These days, at the end of reports on the damage it is claimed feral animals do to farming property, there is always an rider . . . "and of course feral animals also kill or compete with native wildlife". This is a reference to THE DREAM . . .

"If only feral animals were not there, if only they could be got rid of, the land would bloom, the native animals would come back - all would be as it was 200 years ago." . . . That is the dream.

But the Australian landscape, and the numbers and mix of the human population and the way we live, have changed overwhelmingly in 200 years. Because of the extinctions that have already occurred and their replacement with other species - and the different balances - and particularly the removal of vast tracts of habitat, and the enormous increase in size of the human population, and the overgrowth of cities, roads, Industries and pollution - the restoration of the original landscape with all its complex and unique communities, the sum total of which distinguished Australia from other continents - is not possible.

Killing animals which are here now, and in the cruelest way, for a dream that other animals, not yet born, will somehow repopulate the barren landscape, is not only morally indefensible, it is out of the question.