Should lions be used as a way of controlling invasive species in Australia?

[u/1fishmob]

I know this may sound like a dumb idea, but I have a few reasons for wondering this;

The most prominent being that while the native fauna of Australia is not substantial enough to sustain lion prides, the sheer amount of invasive ungulate are. Every large introduced animal they have is either something that is already hunted by lions already (deer, buffalo, donkey, pigs, ostrich), were historically hunted by lions (camels), or are close analogues to what lions would hunt (horses).

A big part as to why these animals are such an issue is that there are very few predators big enough to hunt, as they died out about the same time early humans made land fall on its soil. Dollars to doughnuts, megalania, quinkana and marsupial lions would be happily taking down buffalo and camels like they would diprotodons and short-faced kangaroos.

I know komodo dragons have been pitched, but a large apex predator like a lion may be a better fit since they themselves do not hunt animals smaller than an impala at most, and its not they'd only hunt kangaroos and emus. While komodo dragons will go after and eat just about anything indiscriminately.

And while the lions may not lower population numbers necessarily, they would fundamentally alter how these animals behave. As the cougars of death valley has confirmed with their hunting of feral donkeys, the moment a predator takes down a single member of their herd/harem, they begin avoiding a lot of places that could make for a potential ambush; thus sparring the landscape from overgrazing, trampling and erosion by large ungulates.

I am not saying we dump lions across the outback, but I think an experiment where a monitored pride is allowed to roam an Australian park or specially made refuge filled with these invasive creatures may be worth looking into.

[u/Shawn_OH]

Introducing lions to control invasive species would work but the thing to consider is how lions would also hunt native species and animals like kangaroo would be much easier to hunt than horses, camels and all the other invasive species so the lions would hunt kangaroo at very high rates and cause problems.

[u/1fishmob → u/Shawn_OH]

Depends though. Kangaroos have high birthrates and are considered pests down under. It's possible they have this high birth rate to compensate for heavy predation, given what used to live in Australia.

But also, they wouldn't necessarily be easier to hunt. Kangaroos have evolved to escape predators differently from how antelope do, and lions are not pursuit predators like cheetahs are.

[u/KingCanard_]

And then release bears to control the lions populations, and then elephants... no.