Arapawa goats face death

Press, 25 February 1977, Page 3

Arapawa goats face death

The feral goats of Arapawa Island, in the Marlborough Sounds, which are possibly the only goats of their kind in the world, will be exterminated by the Forest Service.

A two-man service team from Blenheim visited the island last week and pronounced the death sentence on them, said Mrs W. M. Rowe, the wife of a farmer on Arapawa. Although the sheep and pigs were to be left alone in the meantime, the shooting of the goats would begin at some time in the future, she was told.

The team had said, however, that because of the rugged nature of the terrain they might be able to

kill 75 per cent of the goats. They could give no guarantee that if lactating nannies were shot they could also find the kids and kill those, Mrs Rowe said.

Mr M. Willis, the director of the Willowbank Wildlife Reserve in Christchurch, said: “I am furious about the whole thing. There is now good reason to believe that this is the only pure stock of its kind left. From what I have heard from goat breeders in Canterbury, after the article in ‘The Press’ of February 10, these may well be Old English goats. “In England, breeders are trying to breed back to them, because there are no pure ones left.” It is believed that the goats on Arapawa are the

direct descendants of stock left there by Captain Cook, in 1777. Miss 1. Ramsay, of Sefton, a breeder of the British Alpine goat, said yesterday that the Old English breed was one of the breeds used in the development of the British Alpine. She is a member of the British Goat Society, which had in the latest issue of its monthly magazine a full description of the Old English, which fitted exactly the goats of Arapawa. “The description came from a book published in 1897, called ‘The Book of the Goat,’ by Holmes Pegler, and was used in reply to a letter from a breeder in England, who is trying to breed back to the Old English,” Miss Ramsay said.

“If the sheep and pigs are to be left, why not leave the goats?” she said. It was wrong to say that goats caused more damage to the ecology of an area than sheep. The head of environmental forestry with the Forest Service in Wellington (Mr K. H. Miers) said an investigation of the goats on Arapawa Island had been made after requests, from all but one of the landholders there, to have them exterminated. The Marlborough Sounds Maritime J|ark Board certainly wanted them killed. “It is not our concern that these goats may be 100 years old or whatever,” said Mr Miers. “Without them, there will be better farming and the quality of

the parkland will be improved. We are not sure when the extermination programme will begin, and it will depend entirely on our budget.” The budget for the island had not been completed, and Mr Miers said it might be next summer, or even next winter, before the shooting began.

Miss Ramsay said that although goat breeders in New Zealand could not import stock from Britain, they could export it there. She is so concerned about the possible loss of this breed to the world that she has sent a telegram to the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) asking him to intervene.