lies on his back under the house. It is a good investment.
But rats have also always been high on our list, mainly because I was responsible for a 42 storey large city building in the CBD. 2008 is the Chinese Year of the Rat, but for CBD buildings, every year is the year of the Rat. Beneath Wesley Centre, runs the old Tank Stream, which is the main rat artery of the CBD. There are hundreds of thousands of rats in inner Sydney. Every level of the car park had to have bait stations. A rat plague means finding between 100 and 200 rats in one place. The CBD does not have that now as it has had in years past but it is a constant problem.
The main reason for a population explosion in the rat population is poor waste management practices. The building boom resulting in demolitions has driven rats onto the streets, especially in the inner areas at night. Numbers are impossible to gauge. But the last time the rat population reached plague levels in Sydney was in the early 1970s, when rats had grown resistant to the “rodenticide” used to control their numbers.
The more common Sydney rat, the “roof” or “black” rat (the other is the Norwegian rat), needs a lot of moisture in its diet and is unlikely to survive if water is scarce, so they live in main drains. I keep the supply of rat bait in the roof and under the house fresh, and it works. Rats cause damage in crops, damage farm infrastructure and pose disease and spoilage problems in food storages and stock feeds. There are currently over 60 species of rats in Australia, and they occupy a wide range of the habitats across the country. The majority of these are native species. Native rats, are slow-breeding animals generally found in non-cropping areas and are therefore not considered to be a “pest” species.
However, two rats (Black Rat and Brown Rat) are introduced species that have rapidly adjusted to Australian conditions. The Black Rat was responsible for London’s Bubonic Plague in 1665. This is the rat most commonly observed in cities. The introduced Black and Norwegian rats, which travel through the storm water drains and sewers, just love to get into your roof, where they pee and poo, increasing the chance of spreading disease, “from parasites like the round worm that occur in the lungs for example, that transfer to humans, through to the viruses.”, according to CSIRO researchers (http://www.csiro.au/promos/ozadvances/Series9RatsL.html).
In 1900, there was an outbreak of bubonic plague in Sydney, beginning in the western side of The Rocks at Millers Point. From March to July 1900, The Rocks and other parts of the city, especially the waterfront areas were barricaded off and locals given the task of cleansing, disinfecting, fumigating and lime-washing the buildings in the area. The stigma of slum hung heavy over The Rocks. However, of the 103 people who died from the plague, only three were from The Rocks.
Working in Parliament House, every night during fig season, I see tens of thousands of Sydney Fruit Bats or Flying Foxes arriving in the Domain, The Botanical Gardens, Hyde Park and other places where the Morton Bay fig is common. They fly down from their caves in Ku-ring-gai. Flying foxes have an important role in their ecosystem, as pollinators and seed dispersers of native trees. Grey-headed flying foxes are one of three species of flying fox that has been increasing its population in Sydney, due to loss of its usual habitat to ongoing land clearing for housing. The specific flying fox problem for Sydney is that since 1989 they began to increasingly roost in the Royal Botanic Gardens. Roosting damages trees by stripping leaves and growth shoots from the tree canopy, and sustained damage kills them.
By 2007, there were 11,000 flying foxes roosting in the Royal Botanic Gardens with damage now severe and widespread to the collection of trees of exceptional heritage significance as they were collected and planted by colonial explorers and botanists starting in 1828. In 1989, 2 viruses were identified in bats: the main people at risk would be bat handlers, and they are required to be vaccinated against it. At our place we live with the bats that constantly strip our fruit trees. Sometimes we net the trees to discourage them. They are pests that I would like to see living elsewhere but we do not try to destroy them (http://www.sydneybats.org.au/cms/).
In recent times pigeons have become pests. Previously they were pets used for racing, and before that kept as ingredients for pie and for laying eggs. There are no estimates of pigeon numbers available but they thrive in cities. Pigeons may carry bacteria causing Salmonellosis (food poisoning). Dry bird droppings can become airborne dust carrying pathogenic material such as Ornithosis, a disease similar to viral Pneumonia, which can be transmitted to humans. Droppings can deface and accelerate the deterioration of buildings and statues. Limestone buildings are particularly susceptible, not so much to the droppings themselves, as to the acid secretions produced by the fungi that live in them. The cost of restoration and cleaning can be significant.
An elderly lady known to me, used to sit in Hyde Park every lunchtime feeding them with bread. They would land on her head, shoulders and arms. People thought that was cute but pigeons harbour fleas and mites and Wesley Mission at the time had to regularly take her for “delousing”. At best, a number of pigeons were awarded the Dickin Medal for bravery for their role in intelligence and saving of lives during World War II as messenger birds. And what else would Bill Lawry have to talk about while broadcasting the test Cricket? One of our sons kept pigeons and I once built a dovecote for pigeons and the doves to breed in, but the local hawks regarded that as their favourite fast food outlet.
Another of Sydney’s pests is also a bit of a tourist attraction – check the photographers in Hyde Park any day. Yet we are ensuring their population by spending $2 million this year to save their nesting sites! The Murray-Darling Basin Commission bought 11,000 megalitres of water over Easter weekend (2008) to help save the ibis breeding grounds on the river system. It is hoped the extra water will stop up to 30,000 chicks from being abandoned by their parents at the Narran Lakes colony in north-western NSW. In recent weeks the water level has been dropping and it was feared the adult birds could start to flee by the end of this month unless there were more inflows to the wetlands. The water had been bought from Queensland for $180 a megalitre, or $1.98 million.
