Biosecurity: Turning up the heat

Australia's biosecurity efforts seem to hang on a constant knife-edge between preservation and tribulation. Our island nation is unique in how seriously we defend our coastal borders from invasive pests, diseases, and weeds. These threats from overseas threaten to ravage some of the nation’s key industries if introduced, such as agriculture, forestry, and fisheries. One needs only look to the ill-fated, albeit self-inflicted decision in 1935 to introduce the cane toad, ironically to control agricultural pests, to see the damages and difficulties that can arise from the introduction of foreign pests, especially in the case of fauna, which can become widespread in the sensitive Australian ecosystem.