Insanity trying to fix what isn't really broken

This is an excerpt from this web-posting, I found it on yahoo, it was one of their 4 news-spots on their main page (constantly changing so that's why I included the link)...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090113/ap_on_re_au_an/as_australia_rabbit_infestation

BANGKOK, Thailand – It seemed like a good idea at the time: Remove all the feral cats from a famous Australian island to save the native seabirds.
But the decision to eradicate the felines from Macquarie island allowed the rabbit population to explode and, in turn, destroy much of its fragile vegetation that birds depend on for cover, researchers said Tuesday.
Removing the cats from Macquarie "caused environmental devastation" that will cost authorities 24 million Australian dollars ($16.2 million) to remedy, Dana Bergstrom of the Australian Antarctic Division and her colleagues wrote in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology.
"Our study shows that between 2000 and 2007, there has been widespread ecosystem devastation and decades of conservation effort compromised," Bergstrom said in a statement.
The unintended consequences of the cat-removal project show the dangers of meddling with an ecosystem — even with the best of intentions — without thinking long and hard, the study said.



Ok, so that's from the top of the news. Basically, it seems like a great over-sight on the part of those who removed the feral cats, but what's insanely idiodic is that to fix the problem they're looking at expensive ways to fix it, rather than introducing 2 very cheap options. Hunters, thereby removing the rabbits, adding a little influx of rabbit fur and rabbit meat into the market, or cheap option 2, re-introducing the feral cats, taking them from animal shelters where they might otherwise be put to sleep.

It could be so much cheaper. But no, the economy is weak, so lets waste 16 million (US) dollars.