Fight for the Wild | 1: Loss | RNZ

Summary

"Fight for the Wild | 1: Loss" by RNZ highlights the critical state of New Zealand's biodiversity. New Zealand is home to unique species found nowhere else in the world, but the introduction of mammals has disrupted its ecosystem. The documentary underscores the urgent need for bold conservation efforts to prevent species extinction. It also stresses the importance of maintaining cultural ties to nature through indigenous Maori knowledge. The program elaborates potential solutions like pest control and strives to make New Zealand predator-free by 2050, drawing parallels to ambitious projects like the Apollo mission.

Highlights

• New Zealand's wildlife is unlike any other due to its isolation. Biodiversity rocks! 🎸
• Early Maori and Polynesians, followed by Europeans, unknowingly disrupted delicate ecosystems. Lesson learned! 🌱
• Kiwi chicks face a threat from stoats and possums, deepening the environmental crisis. Save the Kiwis! 🥝
• Conservationists battle against introduced predators to preserve what remains. Heroes in action! 🦸
• The Predator-Free 2050 initiative aims to restore nature, mirroring the ambition of the Apollo Project. We have a goal! 🎯

Key Takeaways

• New Zealand's biodiversity is unique and unparalleled globally. Embrace the wild! 🌿
• The accidental introduction of mammals led to biodiversity loss. An evolutionary experiment gone wrong! 🐭
• Predator-Free 2050: A 'mission impossible' to save iconic species. Audacity is key! 🚀
• The Maori worldview emphasizes a deep interconnection with nature. Land is heritage. 🌏
• Conservation requires bold measures and unity. The future is in our hands! 🤝

Overview

"Fight for the Wild | 1: Loss" paints a vivid picture of New Zealand's past and present biodiversity challenges. The documentary opens by celebrating the country's rich natural heritage, marked by species like the Kiwi and Tui, which hold cultural significance as 'taonga' (treasures). However, as humans and introduced mammals made their way to these isolated islands, the unprotected ecosystems faced grave disruption, spiraling into a biodiversity crisis.

Much of the episode reflects on the unintended ecological impacts of the mammals introduced over centuries. In an engaging narrative, the documentary explores historical decisions leading to native species' decline, illustrating this with vivid examples like the endangered Kiwi, whose chicks fall prey to stoats. Conservationists in New Zealand labor tirelessly to protect remaining species, but face uphill battles against fierce predators.

Amidst detailing the grim realities of biodiversity loss, the documentary also offers hope and inspiration. It presents the country's bold plan to become predator-free by 2050, an ambitious and pioneering mission likened to the Apollo space project. The episode underscores the necessity of integrating Maori perspectives on nature and humanity's role as custodians, urging immediate action to preserve this vital part of global natural heritage.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 30:00: New Zealand's Unique Biodiversity and the Threat of Extinction New Zealand's biodiversity is both unique and unparalleled globally. It includes iconic species like the Kiwi, providing a deep cultural connection for New Zealanders, who express this through symbols such as naming their music awards 'Tui' after the bird. The concept of 'taonga species' reflects the country's view of these native species as valuable heritage items.
• 30:00 - 60:00: Extinct Species and Conservation Efforts The chapter explores the unique evolutionary experiment that took place in New Zealand, a region originally devoid of mammals. This absence allowed unique species to develop. However, the arrival of mammals dramatically altered the ecosystem, leading to widespread destruction and extinction of native species.
• 60:00 - 90:00: The Importance of Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Connection The chapter begins with a discussion on the critical state of native bird species, specifically focusing on a species named Logan, which is on the brink of extinction. The narrative emphasizes the urgency for decisive and bold actions to prevent the disappearance of these species. It raises an important question about whether society will choose to passively observe these species vanish or take active measures to ensure their preservation.
• 90:00 - 118:00: Hope for the Future: Predator-Free Goal by 2050 The chapter titled 'Hope for the Future: Predator-Free Goal by 2050' discusses the ambition and plans for creating a predator-free environment by the year 2050. It likely delves into the importance of this goal for preserving native species, enhancing biodiversity, and addressing ecological concerns. Strategies, challenges, and potential solutions for achieving this aim may be explored. While the transcript provided is brief, indicating it simply as 'Great,' it suggests a positive outlook or a successful component related to this goal.

