Our first introduction to conservation in NZ was to be a day in the field learning how to trap mammalian predators. After eating a simple breakfast, we packed a bag with water, hot tea, rain jackets, and headed out the door. Our drive took us through the vivid rolling green hills of Raglan, a mix of early successional fern tree forests, and agricultural grazing pasture dotted with sheep and cows. In the background, the aquamarine ocean touched the horizon, ever drawing the eye. As luck would have it, our meeting place was Manu beach, arguably the most famous surfing destination in NZ.
We pulled into the parking lot to meet Jasmine Edgar (aka. the ruthless possum killer). She was to introduce us to on-the-ground conservation in NZ—trapping. We threw some extra rat traps in my bag, and made our way to the first trap. The trap was a four sided wooden box with mesh on each side. One side of the mesh is a small opening that allows mice, stoats, and rats through, and curious birds out. The actual trap inside looks like a giant mouse trap, and works in pretty much the same way. Bait the trap with peanut butter or dehydrated rabbit, spray a little salmon oil in for style, close up the trap, and wait.
The first trap was empty, and I can’t say I was too disappointed. The thought of encountering a large rodent in various stages of decomposition is not a pleasant thought. Yuck!
“Open the Trap NZ app and see if you can find the trap closest to our GPS dot, and click on it,” Jasmine instructed. The app is home to the data for the Karioi project. A quick look revealed hundreds of color coded traplines, most of which snake up Karioi Mounga. Our trap line was along the ocean, aiming to protect the gray faced petrel and other seabirds depending on the shoreline for part of their lifecycle.
“Now click ‘bait bad,’ and mark reset with “dehydrated rabbit’ and ‘salmon oil,’ then hit save.” Jasmine closed up the trap, then we followed the GPS track to the next trap about a hundred meters off.
“Oh! Look what we’ve got here!” said Jasmine. Inside was a big fat, dead rat. Stinky too! Carefully she pried open the trap and grabbed the rat out with her pair of metal tongs.
“When you get an animal in there, be sure to toss it far off so that the next person that checks the trap isn’t kneeling in rotten rodents.” she told us, “Now it’s your turn!” She handed me the equipment and Mo took the phone to do the data recording.
The first decomposing rodent was indeed a little grim, but really not so bad. In fact, it was soon exciting. Almost like a game. Will the next trap have a rodent? If so, what will it be?
“I got into trapping as a volunteer for the Karioi project,” said Jasmine,” and once you start, it's almost addictive, and you can’t stop. So after my kids got a bit older and I had more time I joined the staff to do more trapping, and I love it. I’m learning all about the bush in addition to checking and setting the traps. It’s really a great way to get to know the forest.”
But wait…since when did conservation involve killing?! Before preparing to travel to New Zealand, I had no idea about the ongoing rodent massacre in New Zealand.
As it turns out, New Zealand is an extremely unique country ecologically speaking. Located in the middle of the south pacific ocean, the closest country, Australia, is more than 1700 km (1000 miles) away. Due to this isolation, the entire island was populated only by birds. The only native mammals found in the country pre-human settlement were bats. Because of this, the birds evolved in complete isolation from land-based predators. The only predators were raptors. Many birds evolved away from the ability to fly, finding all their food on the ground, and having no need to escape predation through the air where it was easier to get picked off by a falcon. The defense mechanism for the animals was to freeze. A still object was hard to spot for hunters in the sky. Some of these flightless birds included the kiwi, the kākāpō, Takahe, penguins, and the giant 250 kilos Moa (550 lb) which were hunted by giant eagles.
As expert navigators, the Māori people arrived between 1250 and 1300 CE, from east Polynesia in giant seafaring canoes. With them came stowaway pacific rats, and pet dogs. It is thought that the Māori relied upon the Moa as a food source, eventually causing the extinction of both the Moa and the giant eagles.
Europeans came in the 1840s bringing with them all kinds of mammals including other species of rats, rabbits, possums, goats, deer, and wild boar to mention a few. When the rabbits got out of hand they brought over ferrets, stoats, weasels and cats to kill the rabbits. All of these mammals multiplied, spreading throughout the country. The predators feasted on the easy to catch native species. Settlers began trapping as part of the fur trade, but also in an attempt to combat the mammal plague over taking the country.
Since the arrival of humans 800 years ago, NZ has lost 53 species of birds, many of which were found nowhere else in the world. According to New Zealand’s department of conservation (DOC) 25 million species of native birds are killed by predators each year. Four-thousand species (plants, animals, fungi, ect) are threatened or at risk of extinction. In some places the rats became such a problem that they infested houses, eating all the wallpaper and anything edible in the building.
