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When conservation and animal rights collide

10,000 Birds

I’ve written at length about the specific vulnerability of insular faunas and the catastrophic extinctions caused by the arrival of rats, mice, ferrets, cats and possums (amongst others), here in New Zealand fully half the pre-human bird species were lost.

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Acclimatisation Societies of New Zealand

10,000 Birds

They took dogs to Australia, chickens across the Pacific, rabbits to England, horses to the New World, and then brought potatoes back. Brush-tailed Possums were brought from Australia to help start a fur industry. Possums still strip our native forests, ferrets and stoats and possums still devastate our native birds.

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Can Stewart Island become Pest Free?

10,000 Birds

Getting rid of rabbits and goats was something that had been done for many years, but it was generally thought that rats and cats would be impossible to remove from all but the smallest islands. The other obvious solution was to make more predator-free islands. But while obvious this was also a much harder proposition.