Fight for the Wild | 1: Loss | RNZ Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 What actually defines New Zealand is this amazing biodiversity that is found nowhere else in the world. I don't think many New Zealanders would need to put into words the sense of a Kiwi as an icon. When you hear a Tui with its two voice boxes singing in your backyard, you get why our Music Awards called the Tui. We call them taonga species because it's a heritage item.
• 00:30 - 01:00 It's something that you pass forward. What happened in New Zealand was an evolutionary experiment that happened nowhere else in the world. The incredible thing about New Zealand was it didn't have mammals. And then overnight the rules changed. And the slaughter began. Waves of animals crept down the country and there was this trail of destruction.
• 01:00 - 01:30 This is a bird Logan, who's here in pieces. Our native species are moving closer to that brink of extinction. We need to make some really big, bold decisions. Are we going to watch this species disappear or are we going to save them?
• 01:30 - 02:00 Great.
• 02:00 - 02:30 This is very odd.
• 02:30 - 03:00 So I just saw a Kiwi in there that's actually a different parent
• 03:00 - 03:30 from this chick that we're tracking. There's a chick under there. I think that this is a different pair breeding a chick that isn't theirs, which I was not expecting. Hey, Cas, I've got a real weird situation here. I've got a hole with Long John Silver and Filibuster's chick in here.
• 03:30 - 04:00 I just want to double check that it's definitely Channel 84 I'm supposed to be following. Yes. Copy that. Correct. Well, that's something that I didn't know happened. OK, so this chick is probably
• 04:00 - 04:30 about five weeks old. Looks like he's got himself a surrogate parent. It is bizarre. I think that their chick has been killed. And this one's wandered into their territory and they found each other, which is pretty cute, really. Now, I'll get the rubbish off his transmitter. OK, I'm just going to pop this back under the pack.
• 04:30 - 05:00 Prehistoric New Zealand was a land unlike anywhere else
• 05:00 - 05:30 in the world. A set of islands which drifted alone in the Pacific, but at the same time it was building this complex ecosystem. We had rich forests full of giant trees festooned with fruits and seeds and flowers.
• 05:30 - 06:00 There was a real tapestry of ecosystems, too, so we had mountaintops, we had lakes and wetlands and shorelines. We've got this huge diversity through temperate landscapes and so many different landscapes in this one little strip of islands, and we had this amazing evolutionary experiment going on here.
• 06:00 - 06:30 We had reptiles, we had Tuatara stalking the forest floor, we had Giant Weta. The only word that I can think of that describes the way New Zealand was. It was absolutely extraordinary.
• 06:30 - 07:00 Because we're an island, we had no land, mammals. Animals that could get here who were already on this island when it broke away 80 million years ago, those animals were isolated from that time. The only enemies really were birds, big
• 07:00 - 07:30 predatory birds. Most of the predators were avian predators. They were your Laughing Owls, Falcons, Harriers, Haast Eagle. We had a Goshawk. So we had a range of aerial predators and they mostly hunt by sight. So getting in a hole was a really good idea. And hole with a small entrance was an even better idea because you predator couldn't get in. You could actually say that for many birds in New Zealand, flying was
• 07:30 - 08:00 a disadvantage. So in a bizarre sort of twist, most New Zealand birds, they were better off to be down on the ground. Even better if you came out at night when the eagles and the hawks were sleeping. Better, if you were drab coloured and you didn't move fast so that you didn't attract the attention. Better if you had camouflage plumage or very drab plumage.
• 08:00 - 08:30 So for 80 million years, the rules in this country were the dangerous critters that you kept away from were birds. And then less than 2000 years ago, humans started turning up.
• 08:30 - 09:00 Polynesian travellers. They finally made it across the Pacific and arrived on the shores of this incredibly ancient island. And overnight, the rules changed. When those first Polynesian voyages arrived in New Zealand, they brought things with them that they thought they might need, so they brought with them Kuri their dog for companionship. They brought with them Kiore the Pacific Rat.
• 09:00 - 09:30 They wandered off into the forest and they found lots of reptiles and vertebrates and they just started to slowly begin to eat their way through the forest. All the little forest birds started going. Eight or nine species of Moa became extinct. And then the Europeans arrived and brought new rats, bigger more effective, more streetwise rats.
