We take a look at how Judas animals are used to help safeguard native biodiversity <\/p>
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A Judas animals are invasive species that, like the infamous apostle, betray their own kind. Their reward, however, is not 30 pieces of silver but the safeguarding of native biodiversity. The procedure is simple: the Judas animal is caught, radio-tagged and released.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> Oblivious to the fact that it is now being followed, it heads off to find a mate, which is then removed. \u201cAlong with habitat loss, invasive species are a major cause of extinction,\u201d says P-A A\u030ahle\u0301n from the Swedish Association for Hunting and Wildlife Management. \u201cJudas animals are playing an increasingly important role in their eradication.\u201d<\/p>\n The technique is being used with particular success in Sweden to tackle raccoon dogs. These East Asian canids became established here (and in Finland and Germany) after being introduced to the former Soviet Union for their fur, and have been chomping their way through the country\u2019s amphibians and ground-nesting birds at such an alarming rate that the government has employed six professional hunters to cull them. But, given that the species is distributed over an area the size of the UK, the task is easier said than done.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Enter the Judas dogs. \u201cThere is no creature more suited to finding a raccoon dog than another raccoon dog,\u201d says P-A. \u201cThey are significantly reducing the population.\u201d<\/p>\n Other Judas animals include goats on the Gala\u0301pagos Islands and Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> Main image: Raccoon dog\u00a0 \u00a9 Ryzhkov Sergey, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div> <\/body><\/html>\n We take a look at how Judas animals are used to help safeguard native biodiversity <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":30900,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"2"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/08\/what-are-judas-animals-scaled.jpg",2560,1858,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/08\/what-are-judas-animals-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/08\/what-are-judas-animals-300x218.jpg",300,218,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/08\/what-are-judas-animals-768x558.jpg",768,558,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/08\/what-are-judas-animals-1024x743.jpg",800,580,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/08\/what-are-judas-animals-1536x1115.jpg",1536,1115,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/08\/what-are-judas-animals-2048x1487.jpg",2048,1487,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"We take a look at how Judas animals are used to help safeguard native biodiversity","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/30899"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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