By the 1900s New Zealanders recognized that they had a serious problem. By the 1950s DOC offered bounty for possum pelts, reducing populations in accessible areas (but not the bush).
In 2004 the Karioi project began as a fledgling community effort to protect the wildlife of Karioi and the surrounding Raglan area. More than a decade later in 2016 the government announced the “2050 predator free goal,” an ambitious goal to rid the country of all mammalian predators.
Trapping rats is one thing, but when it gets to animals we consider as pets, conservation has a whole new meaning.
“What was it like when you found your first cat in a trap?” I asked Jasmine.
“Yeah. It was really tough. I was running a trapline up Karioi and got to this one trap and thought ‘wow that’s a big stoat,’ then I realized it was a feral kitten.” Killing animals is not fun, but it comes to a point where we have to decide if we’re going to do something, or just watch as we lose all our birds. The cats were never meant to live out in the bush, they don’t live good lives, and they don’t belong. When I realized that, I saw it was just part of the dirty work of real conservation.”
Who are we, and how did we find ourselves killing rodents in New Zealand? After graduating with a degree in Agriculture and Natural Resources from a small college in Kentucky U.S.A I won a watson fellowship to study ecotourism for a year. More specifically, my goal was to study the intersection between small scale tourism, wilderness preservation, and community development. Moriah, as my wife, got to join the adventure.
In my research I have found that values are vital to the preservation of wilderness. Those values can protect and build communities and the land in which they live. Without values, places, especially tourism destinations, easily fall into the trap of commodification and desolation (no one cares for the land unless it makes good money). In many ways, I believe that faith is the act of creating and honoring values, of saying “enough,” a very inhuman concept.
While researching possible destinations for my project, I came across NZ’s chapter of A Rocha, a faith-based approach to conservation. I reached out to them to learn more, and was referred to the Karioi project, one of their main conservation efforts in NZ. Raglan, being a prime tourism destination and the organization’s work with the community and conservation made this project a perfect fit.
A few days after trapping with Jasmine we joined the Annual Christmas party at Orca’s restaurant on the bay. We arrived to find a robust crowd of volunteers sharing drinks and catching up. All of them were part of the nearly 100 volunteers that work trapping as part of the Karioi project and mission. We sat down at a table and joined a team of locals for the Karioi pub quiz prepared by staff member Loui (aka “the Milkman” so named for the way he routinely checks traps in people’s yards). There were many laughs and good times that night. Trapping is a tangible action that brings the community together. It’s hard and unglamorous work, but slowly it's making a difference.
One of our highlights was witnessing the banding of Oi chicks (gray faced petrel) with the Karioi team. We all met in the parking lot and made our way down the steep forested trails to a known Oi burrow which is 1-3 meters deep. Oi birds mate for life. It takes them up to 8-10 for them to reach reproductive maturity. This is the only reason they come to the shore, to nest and raise young. They lay one egg in a well established burrows prepared in the previous years. If successful, they will return to the burrow year after year. The parents share the incubation and feeding of the chicks when hatched. The birds are banded to keep track of their movements and population numbers.
Kristel, who is certified in banding, opened the observation hole and reached down into the burrow. After a few tries, carefully she pulled out of the hole a big fuzzy chick! About the size of a small chicken, he squawked and moved around blinking at the light. This was his first time under the sun. Carefully Kristel proceeded to band the chick, and then safely return him to his burrow. One chick successfully was not eaten by mammalian predators! In a few weeks this little guy would be off in the big world, flying the great seas.
Before predator control, the population in Raglan was all but dead. This year the Karioi project marked the 50th Oi (gray faced petrel) successfully fledged from its seaside burrow, proving that their work has made notable impact. What a success!
It was an absolute pleasure to join the team at Karioi. We learned much about the importance of conservation and what it looks like in one representative part of New Zealand. Much of the success of the Karioi project comes from a tangible, albeit tough, shared community goal to keep Raglan the surrounding area wild and beautiful. Karioi is on the cutting edge of preservation, even if it takes time for surrounding businesses to understand the importance of their work. In coming years maybe conservation efforts will find ways to even tap into tourism resources (that are drawn to the area for it’s wild charm) to help run ongoing conservation efforts, for truly, without the birds and native bush, Raglan would cease to be the charm that it is.
If you would like to learn more about A Rocha, the Karioi project, the Watson Fellowship, or my project, please click on the provided links.
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