• 09:30 - 10:00 We just keeps bringing more things in and then more things would go out of control, so would bring more things to control them. Because of the history of Gondwana, our birds had flown here and evolved in the absence of predatory mammals, so all the predator avoidance things were to do with concealment. Camouflage doesn't work for predators that hunt by smell and nesting in holes turns out to be not that flash either.
• 10:00 - 10:30 We've just totally devastated everything that we had on the mainland, and it all comes down to introduced mammals. They didn't only eat the birds and the insects and the reptiles. They ate the forest and they didn't eat, humans
• 10:30 - 11:00 burnt or cleared. It was a massive extinction. We lost over half of everything. That's really tearing apart the ecological fabric of this country.
• 11:00 - 11:30 When you start taking species out of webs of life, the whole system, including our place in it, becomes weaker. We talk about Matauranga or the Maori worldview or Maori knowledge. It is completely within
• 11:30 - 12:00 and integrated with nature. The earth, te Taiao, is our older brother is all that we are. And if we don't look after it, it won't look after us. If we lose biodiversity, we lose language and traditional environmental knowledge that's connected to that plant or that animal. We lose all of the messages we're supposed to pick up about how to
• 12:00 - 12:30 conduct ourselves as humans. Our customs and ceremonies draw from the actions and behaviours of these species. If we have any hope of carrying that way of knowing and being and doing forward from our generation into future generations,
• 12:30 - 13:00 if we if we can't do that, we're going to be the ones that dropped the ball. Most of us don't realise what we've lost. We don't realise that mainland New Zealand, lots of our forests are empty shells. And it's not until you go somewhere like a predator free offshore island, that you suddenly step back in time and you realise what New Zealand used to be like.
• 13:00 - 13:30 Thanks Peter. Ulva is my favourite place to work on Stewart Island because it's been pest free for over 20 years. It's really different from the mainland and there's heaps of birdlife here and the bush is different. You know, it's full of young saplings. It's just a beautiful place to be.
• 13:30 - 14:00 Stewart Island Kiwi are particularly unique for two reasons, and one of them is that you can see them in the daytime, so
• 14:00 - 14:30 they're active at night and at day. And the other is that they're group incubators, so we assume that it's family members. These Kiwi are just unlike any other Kiwi, you know, because there's so many in one burrow. All the interactions that happen at the entrance to that burrow and they chase each other past the burrow entrance.
• 14:30 - 15:00 Kiwi coming and going, you know, it's, it's like this secret social lives. He actually falls over, it's like tumbling ... laughs.
• 15:00 - 15:30 So I come to Ulva Island once or twice a week, usually. We've got twenty one adults and four chicks so far with transmitters on here. The biggest part of my project is looking at chick survival. We have two sites. One is Ulva Island and the other is Kaipipi, which
• 15:30 - 16:00 is on mainland Stewart Island and has the full suite of pests that we have there. So an interesting comparison. This is one of our new chicks at Kaipipi. And there's a rat, just running around as well. So rats will target the same food as the chicks. So because they have such a small bill and they mostly forage in the leaf litter, which is where the rats forage. And so far our chicks at Kaipipi are a lot lighter
• 16:00 - 16:30 than our chicks on Ulva. So they're not putting on as much weight. They're not growing as quickly. This is one of our nest cameras and one of our new chicks just going home for the night. You can see the transmitter. And shortly after the chick, a possum enters the burrow. When the Kiwi is regularly getting off the egg and chasing the possum, it takes a lot of energy for the Kiwi to do
• 16:30 - 17:00 that, but also the egg can easily be broken by that kind of disturbance. This is not just once a week. You know, this is a few times a night. Sometimes the possum will come back every hour.
• 17:00 - 17:30 It took us a very long time to realise how bad predators were. By the eighteen hundreds, they were overrunning New Zealand because they can breed so quickly and there was just limitless food for them. They'd be released in one place and then 10, 20 years later, they'd be eruptions as they just moved out in waves across the country. But it didn't occur to us that we were creating a disaster.
