THE PRESS FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1978. The Arapawa Island goats

Press, 14 April 1978, Page 12

T HE PRESS FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1978. The Arapawa Island goats

The Marlborough Sounds Maritime Park Board has done its proper duty in deciding to control the goats on Arapawa Island. It has also acted soundly in asking the Forest Service to manage the control programme rather than expect a private group, with perhaps too keen an interest in the survival of the animals, to cull the herds. The board has a clear responsibility to ensure that the coastal forests on the island—among the few in the Cook Strait region—are kept in good condition and allowed to regenerate. To achieve this, the goats must at least be reduced in number. The board’s decision would not have been questioned except that the goats have an interesting biological and historical status. In their own way they appear as deserving of protection as the forests they are damaging. But the board’s efforts to protect the forests will not result in the extermination of the breed The board acknowledges that extermination of the goats would be, physically and financially, very difficult. Provided that pressure is kept on them, the survival of small herds may not be

incompatible with the protection of the island’s indigenous vegetation. Should later studies establish that this is so, it will be a relief to those who believe that the animals should be allowed to remain in a habitat that has been theirs for 200 years and that the survival of a few specimens in wildlife parks, or on farms, would not do the animal justice. But if later studies establish that even in reduced numbers the goats threaten the forests, the board must be prepared to implement a policy of extermination or removal, however determined the opposition and whatever support this opposition may enlist in high political places. Extermination on the island need not rule out gathering a sufficient number of goats and establishing them at some other place where they will be available for study and breeding purposes without threatening a forest which could never be replaced were it destroyed or even seriously modified. A reduction in the herd would certainly improve their habitat and might even improve the physical condition of the surviving animals.