What keeps the big end of town from driving everybody else into bankruptcy?

We make a strange pair, down at Sydney Park, Jesse Dingo and I. It’s not often you see a dingo and a possum together, but then I am a very large possum, and he’s a very civilised warrigal.

We walked up the big hill, watched the morning sun light up the city and then strolled down to the kiosk where Joadja, on her morning off, was waiting for us at the kiosk. She was having a coffee with old Stan, the retired colonel, who’d been on his morning bike ride, and she greeted us with a news item she’d googled on her iPad.

“Now here’s a happy story to take our minds off the grim shit that’s the daily news. Says here on the American ABC news that an Oregon Court of Appeals decision in September 2011, forbidding the killing of two members of a wolf pack has spurred efforts by ranchers to find modern, wolf-friendly ways to protect their livestock. The wildlife activists, the Fish and Wildlife Department, and the ranchers all seem to be working together.”

“Good news eh, Jesse”, I said, tossing him one of the kiosk’s famous lamb, mint and mushy pea dog treats.

Joadja fetched me a long black. “And there’s this great system where they’ve fitted some wolf pack members with radio collars that trigger a device that erupts with bright lights and the sound of gunshots when wolves approach a place where cows are calving. Also it seems little orange plastic flags on electrified wire is pretty effective in turning them away too.

“You know, by the 1930s they’d nearly wiped out wolves across most of the US. But things are changing. There’s been great excitement in California because the first wolf known to enter the state since 1924 – he’s known as OR-7 because he’s the seventh wolf to have been fitted with a GPS collar in Oregon – has been tracked for almost 5000 km, and over 3000 km since he crossed the California border. And so far he hasn’t killed a single sheep or cow in over three years as far as anybody can tell.

“Thankfully, for the good of the whole ecosystem, wolves are making their way back into the landscape.”

“Thankfully? Don’t wolves kill lots of native animals too?” asked Stan.

“Well, yes they do, and that’s just the point. By preying on some of them, they preserve others.”

“Hang on. How does that work?”

“Well, ecology tells us that wild ecosystems need at least one of what’s called an “apex predator” – a carnivorous species that hunts the most dominant grazing species in the ecosystem.

“The apex predators – we’re talking about things like lions, sharks, raptors, wolves, dingoes – being lazy, like us humans, prefer prey that gives them lots of meat for least effort. So they concentrate on things that are abundant.

“Dingoes, for example, prefer to hunt possums and rabbits, and after that, wallabies and kangaroos. The wallabies and roos are bigger, faster and therefore more difficult and dangerous. Also, they usually have to be hunted as a pack, rather than individually.

“The whole point is that the abundant grazer species tend to push smaller, less common, more vulnerable species out of their habitat usually by eating out their habitat, but also by grabbing other resources like nest holes.

“By preferentially preying on the abundant grazer species, the apex predator holds down their numbers and keeps open opportunities for the little vulnerable guys who inhabit those fragile fringe niches in the ecosystem they’re always in danger of being crowded out of.

“Now the thing is, the dingo-killing industry like to portray dingoes as the enemies of our native wildlife – It’s an attempt to put on an environmental disguise – but actually, the reverse is true. To preserve lots of little marsupials and rats and things, we’ve got to have an apex predator, and over the last few thousand years dingoes have taken over the role.”

“Geez, I had no idea”, said Stan.

“You know, if the free market economy can be compared to a wild ecosystem”, Joadja mused, “…what’s its apex predator? What keeps the big end of town from driving everybody else into bankruptcy?”

“ICAC?”

“Ha, there’s a laugh. I reckon they’re too busy hunting down a few rats to have time for the really big snouts in the trough.”