In the 1970s most of the NSW population of Australian White Ibis left its traditional home around inland lakes and rivers and migrated to urban parks where water was available. Some settled down around the ponds in Sydney’s Centennial Park and now the urban Sydney Ibis population have grown so large it poses significant problems. The Ibis prevents other birds from nesting, suppress vegetation, carry diseases and pose a risk to aircraft at Mascot, which may hit them, damaging the engines.
Ibis is the most common bird scavenging in landfill tips. They get 70 per cent of their food from these tips, but have been observed choking to death on human’s food scraps like meat bones. Their natural foods are the much more digestible native diet of invertebrates, such as grasshoppers, locusts, cicadas, beetles, frogs, worms and crustaceans. They would also be able to remain cleaner in their own habitat like the lake near our home.
I should not forget the Bogong moth. Every November I would have to employ special cleaners with backpack vacuums to suck up the millions of Bogongs that would clog our air conditioning, infiltrate every floor of Wesley Centre, clog every light fitting, and pile up outside every window, attracted by the lights. Numerous staff became sick after accidentally swallowing one. Flying at night they are attracted to light, and can swarm in large numbers considered a nuisance by humans. They block air conditioning ducts and set off alarms. But while inconvenient, they are harmless and soon are gone. People are not aware of how helpful moths are in horticulture, and their role in preventing bushfires by devouring leaf litter when they are in the caterpillar stage. They may eat some of our vegetables, but they also eat a number of other garden pests.
Pest birds like starlings and Indian Mynahs (not the honey eating native Mynahs) can affect grain and food, and their processing facilities by contamination and the spread of disease. Starlings were introduced in the late 1850s to destroy insect pests and Mynahs from India as cage birds. They have spread to almost all areas of Australia although Western Australia has an expensive program to eradicate them. They carry parasites and diseases that can be transmitted to animals, compete with native birds for nesting places, breed very quickly, and can live almost anywhere – cliffs crevices, eaves of houses, tree stumps, etc. They form large aggressive flocks that converge on crops to feed. They thrive in a wide range of habitats including cities and towns, lowland suburban and cleared agricultural land, open woodlands, mulga, irrigated pasture, feedlots, Mallee, reed beds, wetlands, coastal plains, and alpine areas.
Bryce Courtney in “Matthew Flinders’ Cat” tells of a homeless man who used to sit on the bench beside the statue to Matthew Flinders at the Public Library throwing little wads of bread to the Mynahs that flocked about him. People thought him kind. But he used to roll the bread around pellets of rat bait, so helping control their numbers!
Many Councils are now purchasing large traps that capture only these birds which are then gassed. At country agricultural shows like Tocal, I see farmers buying them constantly.
Probably the pest I really do hate most is the feral cat. Feral cats were probably introduced with early shipwrecks but certainly with the First Fleet in 1788. The feral cat now occupies all environments across the continent as well as some 40 offshore islands. Even in our driest desert you can find up to 6 per square kilometre. Australia has hundreds of thousands of them. They feed mostly on young rabbits, insects, reptiles, native birds and native mammals, including rare and endangered. The number of native species killed per day is enormous. It is hard to get rid of them in urban areas.
The fox is most widely distributed mammalian carnivore in the world. Deliberately introduced in Victoria for hunting in the 1850s, the fox has spread to almost all of southern Australia. Fox free Tasmania has now been infested by foxes which have jumped off container ships in ports. These have been spotted and photographed and shooting clubs are seeking to eradicate them. They spread tapeworm to other animals and humans. Foxes inhabit highly urbanised areas and the two extremes of climatic conditions found in Australia, the Australian Alps and the arid zone. Diet is highly variable, including fruit, berries, insects and reptiles, ground feeding birds and mammals.
The fox causes millions of dollars worth of damage each year in Australia, killing livestock, and causing extinction of many native mammals including many types of native duck. It has not been eradicated despite intensive efforts of poisoning, trapping, and shooting. The numbers have remained uncontrollable. In urban areas they inhabit drains and creeks and live on household pets (white rabbits, guinea pigs, cooks and ducks), but particularly on the pet food left outside the back door for dogs and cats.
I have seen one jump a four-foot fox-proof fence which surrounds my place. At different times they have killed a dozen or so chooks, leaving the blood stained carcasses which they cannot eat for another night. They kill the ducks on the dam, chew off their heads, and often bury the body for later retrieval. They become brave just staring into my torch and calmly trotting off trailing a duck. I cannot shoot or poison them, and if perchance one is trapped, where can I release it? To some bushland where it will only cause more deaths among the wild life? (http://www.csiro.au/promos/ozadvances/Series1Fox.html).
The possums eat our roses to death; strip the plum and other fruit trees, and remain cute little critters. One family lives in one of our high bird boxes, and comes out every night to play on our roof and eat any birdseed left. Not long ago, we saw mother possum with her baby on her back. We watched for months as the family grew. Cute. Then teenage son started to fight with father possum and moved out of home. I think he has now shacked up with a girl possum and moved next door. D-Ter and Poss-Off sprayed onto the roses deter them, for they hate the bitter taste, but it must be re-sprayed after every rain. If they get into your roof, call the experts! You cannot beat them and keep within the Law. If you do trap them, don’t let them loose near our place. The best way to get rid of pests in your home is to prevent them in the first place. You have to eliminate what it is that the pests are wanting when they come into your home.
Some pests, like weevils go to the pantry to boxed and bagged foods. Get rid of their food and water sources and their living areas. Clean up food waste, standing water or clutter. Check outside of your home to make sure wood is stacked off the ground and garbage bins are closed. Clean up dirty dishes quickly; take garbage out promptly, wipe up spills and do not leave open food containers sitting around.
What about email pests? These are the kind that are easiest with which to deal. Just delete and zap! Problem solved.
Rev The Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes, A.C., M.L.C.