Native bird numbers double during 20-year Department of Conservation pest control study – NZ Herald

Marks Flat

Since this was published in lots of local papers a few months back, now seems a good time to republish, given that since then we’ve seen new heights of unimagined hysteria regarding  how DOC and the Govt. continue to use 1080 successfully in vast areas of our landscape, that we can’t access easily, and even if we could the cost effectiveness of trapping would not be sustainable.

That cost effective mind set relies on people power too, paid or otherwise. And here is the thing: even if we could deploy millions of traps, there’d not be enough people to service them, even if every man, woman and child in NZ got on the job.

Here are a couple of older photos of mine of the Landsborough area. It’s big! The river valley runs all the way from Mt Cook National Park to Haast, parallel to the main divide, with the additional Hooker Range to the west.

The cliffs in the photo below were called “The Kea Cliffs” by old time mountaineer explorers who thought the birds nested in such places. Sadly this is not true – they nest on the ground and are easy prey for stoats, rats and cats.

20-year DoC project in South Island valley shows value of pest control. A 20-year effort at the Department of Conservation’s longest-studied area for pest control has led to native bird numbers doubling – an encouraging sign for New Zealand’s bold predator-free 2050 mission. A programme in South Westland’s Landsborough valley is DoC’s longest study charting the response of birds to pest control, giving conservation scientists insights into what approaches work in beating back predators. Predator control b

Source: Native bird numbers double during 20-year Department of Conservation pest control study – NZ Herald