Who are the predators?

Press, 5 October 1985, Page 20

Who are the predators?

Immigrant Killers: Introduced Predators and the Conservation of Birds in New Zealand by Carolyn King. Oxford University Press, 1985. 224 pp. $27.50 (Reviewed by lan McLean) In spite of the media attention and emotionalism normally associated with conservation issues in New Zealand, there are few serious attempts to analyse the issues from today’s perspective. Should we assign blame for extinctions? What lessons can be learned from past errors? Are stoats the destructive predators we assume them to be? What are the realistic options for the future? These and other questions are faced head-on in this book. Who are the predators? Certainly they are stoats, ferrets, cats, and rats; but they are also goats, deer, pigs, possums, sheep, and especially people. Milling a forest is as certain a way of killing a kokako as is shooting the bird, but only the former is legal. Eating all the growing tips on a rata until it is dead (as do possums) is equally effective. Carolyn King identifies three major invasions in the decimation of New Zealand’s birds. First, the Polynesians who brought rats (kiore), dogs, and a need for farmland. Second, the early invasion of sealers and settlers with land clearing, more rats and cats. Third, the later Europeans, more land clearance, and a host of predators.

Three of the seven chapters are devoted to an analysis of the impact of each of these invasions. The rest give the scenario (“NZ the way she were”), and analyses of present problems and future possibilities. Carolyn King is an ardent conservationist. She gives us three main messages. First, let’s temper emotionalism with reality. It is our environment to live in, enjoy, or destory as we please. Endangered birds deserve, and need, our protection, and we should continue the search for harmonious compromises. Second, let’s look to future possibilities by learning from the past. Breast-beating and blame-laying over earlier mistakes will only further dissension and inaction. Third, and .most controversial, we must learn to live with the predators; so must our native birds. Only in rare instances will predator control be either useful or cost-effective. Our efforts are most usefully directed toward identification, protection, and maintenance of necessary habitats for native species. The last word should go to Carolyn King; “Conservation of nature in its best and widest sense is not a hanging on to the past, but a hanging on to the future,” and “neither criticism nor whitewashing are needed; just an acceptance of what has happened, and a determination to see that none of it happens again.”