Indian Myna bird eradication program

i'm thinking collectively.....all the introduced species doing their bit to undermine the balance (not on purpose obviously....they're just in the wrong spot)

I always thought it was 'Miner Bird'.

At renmark there was a dove being attacked to death by a gang of them, dad got the dove and kept it for an hour or too, to keep them away. Then let it loose back on the lawn, with in moments the Myna birds flew out from every which where and began pecking at it again.

So he grabbed it and put it in a bucket... and my friend drove it out, far past the township and let it go.


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There's my input.. lol

something very similar happened to a magpie on my lawn the other day. there was 3 magpies, one being pinned on the ground while 2 magpies were holding it down and a crow was trying to literally pull its head off, the magpie on the ground was screaming out, so i ran over and grabbed it, brought it inside so it could recover from shock. it flew away about a hour later but it was so strange .. sorry for the randomness

On the radio a few weeks ago there was a lady being interviewed (not exactly sure what her profession was) but she has been studying the Indian Myna birds impact in Sydney.
The radio host said that there has been an increase in the number of Myna birds and wanted to know if action is going to be taken to try and reduce their numbers. The lady said that although there population has grown, they don't seem to have any impact on any native birds population. She also said that the Australian Myna Birds (the noisy myna) is actually a much more aggressive and territorial bird than the Indian Myna is. < I can totally agree with that as I always see Noisy Mynas swooping and chasing away other native birds, whereas I have never seen an India Myna do such a thing. There have also been a few incidents where I have found injured birds who were being attacked my noisy mynas...not Indian mynas.

I don't understand why they are trying to reduce the population/eradicate them when they aren't doing any harm? There are so many other things that council money could be put towards that would actually benefit the community...grr.

In regards to cane toads...I have never had to deal with cane toads as I live in nsw, but it's funny that all the reasons that I thought cane toads were damaging the environment are actually myths to a certain extent....
For anyone interested have a look at this website:
http://www.canetoadsinoz.com/biodiversity-impact.html

eat food another frog would of eaten, or kill native animals with poison? are these true?

"Although toads do compete with frogs for food, and do sometimes eat frogs, the number of frogs doesn’t go down when the toads arrive. There have been several studies now – some relying on just counting frogs, others using more complicated systems like electronic listening posts to record the male frog’s calls before and after toads arrive – and none of them show any decline in frogs due to toads." - http://www.canetoadsinoz.com/debunkingcanetoadimpactmyths.html

Well according to that website very few native animals are actually affected by their poison. It is mainly large predators that are effected, such as large snakes, goannas and quolls (marsupial carnivores).
Native animals are also starting to evolve to adapt to the presence of cane toads "First, the snakes that lived with toads wouldn’t eat toads when we offered them to snakes in captivity, whereas when given the chance, about half of the snakes from toad-free areas readily grabbed a toad – and usually died as a result. Second, the toad-exposed snakes were more able to deal with the toads’ poison. Third, the snakes from toad areas had smaller heads compared to their body size – so they were not able to eat really big (and thus, more dangerous) toads." - http://www.canetoadsinoz.com/evolutioncausedbycanetoads.html

Of course they are still affecting the biodiversity of Australian native wildlife and some sort of humane action needs to be taken, but it seems that native animals are adapting to cane toads much better than what most people would have you believe.

We blame other animals we introduced here for environmental problems. Just stop for ten seconds and look at what humans have done. I can't even begin to understand how we've massacred and ruined this place. We are so way above and beyond carrying capacity. With that logic we should start murdering each other.

Yes it is terrible what is happening to those birds. But what are we going to do? We can't go back in time and tell the humans not to bring those animals into Australia.

And do you guys know what those birds do? They will get into a native birds nest, kill the chicks (sometimes the adults) and replace them with their own chicks.

So, its true, its not fair that we are killing these animals because we brought them here, and we humans do make more damage, but those birds are also another cause of our downfall in native wildlife.

Also considering most of the wildlife in Australia isn't found anywhere else in the world.

Sorry if I sounded harsh, its not that I want innocent birds being killed just because they harm other birds, but that is my opinion. If I could only choose one, I would try and work to protect Australia's native wildlife.

Agree completely. I've seen Noisy Mynas do this in abundance too but haven't seen much of the Indian Myna do it... But because the Noisy Myna is native, it's OK? Even though they have similar tendencies (with many people arguing that the Noisy Myna is worse?). It's the same with the Koel bird - it lays its eggs in other bird's nests and often drives them out. But again, this is OK because it's a native? I don't think the Indian Myna is any worse or any more destructive than other birds.

For those of you who agree with this program, surely you can't agree with the way they're going about it? Because all the councils and action groups who are enforcing the program are encouraging us to trap them with home made traps and kill them using methods such as breaking their necks ourselves. That's just wrong.