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Aisha i'm aisha rascoe and you're listening to the sunday story where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story a huge experiment is underway in new zealand the country is trying to save its endangered wildlife animals found nowhere else on the planet but to do that they're killing animals that aren't native and have been taking over it's a nationwide extermination campaign one of the most ambitious in the world and it's raising questions about just how far humans should go to save the natural world lauren sommer from npr's climate desk went to new zealand and joins us now hi lauren hey there.
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Okay so yes i went to new zealand and i want to introduce you to some of the people doing this work if you come down here we.
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Can actually show you the small stream.
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That runs through here so that's mila mackenzie and i met her in a neighborhood park in dunedin new zealand and that's where her student group volunteers and they've done a lot you know they clean up litter they put in new plants i think this year we've put about one to two hundred trees that's finn hibbert he's another student in the group and it's called town belt kaitiaki it's lucky almost all of the kids.
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Love weeding i find that hard to believe cause i can't stand weeding but that's great that they're doing this and they're like taking care of the environment.
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That'S nice yeah exactly but they're also doing something that most kids don't do these are traps basically yes we call these trapping stations so they're trapping and killing animals that aren't supposed to be in new zealand so we have a possum trap so the white ones that are up on the trees and then we have down here like our rat and mice traps they're the small like tunnel ones so mackenzie and hibbert are doing this as part of a nationwide goal and it's big it's to completely eradicate many invasive species species so these are animals that were brought to new zealand by humans some were brought by accident like rats while others were actually introduced on purpose and these invasive species have been devastating for native wildlife especially birds more than sixty bird species have gone extinct and most of those that are left are threatened so conservation experts say saving those species means getting rid of invasive species and that's what these students are helping with though it is.
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A bit gross sometimes just thinking about it's a bit gross it's actually quite an ethical thing because it's easier if you kill off something that's causing a.
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Problem then instead of letting them kill.
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Off everything else so are these like volunteers or is this like something the government is running yeah it's really kind.
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Of this nationwide thing i mean the government is funding it the government is doing a lot of the work but everyday people are also volunteering they're chipping in and the whole effort is called predator free twenty fifty because the goal is to do it by twenty fifty.
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How many animals are we talking about here in terms of what would be.
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Eradicated so no one knows exactly but it's a lot i mean there are estimates that it's in the tens of.
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Millions probably more that is a very high body count yeah and i think.
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The question that everyone's asking is is it even possible there are just huge challenges here technical challenges ethical challenges and this is the most ambitious invasive species removal in the world so what new zealand figures out will have a huge influence on other places that are trying to save their endangered species so today.
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On the sunday story what it could take to save some of the planet's rarest animals stay with us support comes from our twenty twenty five lead sponsor.
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Is the sunday story i'm aisha rascoe joined today by npr correspondent lauren sommer so lauren you went to new zealand you seem to get the best gigs but i can't say i know a lot about new zealand's wildlife it does kind of make me think of this bird that you see in children's books sometimes it's the kiwi right yeah yeah.
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The kiwi it's the most famous bird in new zealand it's kind of this national symbol new zealanders are actually known as kiwis that's their nickname you've seen it right let me send you a picture real quick hold on oh my goodness they're really round they have this really long beak it is a unique looking bird like very dorky cute and as you might imagine in new zealand there are people that are huge fans and i met one of them it's really unusual and it's got a lot of attitude and it's like once you see them you just love them so that's claire travers she works for the whakatanee kiwi trust which is a group that helps to save kiwi and she says even though they're super famous birds a lot of people in new zealand have never actually seen a kiwi one because they only come out at nighttime but also because they're disappearing oh wow.
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So this is a national bird that's at risk of becoming just a symbol.
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Yeah exactly that's what people are worried about but you know travers is one person who does know how to find these birds what we're going to do now is go out and locate a young chick so we went looking for a five week old chick but they had just released into the wild and you know it was daytime so that's when kiwi are in their underground burrows but this chick had a radio transmitter so the team was kind of scanning for that signal which helps them figure out where it is oh look it's getting stronger there now seventy oh seventy one so we were in a jungle in whakatane new zealand and it was incredibly dense it was just giant ferns huge trees it was not easy to walk through and find this kiwi okay here we go.
