NZ Predator free by 2050?

No worries. Also... "Lets roll out some feel good factors, especially as it is election year next year. Then expound at great length on how great it will be. I will be over the moon and apologising profusely if it should ever happen." I think this is effectively the National Party latching onto a movement that's been gaining its own momentum for some time now. A decade ago nobody significant was claiming that making the mainland predator free was remotely possible. If you suggested it, you'd be laughed out of the room because the establishment had decided it was a silly concept. In the last few years and with some generational change, the conversation's sharply turned, especially since Paul Callaghan made a big deal of it. People have been positively re-thinking what might be done to he point that loose strategies have been posited and it's even been informally costed. Many of the people likely to care about and support this fall into that party's core middle-class home-owner voting demographic. Without indicating some kind of interest, it risks losing support to an alternative government that will. So yes, it's politics. Chances are the government's been planning to announce this anyway, and you can bet it's been intentionally scheduled to try and divert the press from inconvenient issues like homelessness and housing and steel trade screwups for a short while. I hope this *doesn't* distract from those things, because they're obviously also important. But, one way or another, everything governments do is politics. It's been started now, so let's see where it goes. It'll be interesting to watch what comes out of the predator free movement now that it's been given official support, both by this government and by future governments. For example, if it's actually being done and if there's increasing popular support, it makes it easier for a future Labour/Green government to outright say "we'll just throw money at this and do it properly" instead of messing around looking for sponsorship. The rough costings that have been made to-date put the entire thing at significantly cheaper, over similar time periods, than the new Defence spending that was announced in June, so it's not as if that's entirely unrealistic.

Not so much carpet bombing of the 1080. They can monitor activity at bait stations and then target an active site. These pockets of predator-inactive areas then grow in size, eventually linking. They call it 'virtual fencing'. Yarmoss just mentioned genetics & possum sterlisation :) Then you've got pheromone and more targeted predator lures.

govt arent committing any extra funding to pest control, they are banking on technology that doesnt exist being able to come to the rescue http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1607/S00360/doc-struggles-on-the-pest-front-undermine-nats-promise.htm http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11681535

Would you prefer that money were just thrown at developing technology with no particular stated goal in mind?

whats going to happen until the technology is developed? assuming it does get developed by 2050, its crystal ball gazing, they put such a distant date on it because the technology is so far away from being developed. is the govt going to say , don't worry it will all get sorted in 2050

Of course this one promise will ensure they stay in power until that date. You know the real reason that John Key was supporting Helen Clarks bid for Top UN job. Rumors exist that if she fails she will come back and want her old job back

'Impossible to say' if predator-free 2050 is realistic, experts say http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/82489453/impossible-to-say-if-predatorfree-2050-is-realistic-experts-say

Perhaps they are hoping that technology will be capable of delivering nano bots programmed to target the appropriate species and kill them. Then of course the question is what happens to the nano bots when their targeted species is gone?

They keep looking for eternity just in case there is one left. In the meantime they keep trampling on all the trees accidently

Wayne, really just that setting an aim of doing it by 2050 isn't too far different from existing guess-work that's already out there. If you were a government and wanted to set a goal of reaching a pest free NZ, how would you go about doing so if not by saying that it's first necessary to invest in researching exactly how to do it? If this is to happen then there's no way it'll happen overnight. That's in part because the methods and technology aren't there yet, but also because beyond the short term it's going to require a lot of people to get involved --- even if it's just to the extent of getting traps in back yards. That's a generational shift. There's no reason why the government should expect to stay in power beyond any election because of this. Stuff like funding methods might change radically, but the goal isn't exactly incompatible with a likely alternative government.