Invasive Species Council

Yeah, and I guess you guys know from firsthand experience, if you are in the industry in question and you start asking questions, you won't be in the industry for very long.

Because I find it interesting, I think they're called the Invasive Species Council.

They got $200 million to bite this virus.

But didn't surely someone in there said, well, there's an algal bloom in the same place? Or just saying, can you show me the virus? Can you show me the tests? Instead of just appearing on the media and going, yeah, yeah, we're sorting this out.

Are they encroaching on some of our Melbourne streets? Where are they? 133693.

On the line now is Rhys Pianta, Advocacy Director at the Invasive Species Council.

Rhys, thank you for your time.

Good afternoon.

Rhys, appreciate you coming on.

Thank you.

Rhys Pianta there, Advocacy Director at the Invasive Species Council.

Over to you, 133693.

And the answer is South Sydney, or the Rabbitohs, as everybody knows them, and Geelong, which has a cat as its mascot.

According to the Invasive Species Council, every year feral cats kill more than 1 billion mammals, about 400 million birds, about 609 million reptiles, and 93 million frogs.

And rabbits, well, they aren't killers, but they are insatiable eaters.

And because they breed really quickly, they're incredibly destructive of native vegetation and landscapes.

That's Tim Lowe.

He's a biologist, author, founder of the Invasive Species Council.

And 1992.

If you're as old as me, that sounds really recent, but...

for coming down to join us again today how are you i'm very well thank you i'm sorry i'm making you nervous beck

i know you made me so nervous dr innes today we're having a chat because the invasive species council right they did a quiz and they found that a lot of people in it's more new south wales queensland and victoria They think a lot of the introduced animals are native to Australia and some of them think some of the native animals are introduced.

So we're going to talk about native animals today, but I did want to quiz Mauro and Dr. Innes.

Okay.

Lewis? It's someone that I've been really wanting to get inside his head for a while, largely because I've got this immense sense of doom coming over me about what the summer's going to look like around bird flu.

So Jack Goff, who is the CEO of the Invasive Species Council, longtime friend of Essentials as well, couldn't think of anyone better to finish the week to give me a reality check on my gloom and doom or actually embed it further but welcome jack and um thanks for coming along and what's your poison

great to be with you yeah no um there's a little bit of doom around bird farm i say and it's probably spring not just summer that we've got to watch out for but um no i've got the uh the jervis bay uh pale ale because i was down at jervis bay on the weekend so a mate of mine's the brewer down there and uh And so we brought a case of it back and that's what we're drinking at the

moment.

Would have been much better for limericks anyway.

Hey, Jack, I was hoping you'd actually bring a cosy Oscar you're threatened to, because I thought that'd be a really good segue into our history together, which was researching public attitudes to the Brumbies, which was one of the most wicked environmental problems we've faced.

But for those that don't know much about the Invasive Species Council, like you guys do the hard work, which is not hugging trees, but killing critters that, ruin the environment so tell us a bit about the work that you guys do

yeah i mean i think a lot of people um get surprised um around the invasive species issue but basically australia is a continent and we're an island and because we're an island and a continent that's been isolated from the rest of the um uh the world for millions of years geographically isolated and It means we've got pretty unique wildlife, pretty unique species here, but also are very under threat from invasive species coming in.