NZ Predator free by 2050?
Original post
And all for just $28M ...
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1607/S00344/predator-free-nz-2050-to-be-a-massive-team-effort.htm
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1607/S00350/predator-free-nz-welcome-will-take-more-than-lip-service.htm
59 comments
@ Gaiters
That's a decent counter-argument.
My response is that humans are going to have to reconsider our entire relationship with the natural world in every possible aspect. Our treatment of wildlife, it's habitat, the oceans, the atmosphere ... everything that life depends on ... has been shameful.
Now is a good moment to point out that a 'predator-free NZ by 2050' goal is meaningless if we also ignore the likely 2 -4 degC temperature rise we are likely to see by then.
We are going to have to stop exploiting the biosphere and start repairing it.
"Think about where you live. Other than tui. What endemic birds grace the property on which you live? It's all introduced birds."
I'm not a strong bird-watcher, but the obvious ones I see frequently are Tui, Kereru, Kaka and now the odd Karearea (NZ Falcon).
Mind you, that's with a fenced sanctuary down the road, an unfenced (council & volunteer supported heavily trapped) sanctuary next door, and a surrounding suburban populace who are enthusiastic with the back-yard trapping.
We get the tuis a few finches yellow heads and waxeyes from time to time but we are in suburbia central with no significant wooded areas withing a kilometer or so so its not just predators keeping the birds away
I seem to have a resident Tui and plenty of his/her mates as visitors, Kereru, Fantails, Finches, Chaffinch, Morepork, Waxeyes, Kingfisher, occasional Lorikeets, Lizards, rescued a baby Hawk from the neighbours earlier this year it couldn't get any lift to take of and was pretty hungry. But then we have plenty of trees, Lemon wood, pittosporums, kahikatea, puriri, tree ferns, rata, titoki, cabbage trees, flax, looking at it it's not bad for a quarter acre.
Unless we start re-planting the forests that have been destroyed there is little hope of arresting climate change, and in the long run that will take care or the predators and we will probably be the first to succumb.
despite modern technological developments so far we havent been able to seriously address the decline of native species, now the govt offer up a pipe dream and want us to applaud it, because for once they are actually putting money into conservation instead of taking it out... but most of the nz economy is focused on profit and not conservation, and that may make it too late to ever really reverse the decline of the nz environment along with the rest of the developed economies.
1 deleted post from
madpom
One of the more helpful summaries I've found so far is in The Economist, though I'm not sure if it adds much. http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21703288-biggest-plan-yet-rid-islands-animals-threatening-local-flora-and
I can't get my head around these efforts about seeding the populations of pests with genetic modifications. Reminds me of the old joke:- "It has been scientifically proved that infertile animals do not pass this defect on to their offspring."
It'd be a helpful thing to have some informed researchers in the room to discuss it.
Izogi's 'Economist' link spelt it out near the end.
One attempt is for females to produce infertile male offspring.
Another attempt is for females to produce male-only offspring.
They're attacks against the dynamics of breeding populations rather than a 'death' gene.
""Another, more speculative idea is to use genetic manipulation to interfere with predators’ reproduction.... Both of these suggestions aim to make the population extinct, one through a lack of females and the other via a lack of fertile males.""
Radio NZ's Our Changing World programme, after 9pm tonight, has compiled a 30 minute expert discussion on the predator free 2050 project.
It's already available online: http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ourchangingworld/audio/201810555/a-conservation-summit-on-predator-free-nz-2050
"It's actually our children and our grandchildren who are going to be making the final decision about novel and new technologies that we don't even know exist yet, and deploying those technologies in the environment. So we actually have an opportunity to start that conversation now that says 'nothing's going to go out there tomorrow or next week, and not even in the next five years....."
Search the forums
| Forum | The campfire |
|---|---|
| Started by | madpom |
| On | 26 July 2016 |
| Replies | 58 |
| Permanent link | |
Participation in the forums signifies acceptance of forum rules.
In order to manage spam, new members are limited to 1 post every 10 minutes.
Formatting your posts
The forums support MarkDown syntax. Following is a quick reference.
| Type this... | To get this... | |
|---|---|---|
| Italic | *Italic text* | *Italic text* |
| Bold | **Bold text** | **Bold text** |
| Quoted text | > Quoted text | > Quoted text |
| Emojis | :smile: :+1: :astonished: :heart: | :smile: :+1: :astonished: :heart: |
| Lists |
- item 1 - item 2 - item 3 |
- item 1 - item 2 - item 3 |
| Links | https://tramper.nz | https://tramper.nz |
| Images |  URL/of/image |
 |
| Mentions | @username | @username |