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''For the Libyan armed group, see: Libya Shield Force'' Western Shield, managed by Western Australia's Department of Environment and Conservation, is a nature conservation program safeguarding Western Australia's animals and protecting them from extinction. The program was set up in 1996 and as of 2009 was the largest and most successful wildlife conservation program ever undertaken in Australia. ==Conservation practices== Between the 1920s and 1950s scientists synthetically developed a poison called sodium fluoroacetate (commonly called 1080 poison) for use in biological warfare. Subsequently, it has been found that sodium fluoroacetate occurs naturally in many plants of the south-west coast of Western Australia and many of the native mammalian herbivore fauna in that region have evolved with a natural tolerance to the poison. The plants in the genus ''Gastrolobium'', are commonly called "poison peas", and farmers often suffer livestock fatalities due to wandering animals that encounter and graze on the deadly plants. During the late 1980s, a conservation program named "Fox Glove", was implemented to control the population of foxes by lacing dried meat baits and sausages with 1080 poison. Fox Glove was very effective in allowing native species' population to increase. This was due to the local eradication of introduced predators, namely foxes and feral cats, although the control of feral cats was much less effective by this means as the cats favor live prey. Poison coated oats and carrots were occasionally used to control herbivorous invasive species, including rabbits and rats. Since 1996 when Western Shield was initiated, a Beechcraft Baron〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Western Shield )〕 flies 55,000 km every three months to drop the 770,000 1080 poison baits. They cover an area greater than half the size of Tasmania as they deliver bait into most national parks, nature reserves and state forests of the south-west of Western Australia. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Western Shield」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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