The New Zealand government has just announced it wants to make New Zealand predator free by 2050 ( Guardian HERE ), formally adopting a target to eradicate all predators that threaten New Zealand’s native birds.
But like the song’s title – “The Impossible Dream” – it’s an impossible, impractical and idiotic target. To achieve the target the New Zealand government’s agencies will bizarrely buy the ecosystem poison – 1080 – from the government’s own factory and aerially topdress hundreds of thousands of hectares of public wilderness lands with the toxin. Brodifacoum is another ‘eco-system’ poison used.
The words of “The Impossible Dream” describe the futility …
“To dream the impossible dream — No matter how hopeless – without question or pause, to be willing to march, march into hell—-”.
And it will be hell with an ecological sterile New Zealand wilderness left as the legacy for generations of future New Zealanders.
If I was a complete cynic, I would say that the New Zealand’s government sees the adoption of “the impossible dream” as a smart political ploy. It will appeal to New Zealanders who don’t know the outdoors and wilderness, who don’t understand predator-prey relationships and food chains and ecological evolution, but will see it as “visionary” move by government. But there’s a stronger more realistic suspicion that the move by government is motivated mostly by a desperate government’s desire by the government to divert attention from mushrooming issues. Afflicting government is growing public unease over unchecked immigration, a housing crisis and a sagging economy with the country’s books showing a debt said to be $115 billion – a massive one for a country of just 4.7 million, not even the size of greater Sydney or Greater Melbourne.
In selling the concept of a “Predator Free NZ” on television, Minister of Conservation Maggie Barry revealed an appalling lack of understanding that predator-prey relationships are simply nature. Government’s campaign to eradicate all predators that threaten New Zealand’s native birds, ignores reality.
Among New Zealand’s native bird populations, predators are not uncommon. The native falcon is solely a predator preying on smaller birds such as the songster tui. The native owl, (morepork) preys on large insects, small birds, especially native waxeyes, and native insects. The native alpine parrot (kea) have also been recorded eating other bird and mammal species including Huttons Shearwater, both chicks and eggs. The kiwi preys on invertebrates and a favourite is the 178 species rich native worms.
In ridding New Zealand of predators, will government’s ‘impossible dream” include falcon, morepork, kea and kiwi to name just four?
And in applying 1080 to forests and wilderness lands how will government avoid killing falcons or moreporks of keas which seize a distressed dying, toxin-ridden mouse or bird?
The use of 1080 presents another threat to the icon the Kiwi.
The toxin was first developed in the 1920s as an insecticide. It was later found to kill anything that ingests it so it was then branded as a pest poison. But it’s still lethal on invertebrates, be they insects or the 178 worm species which just happens to be the food of kiwi. So in eating toxic worms the kiwi ingests 1080. Even if it doesn’t but with its natural food supply of worms decimated, kiwi populations inevitably crash downwards.
In announcing the “Impossible Dream”, New Zealand’s Prime Minister and Conservation minister Maggie Barry threw figures around with reckless gaiety – 25 million native birds killed by pests a year and a $3.3 billion cost to the economy and primary sector a year due to pests.
Where did she get the 25 million bird figure from? How was it calculated – surely an impossible task? I have no doubt it was plucked from the air, perhaps calculated by a pencil on “the back of a cigarette packet.” That phrase “on the back of a cigarette packet calculation” was how a senior scientist of New Zealand’s Landcare Research agency termed the Department of Conservation’s assessment of New Zealand’s possum population as 70 million.
The Department used the 70 million figure for some 20 years to justify its aerial blitz with 1080 of public lands. Estimates are made to suit policy.
But here’s the bizarre twist. The same Landcare scientist Graham Nugent, said even using the highly-inflated 70 million figure, possums would consume just 15% (one-seventh) of the daily foliage production of New Zealand’s forests.
Yet Conservation Minister Barry declared possums were defoliating forests.
So she was wrong again.
Bureaucrats have labelled the herbivore possums as a predator. YouTube depictions of possums blundering into bed nests have been challenged by some perceptive conservationists as stage-managed.
Maggie Barry said possums were fast breeders. Again totally wrong. Possums generally have just one ‘joey’ a year.
Bureaucrats will go to bizarre lengths to justify wasteful policies. After all their salaried 40-hour-per-week position depends on perpetuating myths.
Those same bureaucrats probably gave their puppet Conservation Minister Barry the words to say.
That other pest – i.e. rats – have been in New Zealand for “just 200 years,” Maggie Barry declared. She was hopelessly misinformed and wrong. The Maori migrants coming from Polynesia to New Zealand about AD 1200-1300 introduced the kiore rat – some 800 years ago. Norwegian ship rats were introduced by European sealers and whalers some 200 years ago.
Whether 800 or 200 years, any predator is absorbed into the ecosystem and develops its relationships. Predators are not bogeys. As one African conservation organisation said “Predators are an important part of a healthy ecosystem. Predators cull vulnerable prey, such as the old, injured, sick, or very young, leaving more food for the survival and prosperity of healthy prey animals. Also, by controlling the size of prey populations, predators help slow down the spread of disease. Predators will catch healthy prey when they can, but catching sick or injured animals helps in natural selection and the establishment of healthier prey populations as the fittest animals are left to survive and reproduce.”
Predator-prey relationships happen the world over. New Zealand is not unique as the Department and shrill “anti-introduced-phobic” green groups can claim.
Rats as predators, were absorbed into the New Zealand ecosystem just as happens anywhere in the world. During my lifetime of exploring, fishing and hunting in wilderness New Zealand, native birds from 1950-90 were never under threat and were indeed abundant. Bush robins would sit on your boots pecking at eyelets, tomtits perched on tree trunks, the alpine clown the keas would fly in to get better acquainted, native falcons would swoop and soar, kiwis called at night around campsites – but now they have largely gone.
The only birds one might hear are nectar feeding tuis and bellbirds.
The disappearance of most bird species, began about 1990 when the newly formed Department of Conservation in existence for three years, embarked on an accelerated, obsessed, maniacal aerial 1080 campaign.
The after effects of 1080 on fast-breeding species like rats is catastrophic. As Landcare Research has shown, within three years of a 1080 drop, surviving rats explode back towards four times their original population size. All 1080 has achieved is to stimulate, within a few short years, a super-plague of rats.
The reaction by politicians and bureaucrats is predictable.
“Ahhhrgr! A rat plague. Quick! 1080!”
So 1080 is scattered and the same looney four-year cycle of mega-poison dumpings is set in motion.
In essence New Zealand’s PM John Key and Conservation Minister Maggie Barry will be stimulating rat plagues, every four years – a crazy, wasteful exercise akin to rat-farming.
The victims will not be the rats in the long-term, but the native birds swamped by successive, man-made plagues of rats and the New Zealand people financing the insane impossible dream of predator-free New Zealand and having their land poisoned.
Reference: The Third Wave by Bill Benfield, (Tross Publishing, NZ)
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