by Emily Bench

Created on: October 07, 2008   Last Updated: March 14, 2010

The rabbit proof fence that traverses the island continent of Australia stands testament to the devastating impact European settlement has had on a rich but fragile environment.

Isolated from the rest of the world, Australia's ecosystem has evolved over many millennia resulting in a proliferation of weird and wonderful creatures found nowhere else on the planet. Today Australia's ecosystem is made up of over one million known plants and animals and it is classified as a mega-diverse country (

www.environment.nsw.gov.au.)

Yet that diversity has suffered under European settler stewardship and modern day Australians have inherited a legacy that further threatens the variety of life down under. The arrival of the European settlers brought a duo of challenges for the natural world; a vicious land grab denuded the landscape of natural fauna and flora and a host of invasive alien species infiltrated the ecosystem displacing local plants and animals.

Australia had what Europe lacked, land and lots of it. Settlers flocked to the new world and took advantage of the surplus of land and cheap labor provided by the convict population. This resulted in large-scale land clearing and deforestation. Land clearing and deforestation has the biggest impact on biodiversity not only in Australia but worldwide. In the past 200 years, almost 40% of the world's mammals that have become extinct have been lost from Australia and land clearing has been the number one culprit in contributing to this (www.wwf.org.au.

The second biggest threat comes from invasive alien species. This term describes animals or plants that are introduced into an ecosystem and thrive to the detriment of local species.

Perhaps the most famous creature in this category is the rabbit. To many settlers, Australia's harsh landscape was unfamiliar and they longed for the green, green grass of home. In an attempt to introduce a little piece of home' to the rugged landscape, Thomas Austin shipped 24 rabbits from England and released them on his land intending to hunt them.

(www.animalcontrol.com.au. Within ten years, the rabbit population had grown exponentially, reeking havoc on the environment. Rabbits, it turned out, were perfectly suited to becoming an invasive species.

They enjoyed a generalist diet, had few natural predators and possessed the ability to breed quickly. The rabbit population exploded so quickly it is the fastest spread of any animal ever recorded anywhere in the world (www.anra.gov.au.

Rabbits have

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