Rabble on Nostr: The country of Aotearoa New Zealand is very geographically isolated. Similar but ...

The country of Aotearoa New Zealand is very geographically isolated. Similar but different from Australia. Here almost every ecological niche that an an animal could occupy has been filled by some kind of bird. But birds that evolved with almost no predators. When the Māori arrived and settled the country about 800 years ago they didn’t introduce that many animals, but they did have to adapt because most crops from more tropical Polynesia don’t grow here. The Māori ended up hunting the giant Moa birds to extinction, but for the most part their impact on the environment was lighter. When the Europeans started showing up about 200 years ago they introduced many more plants, animals, and intensive agricultural. The native birds had evolved in a world without predators. The impact was huge. Australia had evolved in the opposite direction, with intense competition, marsupials taking the dominant spot in the ecology.

Anyway. This is a really round about way of saying that today the biggest problem for the native fauna are rodents and cats. There is an effort to rid the islands of these predators, except for the cute cats, those are allowed to kill billions of birds because they’re friendly and adorable to people. Some of the smaller islands are already predator free. I live on a peninsula at the very end of the north island. They’re working out from here to expand the zone for native birds. Across the street from my house there are traps. I’m writing this because I saw the guy servicing the trap this morning as I was having coffee.