Pest control

I find correspondent Carolyn Ravlich’s assertion that, “animals will co-exist, both native and non-native, and survive without the cruel intervention of humans” to be more from cloud cuckoo land. This was a view held by some naturalists back in the 1960s, where pests and native fauna were thought to be able to reach an equilibrium and both groups would continue to live “in harmony” ever after.

Luckily for us in 1964 when Big South Cape, off Rakiura, was overrun with pest rats, three young men, namely Brian Bell, Frank Newcombe (both Wild Life field officers) and Don Merton threw this unfortunate thinking out the window and moved to translocate 36 South Island saddleback to rat-free Big Island and Kaimohu Island. The remaining two bird species and a bat were quickly eliminated by the rats “living in harmony” with our native species.

There are now numerous other examples of timely intervention by humans to save our native fauna and flora, one being the Chatham Island black robin (again involving Don Merton) and another being the remarkable work by DoC officer Colin Bishop and his “saving” of the kaka in the Waitutu Forest. Not only have numbers increased but he and his colleagues have reversed the sex ratio from a dreadful 1:7 to a value approaching 1:1. If given the choice of Carolyn Ravlich’s slug-free backyard and the “cruel intervention of humans” to save our unique floral and faunal heritage, I shall back the latter every time.

Dr W. R. H. Ramsay, Kerikeri.