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So that's the the sound of the microphone like bumping into a bunch of stuff yeah i was.
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Doing my best to keep up along the way we did see these kind of signs of kiwi so you can see these holes here that's coutura bouchard and she volunteers with the kiwi project she was pointing to a bunch of these like little holes in the dirt they were kind of like puncture holes so they'll stick their beak in and they kind of sometimes swirl it around a little it's kind of how they find worms and bugs to eat and so we searched all morning and then we finally zeroed in on the chick i got her it was a north island brown kiwi it was just like this tiny little fluff ball with a long beak we're checking her eyes and ears so they did a health check on her and they found that she had lost a little weight you want.
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Them a bit stroppy you want them.
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A bit feisty that was a good sign yeah but you see how small she is she's living in here all on her own just doing her thing young kiwi are really vulnerable only about five percent of them survive there and that's mostly because of one predator stoats.
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Okay so what is a stoat they're.
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Related to ferrets and weasels and they're only about a foot long but they're basically the terminator i mean here's how people all over new zealand describe them.
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To me they are very smart very.
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Very smart i mean a stoat will take on a predator that's much much bigger than it is they they run really fast they can climb trees they can swim incredible predators apex predators they're sort of pound for pound one of.
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The most amazing carnivores on earth they're extremely sneaky they're absolutely amazing killing machines.
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Oh my goodness i mean i'm looking at a picture of them they look so cute they're killing machines the description of them is incredible i mean it does sound like something out of a horror movie but they look so cute so looks can be deceiving oh absolutely.
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Yes if you're a bird in new zealand this is your nightmare and stoats were brought by european settlers because they had actually brought in rabbits for hunting but the rabbit population got out of control so then they brought in stoats to control the rabbits and then the stoats started eating new zealand's birds okay.
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So they thought they were solving one problem but they created a much bigger.
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Bigger one oh yeah yeah and it's kind of a standard story with so many invasive species around the planet because new zealand birds did not evolve with predators like this the country had no native mammals aside from bats so the only thing the birds had to worry about were predators like eagles and raptors things that kind of hunt from the sky so new zealand's birds they use camouflage to hide or they would kind of just freeze when they were threatened so that they weren't seen from above but obviously that doesn't really work when the predator is a mammal on the ground right next to you because when.
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You freeze it's like when you fall in a horror movie then they can really get you now you are the.
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Perfect prey and add to that birds like kiwi can't fly so they really can't get away claire travers told me that stoats sniff out the kiwi burrows and then they just pick off the chicks right when they leave the nest so you find a leg with a little transmitter attached where a stoater's dragged it and eaten the rest of it and you just think all that work put into that bird just to be like that that's the heartbreak for me.
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Well that is tough clearly the kiwi.
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They need some help yeah and that's where the trapping comes in so tom's got a doc two hundred here that's the trap mechanism that's gay pays she's the predator control coordinator for the whakatane kiwi trust she showed me one of their traps which is designed to catch stoats it's kind of this wire mesh box on the ground and then the trap part is at the back it's a metal plate which when it's depressed goes off and the heavy bar comes down and crushes and kills the animal instantly so pace told me that the traps have gone through animal welfare testing to make sure they're as humane as possible and they've set hundreds of these traps to try to catch stoats each stoat is a little victory it's a huge victory really because they are such hard animals to capture i mean it's easy to when you start but when you get to this stage in our project we've been going for like over twenty years you're really down to the.
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Hardcore i mean what's a hardcore stoat because i thought that stoats were you know pretty hardcore at this point yeah.
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Yeah so the hardcore stoads are the ones that have learned to avoid traps they don't go in them and they teach their young to avoid the traps too so obviously that makes it really hard for them to catch and it kind of makes this a battle but travers told me it's one she can't walk away from if we weren't doing what we were doing as a nation for kiwi you know within the next two generations that have they'd be gone and you know it's not just kiwi in trouble around four thousand native species overall are threatened in new zealand so that's where this national goal is coming from it's to get rid of stoats right but it's other species too so weasels ferrets and three species of rats yeah it's bold and ambitious but i believe that that's what we need to do in the world so that's brent bevin he manages the predator free twenty fifty program at new zealand's department of conservation if we don't take action we are killing our native wildlife by omission choosing not to take an action is an action so either way something's going to die based on the decisions we.