• 17:30 - 18:00 One situation that I think was an enormous wake up call for for conservationists in New Zealand, was the arrival of ship rats on Big South Caporn and they were the only rat that arrived there. 1964, muttonbirders said, hey, we're in trouble. Suddenly we're overrun with rats. They're ripping the wallpaper off the walls and chewing the flour paste behind the wallpaper. They seem to be starving this.
• 18:00 - 18:30 Most of the Saddlebacks have gone and the Moreporks have gone. And Don Merton and Brian Bell went down and had a look round and they decided we've got to catch what's left and get them somewhere with there aren't rats. When they first heard that rats got onto Big South Cape, there was a sort of notion around that the stuff that was going to go extinct had already gone extinct. The heads of government departments who made the decisions,
• 18:30 - 19:00 many of them trained in universities in Europe rather than in New Zealand, and they had a different perspective on rats over there. They saw rats and European birds living side by side. So they said, don't worry about it, they'll find a new equilibrium. Some of our superiors advised us not to do anything. They said, just monitor it, just watch. But we had a hunch that the rats would
• 19:00 - 19:30 spell disaster, ecological collapse and extinctions. And that actually turned out to be the case. We lost two more native bird species to rats. All we have is a Kodachrome transparency image of the last Snipe in the last Stead's Bush Wren.
• 19:30 - 20:00 Big South Cape was a stark and explicit lesson for New Zealanders. Fiordland is vast and largely untouched by the hand of people, but unfortunately, the pests that people brought with them are throughout most of the park.
• 20:00 - 20:30 Out in the West, there are still a large number of Kiwi, but they are under threat. The crux of it is that Kiwi chicks are very vulnerable to stoat predation. My project is to follow what happens to the Kiwi chicks that are produced by the adult pairs here and what their survival rate is.
• 20:30 - 21:00 So the chick's not in the nest, the dad's not in the nest. It might have left naturally, that'd be good. I think that chick is of an age where this probably isn't very good news. Let's see what we can see. I can just see the chick, I can't quite read the time and date stamp, but the real answer to what's happening is going to be when we go catch up with it by following that transmitter signal.
• 21:00 - 21:30 We've got a living chick. Kiwi chick's alive and well just down in here, you can, basically I just could see his bumb. This, I think, is probably his first time he spent the day outside the nest.
• 21:30 - 22:00 Straight away there, probing around for invertebrates, same as the adults do. Chicks are actually pretty safe in the nest. Mum and Dad are big and powerful and they can see off a stoat. So they're safe themselves from stoats. And also the stoats do go in the nest a lot. The adults send them packing.
• 22:00 - 22:30 The problem is the chicks come out to feed on their own and they always come out on their own and not hang out with Mum and Dad outside the nest. So that's when they're vulnerable. So the stoat, it can smell, it knows there's Kiwi in there. They often, once they find the nest, come back repeatedly to check it out. If it's coming back enough, then it's probably only a matter of time before it runs into the scent trail of a little chick that's outside the nest on its own. And then it's curtains.
• 22:30 - 23:00 When we follow the transmitter signal for the chick, if we're lucky, we'll find a living chick. For me in the study, so far, much more often than not, all I find is a pair of legs with a transmitter still attached.
• 23:00 - 23:30 So far, we've monitored two full seasons here at Shy Lake and 24 chicks, and not one of those chicks has survived for more than about a month. New Zealand is the country in the world with the
• 23:30 - 24:00 highest proportion of native species, endemic species, but we're also the country in the world that has the highest proportion of our native species that are at risk of or threatened with extinction. There's a figure floating around that New Zealand has something in the order of 4000, threatened and declining species. That's a terrible legacy for us to leave.
• 24:00 - 24:30 Our forests are under this continuous onslaught, there's still waves of rats and waves of stoats and just battalions of possums. If you walk in a forest at night, it's really sad because that's all you hear, all these possums making calls and rats foraging around.
• 24:30 - 25:00 Well, the Ship Rat is one of the world's most extraordinary mammals. It might be the most widely distributed mammal on the planet apart from humans. It's really got no flaws, really. It's sort of small size. It can swim, it can climb. It's got this amazing behavioural trait of being a strong explorer, but with great caution.
