David Bowman proposes that elephants should be introduced into Australia as a cost-effective way to control invasive gamba grass, a major source of wildfire fuel (Nature 482, 30; 2012). But managing the elephants could be more expensive than, say, launching a fleet of harvesters every year to reduce fire risk. We should start by asking what is likely to work best, regardless of the cost.
To combat the problems caused by invasive aliens, we should implement ecologically sound control mechanisms that have a reasonable probability of success. We can worry about the bill later.
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de Bruyn, P., Davies, A. Australia: no price on cutting fire risk. Nature 482, 471 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/482471f
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/482471f