I understand this couldn’t always be the case, like trying to kill all Cane toads across the entirety of Australia would likely be a massive undertaking. But for say, Bull Carp in some of America’s rivers, localized just to where those rivers reach, I feel like it wouldn’t take anymore than a month and some semi-advanced technology to just aggressively fish them out of the waters? Especially given the purpose of this would be to over-hunt instead of eating them, so you could use methods like shooting them in the water instead of fishing them out carefully.
Human’s seem pretty good at over-hunting things unintentionally for sport, so why can’t we systemically over-hunt invasive species if it helps the environment?
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1 – Screening out just the invasive species with your traps is sometimes difficult. How do you kill just invasive carp and not native fish?
2 – Who pays for this effort? These animals generally don’t have any particular economic value as food, so you need to pay a large team of hunters to try and wipe them out. This can be a very large scale effort if the species has become endemic over a large area.
The very traits that make a species invasive are the ones that make intentionally eradicating them difficult. They tend to be adaptable, resilient generalists. And every invasive species is a native species somewhere, so driving them to extinction would be counter productive.
Sometimes nothing. Sometimes PETA. It all comes down to public opinion and how difficult of an undertaking it is. For example, it’s heavily encouraged to hunt wild boar in Hawaii. In suburban areas with a deer problem, extra permits for hunting deer are sold, and really only game and wildlife would care if you shot one in your back yard(though you may get the police called on you for firing a gun in city limits). Both of those things have in common is that it doesn’t cost the local government anything to allow people to hunt them. Beyond those efforts, it costs money and people hate seeing the bill, especially if it fails.
It’s hard to do unless you’re working in a limited and isolated area. For example, there’s some good work being done in the way of [killing off invasive species in the Galapagos](https://www.galapagos.org/conservation/project-isabela/).
>The goal of Project Isabela, initiated in 1997 and completed in 2006, was to eliminate large introduced mammals from northern Isabela Island (approximately 250,000 ha), Santiago Island (58,465 ha), and Pinta Island (5940 ha). The project began in response to the massive ecosystem-wide destruction caused by introduced goats on Alcedo Volcano on northern Isabela. At the start Project Isabela, the goat population on northern Isabela was estimated at 100,000 animals. Eradication work began on the smallest of the islands – Pinta – which was used as a training ground, then shifted to Santiago prior to the arrival of helicopters, which were essential for work to begin on northern Isabela.
Some species breed too much, like feral hogs. A hog can have around 6 to 8 babies in 1 litter. After around 6 months to a year those babies are ready to have their own babies. A hog can have up to 2 litters a year. They’re breeding faster than we can kill them.
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