THREE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR OF THE CANBERRA TIMES ON MYNAS, WITH MY COMMENTS

260919 INDIAN MYNAS LETTERS FROM FRANKIE BILL HANDKE OAM AND CAROLYNE DREW TO THE CT https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9349918/pauline-hanson-veteran-andrew-hastie-hit-with-cowardice-claims/ Why culling Indian mynas in the ACT might be making the problem worse By Letters to the Editor September 15 2026 - 5:30am https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9349918/pauline-hanson-veteran-andrew-hastie-hit-with-cowardice-claims/ (For Frankie Seymour’s and Bill Handke OAM’s.) Dead bird walking: An Indian myna trapped by the Canberra Indian Myna Bird Action group. Picture by Kate Leith The recent spate of hate letters attacking Indian mynas would be less ridiculous if these were slow-breeding animals. With slow breeders there is actually some chance of reducing the population. The biological inevitability of killing fast-breeding animals is that, for every individual killed, another that would otherwise not have survived infancy, takes its place. Being younger, the replacement will be more fertile than the one you killed. Killing fast-breeding animals means there will be more of them than if you left them alone. It is the opposite story with animals like kangaroos that cannot breed more than one young a year. Slow-breeding animals can easily be driven to extinction especially when subjected, as kangaroos are in the ACT, to sustained persecution over many years. Of course, the government is well aware of both these dynamics. In the case of kangaroos, the government wants them gone. Kangaroos are a highly visible impediment to developing every scrap of remnant wildlife habitat in Canberra. Most of the other native animals killed by development are much less noticeable. Conversely, the government wants to maintain permanently higher than natural populations of fast-breeding naturalised animals, like mynas, as scapegoats. Like all the other scapegoats in human history, they can be used to distract attention from the government's own abysmal failures. Meanwhile, all these cruelly persecuted animals, native and naturalised, are supposedly recognised as sentient beings under the ACT's Animal Welfare Act. Yeah, right. Frankie Seymour, Queanbeyan, NSW Mynas out of control I travel from Noosa inland to Canberra each winter and each year I get more dismayed by the increasing number of mynas along the way in towns, farmland and along roadsides - where once this was just a problem along the eastern seaboard. This year in Narrabri there would have been between 80 and 120 on the oval verge and they were by far the most common bird seen between towns as well. This indicates that they are now totally out of control. Twenty years ago we raised this as a local and national issue - yet we still cannot lift the consciousness of the prominent environmental and conservation advocates or government officers to this as a major threat to our wildlife. Our natural environment is being devastated before the eyes of authorities and they are totally blinkered. Bill Handke OAM, Kambah MYNA BIRD CRUELTY https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#inbox/FMfcgzQhWTrFGkGVTQDQXDBMtJzVBlrW (For Carolyne Drew’s.) Several correspondents have now rushed to defend the trapping and killing of myna birds. Yet they keep avoiding the elephant in the room the cruelty. Mynas are not the only birds that compete for nests or evict other birds. Apparently, it only becomes ‘cruel’ when a bird we’ve labelled as a ‘pest’ does it. Meanwhile, humans deliberately trap mynas and kill them using carbon monoxide from an engine exhaust. Is this as humane as its proponents claim? Would they like their pets to be euthenised this way? Rather than telling us why mynas deserve to die, they should own up to the horrors they put the birds through. Carolyne Drew, Hawker. MY NOTES ON THE ABOVE – IAN MACDOUGALL In my view, the three letters above raise some interesting philosophical questions, both moral and political. I will comment on them in the above order. My friend Frankie Seymour says: “The biological inevitability of killing fast-breeding animals is that, for every individual killed, another that would otherwise not have survived infancy, takes its place. “Being younger, the replacement will be more fertile than the one you killed. Killing fast-breeding animals means there will be more of them than if you left them alone.” Not necessarily. It depends on the ratio of the rate of replacement by reproduction to the rate of killing. If this ratio is greater than 1/1, then the numbers will increase; if less than 1/1, even if only for one breeding season, the species is headed for the ‘endangered’ category. And if it stays there long enough, for extermination. Further, and re kangaroos she says: “Most of the other native animals killed by development are much less noticeable. Conversely, the government wants to maintain permanently higher than natural populations of fast-breeding naturalised animals, like mynas, as scapegoats. Like all the other scapegoats in human history, they can be used to distract attention from the government's own abysmal failures.” Well, perhaps. However, that confers on Barr and his cronies a degree of rat-cunning that would impress the likes of Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) no end. More likely, IMHO, a simpler explanation: Barr & Co. have been lobbied by voters such as Bill Handke OAM, of Kambah, (see his letter, second in the collection above) and want to be seen to be alert, alive and on the ball. Frankie goes on to say: “Mynas are not the only birds that compete for nests or evict other birds. Apparently, it only becomes ‘cruel’ when a bird we’ve labelled as a ‘pest’ does it.” I disagree with her there. ‘Cruelty’ is just that, whether perpetrated by a dog, cat, human, Nazi, liberal, communist, Catholic, Calathumpian, or whatever. (If I was out on the African veldt and in the process of being eaten by a lion, it might prompt me to wonder before I shuffled off this mortal alfoil if bone-crunching, bloodthirsty Leo was capable of empathy, and could thus be persuaded by Christ’s ‘Golden Rule,’ or its Confucian precursor of “Do as you would be done by.”) And then Frankie adds: “… Meanwhile, humans deliberately trap mynas and kill them using carbon monoxide from an engine exhaust. Is this as humane as its proponents claim?” That in turn prompts me to ask: ‘humane – relative to what?” Birds’ bodies have very little in the way of internal water, relative to say, mammals. They do not sweat or urinate, have dry mouthparts (check inside the beak of a pet galah or budgie) and so virtually no sense of taste or smell. Thus, on the face of it, they would likely absorb a fatal dose of carbon monoxide (CO) from engine exhaust and lose consciousness from lack of oxygenated blood to their brains before becoming aware of their being in any mortal danger; though please note that I am not aware of any research results either way on this particular topic. But I also think that philosophers down the ages would agree that as all of us living beings are mortal and that as death is inevitable and the Hegelian antithesis of life, the speediest and least painful exit from the world’s stage is to be preferred over a long, lingering and agonising one. Carbon monoxide at least guarantees that. Which brings me to the issue raised by Carolyne Drew, of Hawker. “Would they like their pets to be euthenised [sic] this way? Rather than telling us why mynas deserve to die, they should own up to the horrors they put the birds through.” As the Austrian ethologist and zoologist Konrad Lorenz pointed out in one of his books, for their own safety and longevity, carnivores prefer the quickest possible kill rather than a slow one. In the process of fighting for its life, the prey animal can wound or otherwise damage the predator with its hooves, claws, horns, or whatever; which wounds can in turn become infected, slow the predator down, decrease its ability to catch more prey, and so endanger its life. The exceptions occur when there is a great size difference in the predator’s favour: think of a cat playing with a mouse. The cat can hone up its mousing skills by letting the mouse ‘escape’ its clutches, and then grab it again as swiftly as possible using its teeth, claws, or both. Cats which have judged that the honing-up of the mousing skills involved is worth whatever risk have passed their genes on, and have been the neo-Darwinian ancestors of our modern cats. So, on the face of it, the mynas are probably better off euthanized by car exhaust, than being grabbed in flight by and eagle or hawk, and carried on talons to the nest, there to be eaten alive at whatever pace by however many resident predators are to be found there. Nature can indeed be ‘red in tooth and claw.’ A quick death is far better than a slow one, when the time comes. As it does for us all.