Kiwis take front line in global war against invasive species
New Zealanders are deeply connected to their land, and the menagerie of peculiar critters that have evolved on the nation’s hundreds of islands. But in recent years, Kiwis, as residents call themselves, have watched with dismay as their country has become ground zero of Earth’s extinction crisis. With fierce determination, however, they have also become the tip of the spear in fighting it.
Home to one of the highest proportions of threatened species in the world, New Zealand’s wildlife is in a state of crisis. The first global analysis of established alien species, published Monday, ranked New Zealand, along with Hawaii and Indonesia, as one of the globe’s three hotspot regions for invasive species. With nearly a third of the country’s endemic species at risk, including its talismanic kiwi bird, the nation has taken on a seemingly insurmountable challenge: total elimination of three invasive predators from its two main islands by the year 2050. The endeavor has earned the moniker “New Zealand’s Apollo program.”
Non-native predators are some of the biggest threats to New Zealand wildlife. Scientists estimate that invasive stoats, rats, and possums kill 25 million native birds in the country every year. That threat looms large for New Zealanders, who view nature as “almost like our church,” says Nicola Toki, Threatened Species Ambassador for the New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC).
“Our nature is who we are, and we can’t describe ourselves as Kiwis to the rest of the world if we don’t have any left,” she says.
The country is already a world leader in invasive species management, but an eradication on the scale of the Predator-Free New Zealand 2050 (PFNZ) initiative would be unprecedented. The science to achieve it doesn’t exist yet, and it would likely unearth social and logistical challenges that invasive species managers have never seen or even contemplated before.
Yet the potential benefits, for New Zealand and the entire planet, could be immense. The planet is currently experiencing what many scientists believe to be the sixth mass extinction event in the past 500 million years, with about a quarter of all the planet’s known species on track to go extinct by 2050. If PFNZ is successful, experts say, it could unlock new techniques and technologies to prevent tens of thousands of species around the world from being wiped out…
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