Unlike the other stories we're spinning in this article, this one didn't start out as a well-intentioned idea, unless you ask Elmer Fudd. But oh, what a terrible it was.
When the first European settlers landed in Australia, they went out to explore the vast wilderness and do what they usually did in new territory: hunt. Thomas Austin was one of the explorers in the mid-1800s who landed and set about killing anything that approached his property. Getting bored of the local Australian animals, Austin wrote to his brother to send 24 rabbits on the next shipment of supplies. As soon as the rabbits arrived, Austin let them loose, excited for new game.
But things went horribly wrong. Since Austin and his fellow settlers had killed so much of the local wildlife, there were no predators for the rabbits. The rabbits bred like ... rabbits, popping out hundreds of new bunnies, way more than the settlers could hunt. Seven years after Austin's mistake, he had killed 14,000 rabbits on his property alone. By 1940, there were 800 million rabbits in Australia, all descended from Austin's original group.
As cuddly and cute as rabbits are, they are terrible for biodiversity. The carrot-munching calamity made the three native Australian parrot species and twenty-three of the twenty-six native tree species go extinct. Throughout the 20th century, the Australian government has embarked on extreme measures to kill the rabbit population, including releasing the deadly biotoxin myxomatosis. Even though they killed nearly 100% of the population, the remaining few rabbits still got it on, and the population shot up again. 150 years and $600 million later, Australia is still dealing with the selfish desires of Thomas Austin.
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