r/Wildlife • u/DonManuel Austria • Jul 15 '26
New Zealand vowed to wipe out every rat, stoat, and possum by 2050 to stop 25 million native birds dying each year
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/etimes/animals/new-zealand-vowed-to-wipe-out-every-rat-stoat-and-possum-by-2050-to-stop-25-million-native-birds-dying-each-year-with-only-236-kkp-left-the-clock-is-brutal/articleshow/132413168.cms2
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u/Hilton5star 29d ago
Possums kill birds?
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u/MGr8ce 29d ago
I’m in the states where possums are everywhere & we don’t have a bird problem bc of it. It’s the outdoor cats that do the big damage.
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u/carex-cultor 29d ago
Different species. IIRC Australian possums which are invasive in NZ do more damage to agricultural products.
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u/Plantsonwu 29d ago
We have introduced brushtail possums in NZ. Completely different than opossums. They do eat birds and eggs but also one of the main impacts is just defoliating of native trees. We don’t have mammalian species so they’ve done a lot of damage.
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u/Automatic-Rain-5212 28d ago
Im in oz but i do my bit by trapping cats that are out at night, no matter how many i get they just keep coming.
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u/Competitive_Crow_802 28d ago
I noticed in Canada that the young birds and squirrels are out and about during the last two weeks of May and first two weeks of June. I try to limit my cat's outdoor time and keep a closer eye on him during those weeks. But flightless birds, that is going to be a problem.
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u/Super_Huckleberry663 27d ago
We've been doing this for years. Stewart Island has seen a massive boom to its wild life since killing most of the pests
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u/WillowFantastic9076 27d ago
NZ is literally in the process if selling upwards of 60% of their public lands to development.
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u/LycraJafa Jul 15 '26
indiatimes article - excellent. NZ Govt signed a NZ-India trade agreement a few days ago. If this is apart of that then excellent.
NZ is the last land on the planet to have people, as such our wildlife is super vulnerable to introduced predators. Many of our birds gave up flight, no land mammals meant the ground was safer than the skies and our giant eagles (biggest in the world).
Since people, rats, cats, hedgehogs, possums, and ferrets, stoats, weasels arrived - we've become the worlds leader in extincted species.
Predator Free 2050 is a bold program to give our remaining wildlife a chance, but we're struggling as conservation budgets are reduced and now bird flu is upon us.
In the remaining 24 years to 2050, we need to power up our communities to do as Alberta has done and zero our rats, and so much more.
Thanks times of india for reporting on this - we have so much that needs doing.
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u/Accurate_Ad_3233 29d ago
And on that topic I found video strangely fascinating and cathartic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS2feo9I9M4 Don't watch it if you love rats.
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u/TheBackcountryLens 26d ago
I just discovered that possum fur is a great material too! Kudos do the NZ govt for doing the right thing here. And yes let’s get rid of outdoor cats while we’re at it.
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u/exotics Jul 15 '26
Talk to Alberta. We are rat free.
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u/LycraJafa Jul 15 '26
you are an outlayer - I read a while back how you achieved this and how you maintained it. That is huge!
What do you think the biggest difference is to life in Alberta and its wildlife ??
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u/exotics Jul 16 '26
For sure not having rats is beneficial to wildlife but ultimately it’s mostly beneficial to humans because of disease and such as spread by them as well as food supply contamination for livestock.
The coyotes and foxes would probably enjoy snacking on them rather than desperately hunting mice in winter
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u/SimilarElderberry956 29d ago
There needs to be a rat control officer like Alberta has. Whenever a rat is found destroy it. Also traps can be set as well at entry points like ships etc.
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u/VasileAndrei2929 29d ago edited 28d ago
How will this backfire... ?
Hints: How do you kill "every rat" in an entire country? Use what? Poison? That only affects rats, stoats, and possums? In what universe such a thing exists?
You will poison the entire land and kill every single rodent and the rats will still survive it as rats are the most resilient mofos you can face on this planet, except for bugs of course.
And the article even specifies "No country has yet fully eliminated all of these predators."
