UK Scientists Raise Alarm At Oz Plan To Fight Invasive Carp With Herpes Virus - Guardian
Scientists in Britain have raised concerns about Australia’s $15m plan to release a herpes virus in the nation’s largest river system to eradicate carp, saying it poses a serious risk to global food security, could cause “catastrophic ecosystem crashes” in Australia, and is unlikely to control carp numbers long term.
In a letter published in the Nature Ecology and Evolution journal this week, University of East Anglia researchers Dr Jackie Lighten and Prof Cock van Oosterhout say the “irreversible high-risk proposal” could have “serious ecological, environmental, and economic ramifications.”
The Australian government allocated $15m in the 2016 budget to a national carp control plan, centred around a plan to release the koi herpes virus into the Murray-Darling river system to kill common carp, or Cyprinus carpio. It followed extensive research by the CSIRO, which conducted seven years of tests to ensure that native fish, birds, amphibians, and other species in the river system could not contract the virus.
Lighten and van Oosterhout say the use of the carp herpes virus should not be compared to the release of the myxomatosis virus to control the rabbit population, arguing: “compared with the biocontrol of terrestrial vertebrates, the biocontrol of large, highly fecund aquatic animals such as carp adds novel risks.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/24/australias-carp-herpes-plan-dubbed-serious-risk-to-global-food-security
