Bird xenophobia, dog nativism
When I was new to Australia I was struck by the vehemence with which locals differentiated between native and non-native animal species. “That’s a pest!” they would say, frowning at the Indian minah and reserving their affection for the slightly different aboriginal (i.e. also immigrant, but earlier) variety.
I am hapy to report that my homeland Hungary finally got the one-up on Australia. Parliament recently passed a law introducing a dog tax. The law stipulates that autochthonous Hungarian races, such as the vizsla, the puli or the komondor, are exempt. The idea is, of course, to promote the population growth of these natives at the expense of the immigrant varieties.
So these politics of the soil really do work across species, don’t they? Hungary was, after all, the first European country in the 20th century to cap the percentage of Jewish students at universities.
(By the way, I love vizslas, pulis, and komondors.)
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In South Africa it even extends to vegetation, especially Australian vegetation like wattles and blue gums. In our city jacarandas (South American) got a reprieve.
But I must say I would happily take an air gun to the Indian mynahs that have recently uinvaded our city — they drive other birds out.