There’s another aspect to this story. It is one that has cost me a great deal of angst over the years. It is my greatest criticism of ‘greenies’. It is the great tendency for so many people to be concerned with very minor aspects of environmental damage while not having any input into the big issues.

I’m not extending this criticism to you at all Belly, as you are interested in all sorts of stuff, including sustainability, population, etc. But within the Greens, the Australian Conservation Foundation, the North Queensland Conservation Council and all manner of other groups, there is a great deal of concern about all sorts of relative minutiae while there is very little concern about the big picture.

Everyone who is concerned about the impact that mynas may be having should surely automatically be MUCH more concerned about the continuous conversion of our natural environment into intensively humanised environments, and all the other impacts that us FERAL humans are having on this continent, and planet.

Thanks for your thoughts Ludwig, first I am very anti green/false or uninformed conservationist groups.
More harm than good comes from them always.
Had my usual Saturday for nearly every one after I left work.
Market day plants and food growers two today.
I am creating a jungle, with intent, bought three, now have 14 blue bird of Paradise plants, have 32 of the smaller orange or yellow ones all are baby's .
But mate did you goggle them?
I put my name down for a trap, with council, every north coast to central coast councils lending them, and telling us how to kill them.
My trap come in September, such is the wait.
Every stall holder,both markets,tells of shooting them ,they kill and eat even their own young,we are talking of the yellow beak brown near black top ones are we?

This is the culprit Belly

http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200709/r186930_697232.jpg

And the following details the difference between the pest and the Australian Noisy Myna.

http://fennerschool-associated.anu.edu.au/myna

Belly, yes just to confirm: I am talking about the black-headed brown birds with yellow beaks and very cheeky demeanour, as pictured in the link that you provided:

http://fennerschool-associated.anu.edu.au/myna/minimising.html

and Ammonite’s link.

Yes I’ve googled them.

I wonder how many of the councils that are providing traps, and wanting to be thought of as environmentally conscious as a result, are also very actively facilitating rapid human population growth and the consequent large-scale destruction of natural habitat?

Every one of them I would think.

Ammonite thanks, yes I have read tens of pages.
Ludwig, we differ here, once a sporting shooter I gave it up after a companion shot a double barrel at ducks, then left 11 in a dam.
But I did continue to hunt, Ferrel cats only.
These birds mate are invaders, are real trouble, and let me asure you every coastal council, not known to be unkind to animals, kills them.
Hendra virus, not transmitted to humans other than from fruit bat to horses but deadly.
What if?
Here by the way we have enought fruit bats to blacken the sky every night as they take off to feed.
And I will bet in our area these birds out number them with ease.
I think if we look at cane toads, these birds, rabbits, Lantana, cat and dog owners who introduced breeding stock in to our bush to become Ferrel we have room for improvement.
My honey eaters parrots and finches would be welcomed back if I can get rid of the pests.

Belly, unfortunately you are not likely to get rid of these pests.

If you catch a few in a trap and keep doing it on your property, they’ll just keep moving in from the wider area. And they’ll quickly get wise to the traps.

Even if a whole lot of concerned citizens did it, they’d in all probability persist, and in considerable numbers.

Then if by some strange chance you did manage to get rid them, there would still be a host of other feral birds – starlings, sparrows, pigeons, turtle-doves, as well as the natives that have become pestiferous, such as noisy miners, pied currawongs and rainbow lorikeets.

I guess we do differ here, because I feel very strongly that bothering with mynas would be a total waste and misdirection of one’s environmental energies. There are just so many bigger things to worry about.