[HN Gopher] Australian Rhino Project
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Australian Rhino Project
Author : tokai
Score : 36 points
Date : 2021-11-21 02:08 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (theaustralianrhinoproject.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (theaustralianrhinoproject.org)
| fmajid wrote:
| Excellent initiative!
| tgvaughan wrote:
| I love collective nouns and am happy to add "a crash of rhinos"
| to my collection!
| Causality1 wrote:
| Just a reminder the vast majority of collective nouns are
| essentially fake. Actual scientists have never heard most of
| them, let alone use them.
| giarc wrote:
| I specifically remember reading a book when I was in elementary
| school called "A Cache of Jewels" that was all about these
| various nouns.
|
| https://www.amazon.ca/Cache-Jewels-Other-Collective-Nouns/dp...
|
| EDIT - I just noticed a review for the book that is 1 Star "It
| should be more obvious this is a kids book". This listing comes
| with recommendations for "That's Not My Puppy" and "Bear Sleeps
| for Christmas". I wish people wouldn't leave bad reviews
| because THEY didn't interpret the product correctly.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| A murder of crows always makes me smile - english can be rather
| odd.
| wahern wrote:
| > english can be rather odd.
|
| The more fanciful terms of venery (aka nouns of assembly) are
| very much deliberate contrivances.
|
| > In the course of the 14th century, it became a courtly
| fashion to extend the vocabulary, and by the 15th century,
| the tendency had reached exaggerated and even satirical
| proportions.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_noun#Terms_of_vener.
| ..
| tus89 wrote:
| What could possibly go Rhrong.
| ehnto wrote:
| Monarto Safari Park, the Zoo where the program is taking place,
| has a fun history. You might ask yourself, why is one of the
| world's largest safari parks located in South Australia?
|
| In 1973, the South Australian government started buying up huge
| swaths of land from farmers, with the goal of creating a
| satellite city for the state capital of Adelaide. They felt
| Adelaide was growing too fast, and to stop it from becoming a
| sprawling congested mess, they wanted a discrete satellite city
| for the burgeoning blue and white collar industries to expand
| into.
|
| That never happened. The population growth stagnated in SA, and
| after a long tenure the politicians who had backed the scheme
| finished their time in office, and the planning department
| responsible was abolished. This left the government with over a
| thousand hectares of land in the middle of nowhere, with no plans
| on how to use it.
|
| So in 1982, the Planning and Environment minister announced that
| 1,000 hectares of Crown land would become an open range zoo, and
| it has been developed into one of the world's leading
| conservation parks.
|
| More recently, they've gotten more funding from the government
| and are developing the park into a more accessible location,
| which overall should help the park grow and help develop their
| conservation efforts.
|
| I was put on to this story by this excellent youtube video, which
| contains some wicked footage of 70s and 80s Australia, and dives
| in depth into the urban planning aspects of this story and what
| the government had hoped to achieve with a satellite city,
| equally fascinating!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RW6-pw16dg
| Torkel wrote:
| Can we eat them then?
|
| Let's say they manage to create a population in Australia. With
| an ever so small surplus, we could take that and eat it. Prices
| for legal rhino burger would probably be insane, right? I mean -
| that and horns are why they are poached. And legal horns could be
| a thing then, too.
|
| Seems like the best option for any animal's long term survival is
| to become human food or amusement.
| tokai wrote:
| There is a little selection of weird frozen meat from Australia
| in my local super marked. Like kangaroo, alligator, and
| ostrich. So if rhino husbandry is possible the demand is
| already there for exotic meat.
|
| Guess it take too much time and resources for rhinos to be
| viable livestock regrettably.
| gimmeThaBeet wrote:
| Sounds very interesting. Honestly not trying to be skeptical, the
| thing it reminds me of was a proposal from a scientist that
| Australia import elephants and rhinos to help control the spread
| of gamba grass. Itself imported from africa for grazing, it
| crowds out local plants, but maybe more pertinent these days, has
| an increased fire risk profile.
|
| To me the contention with any plan, conservation or otherwise, is
| "be _ultra_ careful what you bring into Australia ".
|
| Certainly not an expert, I'm sure in any case they would be very
| careful doing any of this, tracking etc. And I don't feel rhino's
| are quite as aggressive as say, hippos (authorities did not think
| Escobar's hippos would survive in Colombia; that turned out to be
| dead wrong). But I would certainly be very curious to see how
| introducing such a large aggressive herbivore with no natural
| predators would affect the area, if only because it does seem
| like a doable task to control the population.
| ehnto wrote:
| It would be a conflicted moment to have to think about
| controlling a pest rhino population. A huge success and an
| ecological disaster all in one, but I think the risk of that is
| quite low as they are not a fast breeding animal and this
| program is in a closed safari park.
|
| We have an invasive camel problem which probably serves as a
| good benchmark for what a pest rhino situation would look like
| here. There is a bounty program for hunters to get paid for
| eradicating them from Australia. It's a touchy subject, no
| doubt. But being hard hooved animals they destroy the top soil
| and kill the ecosystem our bugs and birds thrive on. Camels,
| sheep and cattle have done immeasurable damage to the
| Australian ecosystem.
| gimmeThaBeet wrote:
| Agree on all points. I had mixed feelings that the fact that
| the population struggles in the face of poaching despite
| having no effective natural predators seems conducive to
| fostering a controlled population in a closed environment.
| The food chain wouldn't affect how they proliferate .
|
| But the first thought is always...just the track record.
| Rabbits, foxes, cats, cane toads, donkeys, camels, goats,
| pigs. But, like you say, they aren't going to be losing track
| of their rhinos.
|
| But, arguing conservation as a practical application, has
| Australia _ever_ intentionally introduced a species for a
| practical application and had it not go absolutely sideways
| (big caveat, usually once the animals escaped, or were just
| turned loose)?
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(page generated 2021-11-23 23:02 UTC)