Australian carrying capacity

From EnvironmentWiki

Once upon a time I was talking with some zero-population-growth advocates, who said (as I recall) that Australia was already near its human carrying capacity. But I remembered reading that Australia has a population of about 100 million sheep. Now granted, sheep are metabolically different from humans in a number of ways, but still, the bare fact that this continent can support that many large mammals in addition to its 20 million humans suggests to me that the human population here could be considerably larger. Even if the substitution ratio is ten to one, that would still mean that an extra 10 million humans could be supported using the resources currently keeping those sheep alive... I would be grateful if some informed person could inject a few actual facts (ecological, physiological) into this line of thought. Mporter 19:59, 26 September 2006 (EST)