Mad Scientists Lose Funding for Fox Extinction

Back in August of 2004, I posted a piece ("The End of the Game") on something called viral immunocontraception. The basic thrust of this Australian mad-scientist scheme was to create a virus to sterilize entire populations of animals: fox, rabbits, people, mice, rats, carp, etc.

The chance for such a thing to run out of control and end "Life on Earth as We Know It"seems pretty obvious ... but apparently not to a small cadre of Australian scientists warmly embraced by Animal Right lunatics willing to risk killing off everything on Earth in order to prevent hunters from firing a shot.

The good news is that the the main groups of scientists working in this arena have lost their funding after 10 years of no subsantive progress in the field.

A news story, from the Australian media, is appended below:

Fox Free to Breed Like Rabbits

Australian scientists have abandoned attempts to develop a contraceptive vaccine for rabbits and foxes, saying the approach has failed to produce results after 10 years.

Dr Tony Peacock, chief executive officer of the Invasive Animals CRC, formerly the Pest Animal Control CRC, says resistance to genetic modification from the grazing industry has also influenced the decision to scale back the contraception work.

Hopes had been high for the success of a contraceptive vaccine delivered via the myxoma virus for rabbits and via non-toxic bait for foxes.

But Peacock says the rebadged CRC is changing tack on controlling the European rabbit and the European red fox, among Australia's worst pests.

"There are major changes in those two programs because the immunocontracepive work we've been doing for a decade in those species we can't take any further at the moment," he says.

"We couldn't make it work well enough to justify the millions and millions of dollars we'd have to spend to keep going [and] the grazing industries are very nervous about proceeding with the GM approach, and our work is genetic modification."

While the rabbit project will be scaled back from a "full-on development", he says basic research into the rabbit reproductive system will continue at the CRC.

The CRC also intends to press ahead with efforts to develop a contraceptive approach to mouse control, which has proved more effective and is better accepted by the grains industry, Peacock says.

Some smaller groups will continue to study contraceptive methods of pest control, he says.

New focus

Peacock says the focus will move back to the rabbit calicivirus, introduced in 1995, and new, improved fox baiting.

"We think the lethal [fox baiting] approach has some advantages and we can deliver it more quickly," he says.

Meanwhile, calicivirus has been effective in some parts of the country but has failed to make a real dent in others, and the CRC wants to see how its effects can become more uniform.

Peacock says feral rabbits and foxes remain an "enormous" problem and admits researchers are still scratching their heads for a solution.

"What we would advocate is, if it's possible to look at a biological control we should pursue it," he says.

"But it's long term research and it's only happened twice in the world, twice in Australia, twice on the rabbit."

Funding row

But all the CRC's new plans could be derailed by a funding row that Peacock says is threatening the organisation's future.

He says one of the CRC's partners, the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, is considering pulling out of an agreement to provide A$10.5 million because of a dispute with the New South Wales government.

If the commission decides to pull out of the CRC it would directly affect the so-called daughterless carp program and potentially affect all other aspects of the CRC.

A spokesperson says commissioners will meet in Queensland next Tuesday to make a decision.

"They agreed to put in A$10 million and now they're reconsidering it to anywhere between ten and zero," Peacock says.

"If we lose a big chunk of money then the committee that recommended the CRC [for funding] needs to reassess it."