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Make well i mean it seems like this is a big ethical question right like there's the animal rights aspect of it because there are people who would argue that killing any living creature is wrong and is it ethical to kill one species of animal to save another species of animal that could go extinct.
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Right that's a really big question here and i talked to someone who looked into this debate in new zealand emily park studies the ethics of conservation at the university of auckland and she said the idea of killing invasive species hasn't been a big sticking point in new zealand the ethical questions that arise are really less about is it okay to do this and more about what values should we be upholding as we do it even if we all agree with the aim of a predator free in new zealand we might disagree about ways of achieving that aim so for instance animal rights groups like new zealand's spca say they want to see the development of non lethal methods of control but they do recognize there's a need to control invasive species and overall the new zealand public is largely supportive according to polling native wildlife is also really important culturally to the indigenous communities there many of the maori tribes a lot of people i spoke to just said you know humans cause this problem so it's our job to fix it and as emily park told me that public support is crucial for a goal like this predator free new zealand is as much a social challenge as it is a biological challenge this isn't just about coming up with the right technologies and methods it's about a lot of social change she says it's kind of about reframing our cultural ideas of these kind of cute fuzzy mammals and it means getting rid of stuff that's living in people's backyards so there really has to be.
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Public buy in so that's the debate around like should this be done but what about the question of like can they do this like is there any other way to save new zealand's wildlife without trying to do this countrywide eradication.
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There are a few other strategies yeah and i actually went to see one of them you know the movie jurassic park where there's just those like huge fences and gates the ones that like.
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Keep the dinosaurs inside and a lot of them are like electrified so they can't get out yeah exactly that is.
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Basically what i went to see after.
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The break we find out what's behind the fence stay with us support for.
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This podcast and the following message come from betterment start investing in a better future whether it's saving for today or building wealth for tomorrow betterment helps people and small businesses put their money to work by automating to make savings simpler optimizing to make investing smarter and building innovative technology backed by financial experts so be invested in yourself be invested in your business be invested in better with betterment at betterment dot com investing involves risk performance not guaranteed this message comes from npr sponsor one password protect your digital life with one password if you're tired of family members constantly texting you for the passwords to streaming services one password lets you securely share or remove access to logins access from any device anytime one password lets you securely switch between iphone android mac and pc with convenient features like autofill for quick sign ins right now get a free two week trial for you and your family at one password com npr we're back.
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With npr's lauren sommer who's taking us to visit some very rare animals in.
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New zealand and yes and it is a high security situation so this is the fence we're at the pedestrian gate.
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The ped gate this is the only.
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Way in and out for pedestrians visiting so madison kelly took me to see a six foot tall fortified metal fence she works at the orokanui ecosanctuary outside of dunedin and she says everyone thinks of jurassic park yes yes that's the very first thing my dad said when i took him here so this fence isn't actually designed to keep things in it keeps things out like stoats and.
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Rats because we know the fences in jurassic park don't work so well at.
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Keeping things in yeah exactly so like the top of it is kind of flared outward it curves outward so nothing can climb over it there is an electric wire on top which triggers an alarm there's twenty four seven monitoring and there's even a code to get in and that changes every day but you know inside native birds are able to thrive it's hard to talk you know if you hear first thing in the.
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Morning the dawn chorus immense.
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You know all around us there are these black and blue birds called tui oh i.
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Mean it sounds like you could get some sort of like dance song out of that i mean it has a kind of a techno vibe yeah exactly.
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There was also a pigeon the size of a chicken that's the kidiru that one that just flew past yeah that was enormous yep so they are huge.
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Okay so i just looked up this this and it is a giant pigeon which i don't know that i would like to see that on a park bench but for bird watchers they would probably like that right yeah yeah that.
