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Dangers of New Zealand Possum Biocontrol Research to Endogenous Australian Fauna

A vast literature highlights the major environmental and economic costs exotic species can have on terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecosystems worldwide. For example, in Australia, weeds cost the nation more than $A3.3 billion annually (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2001; McNeeley et al. 2003), and rabbits $US370 million annually (McNeeley et al. 2003). Increased exchange of material goods and people across the globe at relatively high speeds has already elevated the risk of new introductions (Low 1999). Effective quarantine may be limited by the sheer volume of traffic across borders, and compromises may be made to accommodate agendas such as economic treaties and diplomatic arrangements. Breaches of quarantine measures, somewhere at sometime, are a certainty. Continuing and looming problems with exotic species have been drivers of the development of pest-control technologies, including biocontrol (Carruthers 2004) and contraception (Tyndale-Biscoe 1994). An ideal biocontrol agent would be a chemical-free, self-dispersing, selfmaintaining, and highly target-specific solution that minimizes human health risks (Carruthers 2004; Hoddle 2004). Ideal agents are difficult to find, however, and there remains the potential for unexpected and irreversible ecological side effects of biocontrol (Louda et al. 2003; Louda & Stiling 2004). Although biocontrol is usually a lethal measure, contraception of wildlife may be more effective than lethal methods for some species (Zhang 2000; Dell’Omo & Palmery 2002), and it may garner greater public support (Grandy & Rutberg 2002). Contraception can be achieved by the administration of hormones or their analogues (Nave et al. 2000; Herbert et al. 2004) or achieved immunologically (Kirkpatrick et al. 1997; Rutberg et al. 2004). At least two research groups are attempting to combine reproductive disruption with biocontrol agents to