On a bright Sunday morning, wildlife enthusiasts gathered in Miramar, a picturesque peninsula. They are on a mission of extermination.
OrganizationMiramar without predators wants to protect the birds in this area of Wellington, New Zealand's capital, by ridding them of rats - every last one.
After donning hi-vis jackets, volunteers are given peanut butter - ideal rodent bait - and poison.
Each is given a piece of cloth to check coil spring traps and toxin covered bait boxes.
"Good luck guys," says Dan Koop, who leads the group.
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The GPS application guides Kupa through the bushes to the device on his route.
On each one, it replaces the bait and updates the information in the app.
None show signs of rat visitation.
But as he examines the ground for feces and other clues, his phone vibrates.
One participant posted a picture in the Vocap group: a dead rat in a trap.
This is not welcome news.
"Dave will feel good about catching him, but we're sad there's still rats around," Coop sighs.
Eradication of rats and other predators is a goal not only for Miramar but for all of New Zealand.
The government expects that task to be completed by 2050.
It is a difficult task.
The largest island to remove all rats is South Georgia, a 170-kilometer-long territory in the South Atlantic.
New Zealand conservationists believe that this feat can eventually be achieved in an area larger than Great Britain.
Others point to practical and ethical problems.
At the heart of the project is a unique ecology. New Zealand separated from the ancient supercontinent 85 million years ago, long before the appearance of mammals.
Without terrestrial predators, birds would be able to nest on the ground and would not need to fly.
Furthermore, New Zealand was the last large landmass to be inhabited by humans.
In the 13th century, Polynesians brought mice and Pacific rats.
Six centuries later, Europeans introduced larger mammals that preyed on helpless birds.
Almost a third of native species have been wiped out by human settlement.
Efforts to save others are not new.
In the XNUMXs, conservationists managed to clear rats from small coastal islands.
But the fight against predators did not become a social phenomenon until 2010.
"It swelled up and became a national totem," says James Russell, a biologist at the University of Auckland and leader of the 2050 project.
One factor, Russell says, was the advent of infrared cameras.
In the 20th century, the most visible pests and targets of large-scale culls were large herbivores such as deer and goats.
But since the 2000s, wildlife researchers have been able to show what the small mammals do at night.
Images of rats pouncing on eggs and chicks were widely shared.
"That shot was exciting," says Russell.
An environmentalist at the time calculated that New Zealand was losing 26 million birds a year to predators.
In 2011, the famous physicist Sir Paul Callaghan popularized the dream of a land without predators.
Russell and other young conservationists argued that it could be done, if there was enough investment and mobilization.
Politicians then got involved.
In 2016, the law designated the worst predators for eradication: three species of rats (Pacific, ship and Norway rats), minks (ermines, weasels, skunks) and possums.
The middle of the century was chosen as an inspirational period.
Predator Free 2050, a public body, was established to channel public and private money into local projects to test eradication strategies.
The most ambitious of them is Wellington without predators.
In a city of 200.000 people, it aims to destroy a range of pests, particularly rats that thrive in urban environments.
A team of 36 project members turned amateur rat catchers into real exterminators.
He supplied them with anticoagulant poison, which is much more effective than traps, as well as a GPS application that stores information from each device in real time.
Cameras are installed in focal points.
"If a rat turns up," says Predator Free Wellington director James Wilcox, "my planning team knows where they want to put their resources."
Any rat found dead is sent to the laboratory for necropsy.
This is crucial because anticoagulants, by composition, kill slowly.
Rats are intelligent social animals and learn to avoid things that clearly harm them.
While the poisoned rat dies far from the bait box, predator-free Wellingtons require autopsies to monitor effectiveness.
"We cut them open to see if they were killed by the toxins," explains Wilcox.
"We also have to understand: is it a male, is it a female, has it recently reproduced? Are we chasing one rat or a family of rats?".
Miramar was at the forefront of the city's offensive against the predators.
Rats are now rare on the peninsula and many native birds have returned.
The distinctive call of the thuja, whose numbers in Wellington in 1990 had dwindled to just a few pairs, is ubiquitous.
"It's flying all the time in our garden now," says Paul Hay, a longtime Miramar resident.
"The birdlife has absolutely taken off, especially in the last five years."
The citywide effort benefits from an earlier conservation concept pioneered in Wellington: predator-proof fences.
The first urban eco-sanctuary in the world was opened in 1999, a kilometer and a half from the city center where birds fly.
Now called Zelandija, it is protected by an eight-kilometer fence.
Visitors' bags are checked and they have to pass through a barrier with two doors that resemble an airlock.
Behind such rigorous biosecurity measures, birds that were once rare not only survived, but spread to the surrounding settlements.
There are now dozens of fenced sanctuaries across New Zealand.
One of the largest, Brook, covers almost 700 hectares, three times the size of Zealandia, in Nelson, South Island.
A year after the predator fence was installed in 2016, the area was cleared of pests.
Now the challenge is to make sure no one gets in.
Constant vigilance is essential.
A bird of prey might accidentally drop a rat.
A tree could fall on a fence and allow a weasel to crawl through.
Any damage to the fence will activate the warning system.
