h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Holy cow! Snakes have arrived in Ireland. Idiotic yuppies during the Celtic Tiger years went and bought snakes and other reptiles such as iguanas into Ireland from Europe. Just as conversation starters and to show how cool they were. Now that these jerks have lost their fancy jobs they are abandoning them in their former fancy digs to scare the wits out of real estate people or landlords.

Worse, some of these mindless jerks are just abandoning these poor reptiles out into the countryside. Here the poor creatures wander around devouring wildlife and scaring unsuspecting inhabitants.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2013/03/16/snakes-slither-over-ireland.html

Since Ireland has been snake free for a long time before Patrick came there, this is really awful. Because snakes are really good predators, bird populations are really at risk. I hope that those jackeens didn't buy too many pythons. At least very few of these are venomous, but really who wants to lose wildlife at the rate that is occurring in the Everglades. Also in the South Pacific the US territory of Guam will be parachuting dead acetaminophen poisoned mice from helicopters to try to control the population of brown tree snakes which have exterminated most of the bird population of the island. Scientists figure it is too late to same the birds here but if they kill off enough of the creatures, they may prevent the snakes from cadging rides in planes and infesting other vulnerable islands in the South Pacific such as Hawaii.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/02/22/172695707/dead-mice-are-going-to-be-dropped-on-guam-from-helicopters-really


Where is St Patrick or the druids when you need them?

Hmmm. For a while Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs were the must-have fashion accessory, too. They sold for up to €500. Now the novelty has faded and they're being released around the countryside.

It would probably be kinder to kill them than to release them into an ecology they aren't adapted for, on top of any affect they might have on the habitat.