Tag: Diet

The dog is in the henhouse: did the kurī (Polynesian dog) have an impact on New Zealand’s wildlife?

The hunter stalks its prey through the forest, following the wafting invisible trail of musky odor straight to the kiwi burrow. Within a few months, the dog has killed over 20 kiwi.

You would think this event occurred recently, given the frequent headlines of dogs killing or attacking our unique wildlife, or the feral dog populations causing trouble in northern Aotearoa New Zealand. Rightly these headlines produce collective anger from kiwis (the people, not the bird, though I imagine the birds would no doubt be pretty pissed off at the current situation).

But travel back in time to when humans arrived in New Zealand over 700 years ago in the late 13th Century and there is a distinct blind spot when it comes to human’s best friend back then, the kurī (Polynesian dog). The prevailing view is that kurī had minimal ecological impact, despite scientists accepting the myriad of other impacts Polynesian, and later European, colonization had on New Zealand from extinctions to the widespread burning of forests, and the introduction of mammalian predators. Continue reading “The dog is in the henhouse: did the kurī (Polynesian dog) have an impact on New Zealand’s wildlife?”

Are deer the new moa revisited: the MythBusters episode

In a rockshelter at the base of a giant two-storey house-sized boulder, Jamie and Janet strike pay dirt. A few centimetres under the floor of this dry overhang are the tell tale signs of a prehistoric megafaunal latrine.

We’re going on a moa hunt: bones and coprolites can be found under giant boulders like this one. Photo courtesy of Jamie Wood.

Jamie Wood and Janet Wilmshurst, from Maanaki Whenua Landcare Research, are deep within an ancient Fangorn-like forest at Daley’s Flat in the upper reaches of the Dart River Valley. Snow-capped mountains, tall enough to make you feel quite insignificant in the geological timescale, surround this U-shaped glacial valley.

The floor of this goblin forest, dominated by red and mountain beech, is carpeted in a thick blanket of moss. Put a foot wrong and you’re likely to fall down a crevasse into the dark unknown. Starting life as an epic rock avalanche brought down by an Alpine Fault rupture at least 1000 years ago (in what turns out to be the only case in the world of using prehistoric bird poo to date an earthquake), the area is now home to some of Aotearoa New Zealand’s precious and picturesque indigenous forest, relatively untouched by humans. It has escaped Polynesian and European burning, climate change, forestry and agriculture. The biggest risk are the pesky deer, which leave distinct browse lines in the forest understory – everything palatable below the line has been eaten out. Continue reading “Are deer the new moa revisited: the MythBusters episode”

Are deer the new moa: Ecosystem re-wilding or a flight of fancy?

It’s the depths of winter and I’m squatting in the snow, surrounded by southern beech forest, using a pair of tweezers to pick up fresh steaming deer poo.

Pooper scooper: Braving the cold in the name of science, these deer droppings are a harbinger of a changing world. Photo courtesy of Jamie Wood.

My wife Maria, and palaeoecologist Jamie Wood, from Landcare Research, are doubled over in laughter, having just given me the official job title of pooper scooper.

We’re helping Jamie collect deer poo as part of a project investigating whether introduced deer fill the same job vacancy as the extinct moa in what remains of our unique ecosystems – an ecological surrogate to re-wild New Zealand.

This long-running and often vitriolic debate has become closely associated with the anti-1080 movement. Hunters have illegally re-introduced deer into national parks and other protected conservation areas, sometimes where they had previously been eradicated. An uproar ensues whenever a potential deer cull is floated by DOC.

So how did this feathers to fur debate start and can the latest Time Lord science help shed some light on it? Continue reading “Are deer the new moa: Ecosystem re-wilding or a flight of fancy?”