"If the alarm goes off in the middle of the night, one of us will come up and have a look," says Nick Robson, Brook's operations manager.
Cameras and ink pads alert staff to any intrusion.
But a predator's best detection tool and worst enemy is man's best friend.
"Dogs are specifically trained to detect certain pests and ignore others," says Robson.
"It may happen that a dog detects a rat while our devices cannot."
Preventing re-invasion is a concern especially for offshore islands.
Rakiura, or Stewart Island, is the largest of these.
It is separated from the mainland by 25 kilometers of water, there are rats, but it has always been without martens.
This relative isolation has allowed rare birds to nest there and conservationists work hard to preserve it.
Gadget the detector dog is a celebrity with her own Facebook page: you can follow her as she checks approaching boats for blind rodents.
Over the past 20 years, the Stewart Island/Rakiura Community and Environment Trust (Sircet) has stopped rats and other pests from destroying a colony of mutton birds, a ground-nesting species that has almost disappeared from the mainland.
"We're holding positions," says Shauna Sangster, president of Sircet, as she inspects the traps in the bush.
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Strong defenses are vital for small nearby islands that are already free of predators.
Rats can swim 800 meters - it's a constant struggle to keep them away from those sanctuaries and the endangered birds they contain.
Government money helped.
Predator-free Rakiura, a project launched under the 2050 scheme, provided expertise, paid staff and handy tools such as self-loading traps.
They crush the skull of any rat that comes near and require minimal maintenance: victims fall to the ground and nature removes them.
Predator-less Rakiura has nowhere near the budget of its Wellington counterpart.
But local conservationists enjoy a level of popular support that other parts of the country can only dream of.
During 2020 and 2021, Sircet says, 261 people have dedicated time to the cause, a huge mobilization rate on an island of 440 people.
Last year, the group handed out traps to school children and awarded prizes for the most rats caught, the biggest rat, the one with the biggest teeth and the one with the most fur.
The youngsters are being raised in a community where predator control is very important, Sangster says.
"What's a little unusual from an outside perspective is part of their everyday life."
Sircet also promotes responsible pet ownership on the island.
The cats - bird killers that are safe from eradication because of their appeal to humans - must be sterilized and microchipped.
Dogs, who tend to mistake kiwis for fluffy toys, can also be dangerous.
As part of Sircet's voluntary training program (for owners, that is), the electronic Kiwi delivers a mild shock to dogs who become too friendly, teaching them to avoid birds in a wide arc.
Holding a position is an achievement.
But what are the chances that Rakiura, an area the size of greater London, will become completely free of predators within 27 years?
Sangster is cautious about this.
"Shoot for the stars: you might land on the moon," she says.
The feasibility of the entire project in 2050 has been the subject of debate among conservationists.
James Lynch, the founder of Zealandia, has reservations based on practicality and profitability.
It supports the ultimate goal of predator removal.
"The problem," Lynch says, "is that we don't have a toolbox for this right now."
Most native birds, he notes, do not need a predator-free environment to thrive.
The few who succeed, he claims, can survive at sea or in urban sanctuaries.
Rather than trying to rid the entire country of pests, Lynch recommends focusing resources on the forest around fenced areas to maximize the survival of birds that do venture outside.
That concept, he says, has worked in Wellington and is the best hope across the country as tools for total eradication are developed.
Others consider the very idea of a predator-free New Zealand fanciful.
Conservation researcher Wayne Linklater points out that over the past 150 years, New Zealand has lost every war it waged against rabbits, deer and other pests.
Campaigns to exterminate intelligent, sentient beings are not only impractical, but also ethically wrong, Linklater adds.
"We matched the enormous resources and passion of the people and applied great cruelty. How could we be so satisfied with suffering?".
The drive to cleanse society of nefarious forces, mass mobilization and slogans remind Linklater of evangelical zeal.
The predator-free movement, he says, "depends on demonizing a species and making enemies of that species so you can kill it."
Besides, who is Homo sapiens, that most invasive of mammalian predators and systematic destroyer of habitats, to declare total war on the creatures he brought with him?
Instead of setting impossible national targets, Linklater recommends allowing communities to set their own biodiversity targets.
Aucklanders might live with a few rats and possums, while Stewart Islanders might prioritize protecting kiwis and mutton birds.
For biologist James Russell, who has done much to provide scientific support for the 2050 project, localized strategies are meaningless.
"It's an unambitious business-as-usual model," he shrugs.
Saving birds in a few places, he continues, is a false economy: it requires constant investment to prevent predators from returning.
Eradication is expensive, but "pay it once, and it's over."
Russell admits that no one knows how to finish the job yet.
Pest control technology has, however, made enormous progress since the 1960s: who knows what continued investment may achieve in the next 27 years?
When it comes to moral objections, there are no hard and fast answers.
It is up to individuals and societies to weigh the complex arguments.
New Zealanders, says Russell, have collectively decided that sacrificing some species to save others is the right thing to do.
It is true that at present opposition to eradication is muted and enthusiasm is high.
Back on the Miramar Peninsula, Dan Coop looks forward to the day when he and his fellow rat catchers will finally be made redundant.
"You have a choice to keep working forever, or to put a huge amount up front to get the last half of a rat and then not have to work again," he says.
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