Invasive Species

The cane toad was originally supposed to help the people in Australia control cane beetles that were destroying their sugar crops. It helped destroy the cane beetles but there was nothing to destroy them since they're toxic to most things that try to eat it and they reproduce often, like rabbits. To try and control the cane toad population the Australian government has tried fencing to contain them, trapping them, disease, and introducing sterile males to the population. None of these has effectively controlled the population. In the United States we have a similar problem with Wild Boars. Wild Boars were originally found in  Europe, Asia, Northern Africa, Japan, and the Malayan Islands. It was brought to the U.S. by Spanish explorers as domestic pigs. Since they were brought here in 1539 they have cause damaged to crops all over the U.S. they are low to the ground and they have hard hooves so whenever they walk they are destroying crops. That isn't even including the diseases they spread. The wild boars can carry many diseases that infect domestic livestock and if the livestock's meat is consumed by humans it infects us too. They are near the livestock because they're attracted to their food. There have been methods to try and fix this problem but none are successful yet. In the southern states where the problem is biggest they hunt the pigs with dogs and guns. The only other thing that the farmers can do is keep their fences maintained and set traps so the pigs can't get in. The cane toad, the rabbits, and the wild boars have all costs thousands of dollars in damage to the countries they are not native to and those countries are still trying to figure out what to do about the problem.

Rabbit Proof Fence

1. When the European settlers began to colonize the western coast of Australia the Aboriginal people were treated unfairly. A lot of the Aborigine's Universal Human Rights were violated by the European settlers. One of the rights that was violated was #25, "Right to an Adequate Living Standard". In "Rabbit Proof Fence" it gives an example of how Human Right #25 was violated when it talks about how the fences blocked their paths for hunting and couldn't feed themselves adequately. Another human right that was violated was #7, "Right to Equality Before the Law". When Moody talked about the old man Udja that went to the magistrate he said, "The old man expected the same form of justice under the white man's law. He never got it," (15). White men got fair treatment under the law but Aborigine's were treated like animals and that is exactly the opposite of Human Right #7. One more way the Aborigine's human rights were violated was their right to personal security. In "Rabbit Proof Fence" the narrator tells about the mothers with mixed children could loose their children at any time and there was nothing to do about it. Nothing they could do would give them a sense of safety, or personal security.


2. When the Europeans came to America, like Australia, they were obviously not the first people here. Native Americans lived similarly to the Aborigines and when the Europeans came they might have treated the Native Americans even worse than they treated the Aborigines. Native Americans were killed and their homes were destroyed. Like the Aborigine's, Native Americans were denied Adequate Living Standards. Because of Manifest Destiny their main food source, Buffalo, were almost entirely killed off and the Native Americans were suffering because they had lived off of that for their whole lives.


3. The relocation of the children of mixed descent by the government was not morally justified. In the Human Rights it stated that you have the right to freedom from interference with privacy, family, and home. When the government relocated the children it violated their privacy by telling where they lived. They also took their freedom of interference with family by taking family away. The people who took the children away probably wouldn't want their children taken away so, not only is it mean, it's immoral