• 25:00 - 25:30 As a result, it has pretty much colonised the whole world. The Norway Rat is a really adaptable species. They're a very comfortable rat around the water and a very confident swimmer. Able to swim probably over two kilometres of open ocean, if need be. To some extent, it's an urban rat. And that's why it was doing so well in the United Kingdom at the time when it was jumping ship and coming to New Zealand.
• 25:30 - 26:00 The brushtail possum was introduced from Australia in 1858, basically to establish a fair trade. The first impacts that people really noticed was their impact on native forest. And then more recently, they were recognised as a predator as well. They take out the reptiles, they take the eggs and the nestlings of young birds, and they're large enough to push
• 26:00 - 26:30 quite large native birds off their nest and take the eggs and the chicks from underneath. Stoats are the ultimate killing machine, and we brought them to New Zealand because we thought they would be an easy way of fixing the rabbit problem that we had created, Stoats are just fearless. They climb so well and they can swim really well and they can kill things much larger
• 26:30 - 27:00 than themselves. They are so beautifully adapted to what they do. They are beautiful machines. They're the worst things that could be brought here. Most New Zealand birds are long lived and they don't have high reproductive rates. And so that means when the stoat kills the breeding female, it just has a really significant impact on the population. So a high number of females get killed on the nest by stoats and rats,
• 27:00 - 27:30 because they are the only ones sitting in the nest. And so you end up with these populations that are terribly skewed. They've got lots and lots of males and hardly any females Kokako we get an excess of males. The females are killed on the nest. That was exactly the same with Kaka. So there are flocks of Kaka flying around at 80 or 90 percent male. So you can be deceived into thinking the birds are doing OK. But they're not. With the complete loss of eggs and chicks you're breeding success can be
• 27:30 - 28:00 as low as a few per cent. Ultimately the bird populations go extinct when the last adults fall over without having had any successful reproduction. We finally realised this disaster, this unmitigated disaster, that we had leashed upon New Zealand. With just about every variation on catastrophe you can think of. From the smallest to the largest animal
• 28:00 - 28:30 that we've introduced into New Zealand, is just laying absolute waste to everything that belongs in this country. Turning everything that belongs into this country, into a refugee and its own land.
• 28:30 - 29:00 We're in this state where conservation has largely been about holding the line at the very brink of cliff. Just working to protect nature isn't enough. What we actually need to do is restore nature.
• 29:00 - 29:30 We had some money to look for Kiwi, new populations of Great Spotted Kiwi and the South Branch of the Hurunui was one of those places that hadn't been looked at for a long, long time. And we decided to go and have a look. And it was in 1995 that we discovered that population of Orange-Fronted Parakeet. Before then, they were thought to be extinct. And it was just this continual flitting of birds in the forest, and
• 29:30 - 30:00 then the rat eruption, that sort of summer of 99, 2000, and everything disappeared, gone. I've never seen any anything sort of disappear so fast. Almost the species have been rediscovered and disappeared within four or five years. It's probably the most dramatic experience I've had of how quickly things can change in the forest as a result of predators.
• 30:00 - 30:30 That was the only population left in New Zealand, so we thought we better get some of these birds into captivity as an insurance population. But also try and get them to breed so that we can use the offspring to to repopulate the different places. And that's where we started the captive breeding programme. Genetic diversity is really important when you're recovering from such a small population, so every individual out there that has wild genetics is important.
• 30:30 - 31:00 OK, the second one coming out. The Orange-Fronted Parakeet, they've have become so rare now that we could lose them by accident. There's a sort of suite of features they have that make them very vulnerable. For one they nest in holes. Now, imagine if you had a nest out on a little branch, in a cup on the end of a branch. When a predator comes along, if you're a little bit like a fantail, you can see it coming. And so the Predator might get your eggs
• 31:00 - 31:30 and chicks, but the adults usually get away. But things like Mohua and Orange-Fronted Parakeets, they don't see the predator until it sticks its head in the hole and then it's too late.
