Jan
16
2009
Mystery of Macquarie Island – solved!
Posted by: Lisa in Ecosystems, Science News, scienceAfter the Australians took all the cats away, the rabbits were still there. You always have to have a top predator to make the other animals survive, because the rabbit population grew 100% and that is too much. They don’t have any more predators. The rabbits ate too much of the beautiful grass, so there was no grass to hold the soil in place. The water broke down the soil and it’s getting very muddy.
The people took the cats away because they were eating all the birds and the plants, but the birds are in danger still because of the erosion. Before they took the cats away, it looked like a quite beautiful rainforest, but since they took the cats away, now it just looks like people ruined the environment.
by Room 222
Tags: Australia, erosion, food chain, penguins, rabbits, science
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January 22nd, 2009 at 8:13 am
219’s comments:
Why don’t they take away the rabbits so the plants can grow back? – Charlie, Ruby, Gabi
They should train cats and put them back on the island because then the plants would grow back when the cats control the rabbit population. – Liam
They should have left some of the cats and taken away some of the rabbits. – Kate
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