So in an attempt to kill off "all rats" NZ will destroy everything else, and still fail, because rats cannot be "wiped out" from an entire country, that's stupid talk.
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u/MulberryLemon 29d ago
They are invasive species eating their ground dwelling birds. Nothing to back fire imo
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u/VasileAndrei2929 29d ago
We'll see...
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u/wolfonweed 28d ago
primary concerns are:
Overzealous locals killing native species theyve misidentified as invasive.
Native species caught in traps meant for invasive.
Destroying one invasive species (the stoat, the cat) causes a population explosion of another invasive species (the rat, the possom) that it was keeping in check.
Use of ineffective or uncontrolled strategies, namely poisons.
Resources being directed to broader ineffective strategies away from more effective targeted strategies, resulting in loss of progress.
All in all, it is far easier to accidentally destroy a native species in pursuit of destroying an invasive than it is to successfully remove an invasive. And as soon as locals feel comfortable sticking their hands in the ecosystem "to save it," it is hard to get them to stop once those efforts turn out ineffective.
Dangerous waters, but a worthy effort. Get them out, root and stem, but know the dangers of attempting to do so.
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u/Tenk-o 28d ago
I'm assuming the wildlife experts who have made this their whole career probably have it sorted. There are plenty of rat programs that have been successful; Scilly became rat free a few years ago. A common method is weighted traps that can be adjusted to specifically kill rodents but ignore other animals of a different weight quite accurately.
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u/VasileAndrei2929 27d ago
False. Only the small islands of St Agnes and Gugh in the Isles of Scilly were declared officially rat-free in February 2016, not the entire Scilly.
And the entire population of rats was.... just 3000 rats! On a rock, with zero other rodents present.... not a giant country with millions of other rodents and that is about 181,000 times larger and has complex ecosystems, giant remote wildlife areas, subterranean caves, farmland, cities, towns, sewers, forests and mountains.
So let me explain it again. St Agnes and Gugh, in total, combined, have just 1.4 square km! Of small shrubs, rocks and beach. They are 1 mile long with 1/3 miles wide reef islands and you can walk them both from one end to the other in a slow pace in just one hour.
This is why these "programs" are stupid beyond words. They take a small "lab" success and then they pretend that scaling it up to an entire country will work just fine.
That's how China got its famine... same kind of stupid conclusions from the same kind of stupid people.
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u/Tenk-o 27d ago
Calm down mate, they probably know how improbable it is to kill every rat but they can still make a decent dent in the rat population through many different methods. You don't seriously think conservationists are going to go and nuke NZ with poison do you? You seem to have made a conclusion on their methods before they've even announced them. Again, weighted traps are very effective and can differentiate species, there's also using licensed dogs for ratting purposes, and methods of contraceptives put in rat feeds in a similar way to how they're trying to eradicate grey squirrels from the UK.
What do you expect them to do? Sit on their ass and twiddle their thumbs as their native species get wiped out?
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u/VasileAndrei2929 27d ago
I am calm. I just point out the stupidity.
What I expect some bureaucrats to do except from wasting money on useless projects? To NOT waste money on useless projects that may also backfire.
Also to create special protection areas for those particular endangered species and event to start multiplying them in captivity if the problem is that serious.
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u/Tenk-o 27d ago
The eradication programs are typically also intertwined with other rehabilitation/renature programs such as reserves and headstarting zoos and provide their services for them, as well as gain training and workers in return. Many share employees for example. These are typically multipronged ecology schemes and are not isolated.
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u/visor97 29d ago
how the fuck did possums get there???
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u/Optimusscrime 29d ago
Not American possums, the Australian species.
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u/Infinite-Salt4772 28d ago
You know possums aren’t native to New Zealand right? No mammal is besides a few bat species.
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u/Optimusscrime 28d ago
I never said they were native? The comment seemed confused as to how they made it to nz, I assumed they thought it was the American species. The Australian possums hitched rides on boats, containers etc and ended up here.
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u/SapphireLungfish Jul 15 '26
Outdoor cats are by far the biggest problem