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15 Australian Birds (Episode 6)

10,000 Birds

” He continues to describe how the introduction of sheep to Australia affected both the Aborigines and the Long-billed Corella : “They once ate murnong, a daisy whose tubers sustained Aboriginal people, until the sheep of the squatters grubbed it up, bringing ‘deprivation, abuses and miseries’, as one missionary wrote.

Birds 147
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Acclimatisation Societies of New Zealand

10,000 Birds

They took dogs to Australia, chickens across the Pacific, rabbits to England, horses to the New World, and then brought potatoes back. A housecat in Buenos Aires got its start in Africa, a sheep in Australia to the Middle East, a chicken in Ireland can trace its origin to the jungles of Asia. Rabbits are still an agricultural pest.