Kill bid over ‘river rabbit’

A final solution to Australia’s plague of noxious carp could flow from a Geelong laboratory.
Researchers at Newcomb’s CSIRO Livestock Industries’ Australian Animal Health Laboratory are investigating a new virus to control the notorious pest fish.
Project leader Dr Mark Crane said the virus, which appeared in Israel in 1998, had killed masses of in carp in the United States, United Kingdom, Israel, Netherlands, Japan and Indonesia over the past few years.
A $350,000 funding injection from Invasive Animals Cooperative Research centre and Murray-Darling Basin Commission will help pay for the two-year study.
“Given their reproductive capacity and their hardiness, carp have been termed the rabbit of the river,” Dr Crane said.
Carp were introduced into Australia in the early 1900s as a food and sporting fish.
However, flooding in the 1970s flushed them out of private dams and into natural waterways.
The carp has pest status because of its environmental and disease impacts.
Dr Crane said koi herpesvirus attacked carp’s gills as well as other vital organs.
Native fish were unlikely to suffer from the virus, he said.
“Koi herpesvirus has a very limited host range and infects carp only,” Dr Crane said.