Ragtag Daily Prompt Friday: Ungulate
Hunt around
looking here
looking there
in the bushes
in the forest
nothing.
I now
must travel the road
to find
my targets.
There
up ahead
there they are.
The only place to
find them
A farm
of course.
Ungulates are not native to Australia, and therefore native ecosystems are sensitive to damage from grazing and trampling by these large animals.
In hot climates, ungulates can drink up to 10 per cent of their body weight in water per day which concentrates their impacts around waterpoints.
* https://news.csu.edu.au/feature/are-feral-cattle-the-brumbies-of-the-northern-territory
bushboys world 
I’ve recently been reading about the damage sheep have caused in Australia to important traditional food sources like murnong. But I gather battle has commenced!
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The battles have been going on for decades, horses in the Kosciuszko National Park, water buffalo in Kakadu national park, camels in the desert regions, goats in the Pilbarra, the list is endless almost unfortunately. 😢
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Not to mention (or is this more New Zealand?) the wild animals introduced to remind the Victorian English of home – foxes and so on.
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Oh yes rabbits and then foxes as a biological control for rabbits….madness. All for the hunt
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Where’s the ‘don’t like’ emoji?
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😡
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These are gorgeous pictures, super selection. 🙂
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Thank you Sue 🙂
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Wonderful pictures – such happy looking beauties, but interesting to hear of some of the potential consequences… what a complex world we’ve made!
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Thank you Emma. As the world becomes smaller and things get passed from continent to continent the more environmental destruction occurs. Being an isolated island, Australia had a wonderland, until the colonists wanted to bring their crap in from overseas.
Lovely to hear from you as well. Hope everything is going OK 🙂
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So sad and so true. I hope we are not too late in waking up to the wonder of how finely tuned our amazing planet is – and how clumsily we can destroy it with our short sighted vision. 🙏🏼
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It can be as easy as, for example over here, Fire Ants arriving in a shipping container. Bio-security is a huge problem worldwide 😢
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Wow, it blew my mind to learn that there are no ungulates native to Australia! Human introduction of Fauna (and Flora) is such a dangerous practice, yikes!
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They are such a destruction of the soil, water and vegetation 😢
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Ugh!
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I love the photos and all of these animals. As for the environmental aspect of this, for the contest I read a book that was profoundly moving to me, and one of its discussions was focused on this conundrum. The book is about the ecosystems in the Great Lakes. Besides some of the beautiful writing, I loved its focus which was “OK, here we are. Where is it working and where is it not? Will it work someday and should we, maybe, just wait?” There were situations in which waiting turned out to be the best solution. The book is The Accidental Reef. A couple of the “wait” lessons involved an invasive fish that the native fish learned was actually good food and a long dump of burnt coal (clinkers) that evolved into a reef that another native fish now uses for breeding. The intelligence of nature is beyond ours. I think our short lifespans warp our understanding of processes.
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Thank you Martha. What I find disturbing is the loss of native species due to the introduction on non-natives. Many hundred Australian mammals, reptiles and birds have disappeared due to introduced species and their destruction of the eco-system 😢
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I hate that, too. It has also happened here. We will never know that world.
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Great images. Over grazing by cattle and sheep causes many issues here in Ireland too
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I recently read about a bog in Ireland that has almost disappeared due to hoofed animals 😢
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A lot of our upland bogs have seen over grazed for years. A lot of good work happening now working with farmers to reduce stocking densities etc
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The rehabilitation was the main message in the story. IUt is good that people are waking to the environmental issues and how they can affect so much. One bog showed where the peat had been harvested for years. It was deep cuts into the ground. I am glad that it was stopped. I hope it will recover but will take many many years
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Yes some of our bogs are still like that, though commercial exploration has stopped..
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The problem is not the ungulates, but humans. I doubt the ungulates would have got there (or here) by themselves. And not just ungulates, but mammals, reptiles, birds, insects, etc., etc. Humans create problems and refuse to deal with them in a timely fashion, if at all. Maybe it’s time for another asteroid!
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You got that spot on Graham 👍
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All of these are so delightful! You’ve brightened up my morning.
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I am glad to brighten your morning Bridgette 🙂
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