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Was the thing about it so many of these birds are so unique and for kelly she said this eco sanctuary is really special to her because of her indigenous maori heritage you know urokanui is obviously a biodiversity project but it's also a community project it's also a place where some of our stories our forests our species our taoka so our treasures can be active here in a way where that storytelling and that knowledge keeping is still stored in the forest might be lost elsewhere but you know protecting these birds it takes constant vigilance i mean we kind of talked about how those fences in jurassic park don't always work right and after a big snowstorm one year stoats were somehow able to get over the fence it was when this very rare bird the south island saddleback was also living in the sanctuary they basically were picked off one by one by those stoats it took months and months and months to actually.
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Track down those stoats well i could see why stoats would want to get in i mean this is basically like.
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A feast for them yeah right and so it just takes a ton of work to make sure that doesn't happen all that work the constant checking you know building these fences in the first place all of that means ecosanctuaries aren't cheap they cost millions of dollars but some people think they are a better value i talked to john innes who studies conservation at the new zealand institute for bioeconomy science which is a national research lab he says he'd rather see the focus on these ecosanctuaries instead of the nationwide eradication i think the idea has been unhelpful predator free by twenty fifty just to be clear i think of course the vision is wonderful who.
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Could who could disagree with that of.
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Course it's good but we have ended.
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Up spending tens of millions of dollars now for several years and people are.
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Not building things that we know work.
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What would be the total cost for fully eradicating the invasive species across new zealand has anyone put a price tag.
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On that there's really just estimates i mean right now new zealand already spends millions of dollars on this but fully getting rid of invasive species it's estimated to be more than one hundred million dollars per year and that's conservative it's probably a lot more that's a lot of money yeah you know so far they have succeeded at eradicating invasive species on some small islands right off the coast but as you can imagine it just takes a huge amount of work and labor and people time to trap and get rid of animals across a country that's you know one hundred thousand.
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Square miles what do you the people you talk to do they think new zealand will be able to reach this.
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Goal well one thing to point out it's not all or nothing so even just reducing the numbers of these invasive predators can be a big help for many of the birds there but most experts told me right now it's just really unlikely that new zealand can do this full eradication to make that goal even remotely feasible there needs to be new technology that makes controlling invasive species just much more efficient and there are people working on it what are some.
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Of those new technologies that they're working.
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On so one example is traps that use artificial intelligence so they have cameras that can see what kind of animal is going inside and then the trap only goes off if it's the right animal those traps also reset themselves to go off again so it doesn't require a person to do that and there are more cutting edge ideas that new zealand is also researching and one is to use genetic research to target animals so that could mean creating poisons that only work on one animal or there are these ideas to genetically modify invasive species in a way that interferes with how they reproduce so it's like you change their genes in a way that means they only have male offspring and then if there's only males over time that population slowly dies out well i.
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Mean genetic modification definitely would come with a lot of concerns and you know going back to jurassic park they say nature finds a way are there risks.
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To doing that strategy yes and you know this is very early it's still in development everyone i spoke to there said there needs to be a really big scientific debate a public debate about these risks but it's definitely a sign of how new zealand is kind of on the forefront of all this and thinking about how conservation could change as the technology technology gets better you know.
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I'M curious after talking to all these people going to all these different places did you come away with a sense of hope for these endangered species or is there a sense that this is too far gone and that you know it won't be able to be undone.
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The biodiversity crisis you know it's not getting better things like climate change are making this even worse and it's to see taking a lot more for humans to stop that slide and that's kind of the big questions in new zealand that everyone in the world is facing right like how far should we go how much should we do and the hard part for all of this is just there's this shrinking amount of time to figure it out so you know i think that was the main sense i got away from the whole thing which is even if they don't think they can get there the important thing.
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Is to try well that that certainly is something to be thinking about and grappling with lauren thank you for this.
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Reporting yeah thanks for having me.
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This episode was produced by justine yan and edited by jenny schmidt the reporting for this episode was brought to us by npr's climate desk neela banerjee was the editor mastering by kwesi lee special thanks to producer ryan kelman the sunday story team includes andrew mambo and our senior supervising producer lianna simstrom thomas coltrane is our intern irene noguchi is our executive producer i'm ayesha roscoe up first is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week until then have a great rest of your weekend.
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