A time for polecats

Press, 9 May 1981, Page 16

A time for polecats

Cntintrv Diarv

Derrick Rooney

■ The predators are moving in for the winter. A stoat, or perhaps a weasel, slaughtered a pen of pet guinea pigs just down' the road a fortnight ago; one night last week two ferrets and three stoats crossed my headlights during a short drive; and last week-end, in broad daylight, in a friend’s farmyard, I almost tripped over a stoat and its prey, a blackbird. The stoat dashed under the haybarn, abandoning its catch, but it came back later, because next morning the corpse was gone. Yesterday, again in broad daylight, a stoat cut across our lawn; the last I saw of it was a bushy, black-tipped tail disappearing around the gatepost into the ditch, with my dog, Fritz, in hot and futile pursuit. We have a pile of peastraw stockpiled tinder the walnut tree for garden mulch, and the local hedgehog likes to nest in it. Mice come into it too, in autumn and the stoat had been hunting these. But we don’t expect predators, and nocturnal ones at that, to be so bold. Immediately, and probably unnecessarily, we tightened security in the fowlhouse, plugging with a heavy cast-iron grating the one gap through which a stoat might enter — if it were able to climb a smooth 4ft wall.

There is something about stoats, and their cousins, ferrets and weasels, that brings

out the hatred in people. The very names are synonymous with something sly, something devious, something just a little bit smelly (they aren’t called polecats for nothing). And they may be all these - things. But they have redeeming features. They are intelligent animals, natural hypnotists, agile, superb hunters, willing to tackle an animal several times their size. I know this, because I saw it happen, the very first time I took my dog out with a gun — Fritz’s introduction to hunting was a sharp nip on the nose from a ferret which he, eight months old and probably 15 times its weight, had disturbed in its nest in a pile of dead, dry grass. It was Fritz who ran, not the ferret. Oddly enough, or perhaps not so oddly, it is the Government we can blame for the presence of polecats in New Zealand, because it was the Government that liberated them just under a century ago, under pressure from sheepfarmers who were being overrun by rabbits. ' It was a futile experiment, because the polecats quickly made a nuisance of themselves and had no more than a marginal impact on the rabbit population. It was expensive, too. In 15 months, beginning in March, 1882, the Government brought out 32 shipments of ferrets from London, a total of 1217 animals. Only 178. arrived alive; as the landed

cost was £953, the Government thus paid more than five guineas a head for them — at a time when a twotooth ewe was worth seven shillings and a fat wether 10 shillings. The Government then embarked on a vigorous programme of ferret expansion, offering ’ high prices and bonuses to anyone who could breed them in large numbers. One establishment, owned by two men named Allen and Riggs, at Wairuna Bush, Southland, was described in the “New Zealand Country Journal” in 1885. The men had a contract to deliver 10,000 ferrets a year, at 75.6 d. a head. It must have been a profitable venture. The entire enterprise was housed in a corrugated-iron shed, 70ft long and 12ft wide. They had 160 breeding jills, and 40 hobs; each jill produced several litters in the season, with between seven and 10 young each time, and the young ferrets could be released at the age of three months. The breeding stock lived in segregated groups in a row of small boxes and boarded-in yards; their quarters were cleaned out daily, and they got fresh bedding of tussock, sprinkled with lime to keep it sweet, every day. In the breeding season the hobs were put in separate cages and the jills, seven or eight at a time, were taken to them. What a life for a ferret. Fresh milk every morning, raw rabbit at noon twice a week, and cooked

rabbit with porridge several times every day. The enterprise used all the milk of three cows; it also needed 30 rabbits every day, and kept a pack of dogs to hunt them. How long the business continued is not recorded, but as it was only one of a number of breeding establishments, it is obvious that ferrets were liberated in fairly large numbers throughout the 1880 s. Stoats and weasels were brought out from England in the mid-1880s. Government officials liberated most of the first shipment, in 1885, in the Southern Lakes district. A few stoats were turned out in Ashburton County, and the • remaining survivors from the shipment auctioned off to the highest bidders in Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin. In 1886 a second shipment of stoats and weasels was liberated in Central Otago, the Waitaki Basin, and Wairarapa, which had been selected as the areas in which rabbits were most abundant. The acclimatisation societies protested vehemently against this action of the Government, but as they had been at least partly responsible for the rabbits, their protests were disregarded. So, apparently, were the rabbits. There might have been a peripheral effect on the rabbit population in some districts, but generally the nuisance continued unabated, while a few birds and the native rat disappeared. As the Dunedin naturalist, G. M.

Thomson, wrote, “it is absolutely certain that (a predator) cannot exterminate, but can only keep in check, the animal it is intended to cope with. If it does more, then its own means of livelihood are imperilled, or it has to find other victims.” There is some evidence that the “other victims” are first rats and mice, and second birds and their eggs. But the evidence is inconclusive. Reports have been published of ferrets taking ducks, kiwi, and kakapo, and there is a much-quoted example, attributed to Sir Thomas Mackenzie, of a weasel killing a black swan (I daresay the weasel found this as hard to swallow as I do). Sir Thomas also recorded that he saw, in the Catlins, a weasel bringing down two tuis from a tree. On the -other hand, there are numerous examples of the birds fighting back. One settler described a fight between a weasel and a weka which ended with the weasel stretched out dead of innumerable pecks on the head. And while many people blame the polecats for the destruction of gamebirds, there is clear evidence from the early years of the century that the numbers of birds such as quail increased rapidly in areas where stoats and weasels were common, presumably because the polecats ate the rats before the rats could eat the eggs. Ferrets, . •which are the largest of the trio, have been reported to kill fully-grown poultry, but birds of pigeon size are the limit for stoats. Stoats prefer blackbirds, and they fancy guineapigs and pet rabbits, too,, if they can get at them. Now that rabbit farming is legal we can no doubt expect a reversal of roles, and a vigorous campaign by rabbit farmers for the eradication of stoats. That would be taking it too far, I believe, but I fear there would be no-one taking a stand over stoat’s rights. A pity. No animal that kills rats and blackbirds can be totally bad... .