No to Kiwi koalas

Save the koalas, sign a petition and bring them over here should we?

As a volunteer at the cutting edge of the conservation movement in this country, my job description is to ‘‘preserve the purity of the bush’’. We brought these animals over: possums for fur, rabbits for food, not to mention goats, deer, wallabies and pigs, and hedgehogs simply because they are cute.

In the back country they are all a disaster. And it is my role to kill them.

Given wasps and rats kill, this is perfectly acceptable by all. Given the ‘‘cuter’’ type of animal, then the job of the conservation volunteer becomes a tad controversial, especially as the apex predator is the cat. It will be even more than controversial if we are called out to kill koalas.

We brought over the mustelids (stouts ferrets and weasels) to control the rampant rabbit population. However, they found our flightless birds much easier pickings.

The rabbit population continues to boom and the kiwis can’t survive in the wild without extraordinary amounts of volunteer work. What will limit koala population other than eucalypt density? Dingoes? And what if the koalas decide, having eaten most of the eucalypt forest, that kauri and pohutakawa are better suited to their taste like the mustelids find the kiwis. Another catastrophe so bad that we may have to bomb the place with even more 1080?

Australia is a tough country with tough flora and fauna. Leave it alone. It will survive. Andrew Luddington, Tai Tapu