Mobs of famished emus are wreaking havoc in the Australian Outback, crashing through fences and devouring crops as they flee the country’s worst drought in decades. They have migrated south in their thousands, laying waste to large tracts of agricultural land.The problem is so serious that farmers are calling for a widespread cull of emus, which are a protected species and appear on the national coat of arms alongside the kangaroo. Hungry kangaroos are also invading farming country, but emus are more destructive and compete with livestock for food.”We put grain out for the sheep and the emus leap on it,” said Brendan O’Keeffe, who farms near Walgett, in western New South Wales “They tear into fences and knock them over They run up and hit people riding on motorbikes. They’re just stupid.”John Lush, president of the South Australian Farmers Federation, said: “They stand in the paddock and just chew the crop until there’s none left.”Conservationists who are opposed to any cull say that the emu population has halved in the past 20 years, partly because of land clearing and intensive farming.The drought is exerting a heavy toll on Australia’s wildlife.

Emaciated camels have been found dead in parched desert regions, and feral pigs have attackedlambs.. Tobacco may be seriously damaging to your health but it could also prove a life-saving breath of fresh air for your stock portfolio.Bear market investors are clinging to the whole sector like a rock in a storm, and Britain’s baccy companies are leading this year’s FTSE 100 winners by a comfortable margin. Topping the list with a 38 per cent rise since January is Imperial Tobacco, the £7.5bn group that keeps UK smokers puffing away on Embassy, Regal and John Player Special, as well as most of the rolling-tobacco brands on the market and the papers you put them in.
In March, Imperial’s chief executive Gareth Davis – himself “rarely seen without a fag” – took the company to a new level and into the top flight of the four biggest tobacco groups in the world. With a swift and aggressive €5.2bn (£3.3bn) move, Imperial gobbled up Reemtsma, the German giant that has cornered its domestic market with the West and Davidoff brands.But brute size isn’t everything, and while the market is prepared to give Imperial shares a big vote of confidence, Davis is a man with a lot on his plate.

“The biggest challenge is to take advantage of this merger,” he says. “We are taking the Imperial philosophy into Reemtsma, and believe me, we are not the types to hang around. Integration started on day one.”Davis has certainly built up an impressive portfolio of brands, but the market clearly expects quality profits growth to come from it. A lot of hope is pinned on the group’s ability to con-tinue to snap up market share in the emerging markets of central and eastern Europe, but competition is fiercer than ever.

The main problem identified by the analysts is that those markets are precisely where Imperial’s big rivals – Philip Morris and British American Tobacco – are looking to grow as well. This will be the first time Davis has found himself head-to-head with Philip Morris in a situation where the US giant is wholeheartedly committed to expanding its market share. In response, he is putting his faith in a mixture of merchandising schemes and a huge salesforce.One of Davis’s chief concerns is that cigarette advertising is being squeezed out of existence almost everywhere Imperial turns The challenge is to get smokers to switch to his brands. “The outlook on the advertising front is extremely difficult, no doubt about that,” says Davis “France is a prime example of the problem. We would love to build on the 3.5 per cent market share we have there at the moment, but without advertising it’s going to be very tough.”Davis is also rather less than convinced that banning tobacco advertising actually achieves the desired effect: “I don’t think there’s much evidence of a significant decline in smoking if you ban the advertising, but in ‘dark’ countries like France, you get far less switching between brands.”The worry is that before too long, most markets will effectively be “dark”, and even global marketing efforts will be curtailed.