• 31:30 - 32:00 You're the noisy one. And it might be a little boy, what do you think? Well it's got a very big bill, hasn't it? So it looks like it could be a boy. When we actually collected Poldark from his nest in the wild, it was actually quite an unusual process for us. Normally, if we we're going to bring fresh genetics in, we would
• 32:00 - 32:30 actually try and collect eggs, it's much easier and less stressful for the birds to be transported the eggs rather than chicks. In this case, we didn't have that luxury. We missed the window for that. And the chicks had already hatched. Collecting checks that are so young and transporting them that far to be fostered by different birds is quite a risky process.
• 32:30 - 33:00 When we arrived back at the Trust, Poldark and his sibling, we were actually placed under one of our females at the time who decided she wasn't really interested. So we then had to readjust the plan and ended up going to a different pair, which luckily took. Then they continued to raise those chicks. Out of those two chicks, unfortunately, one didn't survive to adulthood, but one did, and that was Poldark.
• 33:00 - 33:30 In terms of the species, we're at a very critical time. We are reasonably successful at breeding these guys in captivity, but the population in the wild is still very vulnerable. We needed to intervene. So at times it does take extreme measures to bring things back. But hopefully those things that we're doing now will contribute to a secure population in the future.
• 33:30 - 34:00 So what we've done to date is we're just trying to keep New Zealand's wildlife alive. But for those who work in conservation, we realise it's a battle and it's a battle with slowly losing. The rats, stoats, possums are actually increasing in number and we are seeing more and more of our native species moving closer to that brink of extinction.
• 34:00 - 34:30 So we're heading into the headwaters of the Mangaoparo River, which flows east and is one of the tributaries of the Waiapu, and we over the conservation land now.
• 34:30 - 35:00 This was one of the last intact understoreys in the country was here. So it was much vaunted in conservation circles, but, now I feel we let it down by, you know, letting it go. These poor trees, they have had possums in them since the 60s and the 70s. There is way more dead Totara
• 35:00 - 35:30 here than there is live. Yeah, look at all that sunlight streaming through. Big Kamahi see, you know the possums are eating it and that's why there's a big hole in the canopy, and why the sun coming through. All the different understory species like your Kawakawa, Five Fingers, all those species had the
• 35:30 - 36:00 time in the sun when they've provided food for the birds. And so, when you lose a species, thre's gaps in the year for the birds and so, what are they supposed to do in that gap? Birds and trees, trees and birds. They both reliant on each other and so no birds to fly the seeds around, no future forests. Ko Tina Ngata toku ingoa. He uri au no Ngati Porou, no reira, ko
• 36:00 - 36:30 Hikurangi te manuga. Ko Waiapu te awa. Ko Ngati Porou te iwi. Ko Te Whanau a Karuwai te hapu. Kia ora. You know, when you think about how we identify ourselves as Maori, we generally identify ourselves through land features. And so many of us will have a pepeha around our mountains and our rivers and the people. And that's because we are shaped by
• 36:30 - 37:00 the land that we that we live in. And I have a connection that is not so much bound up in a sense of having rights to this place, but having responsibilities and obligations to this place, because I have genealogical connecions to it through our worldview. So when it becomes sick, it impacts on whether or not I am meeting my responsibilities for
• 37:00 - 37:30 looking after a legacy that was left for me with the expectation that I pass that legacy on. You know, being tangata whenua from here, our belief that the trees, the plants, the flora and fauna were our siblings, brothers and sisters, and so there's an obligation to look after them. And so, the mauri of this places has been severely compromised.
• 37:30 - 38:00 I'm a Kopara, I'm a bellbird because I'm from Te Araroa, and so we call ourselves the Bellbirds of Te Araroa. And so, you know, what does that mean when we don't have any bellbirds around anymore? We got to do something, most people will probably walk away, but, oh.
• 38:00 - 38:30 You know, we're watching a place fall to bits.
• 38:30 - 39:00 Hui are all about our joint funding proposal between our iwi, Ngati Porou and Te Whanau-a-Apanui and the Crown to come up with a plan to try and turn things around for our Raukumara. The more people that know about it, the more people will care. We've probably had about three engagements with the department and the minister, and they've been very supportive of it as it's been
• 39:00 - 39:30 shaping up. Her word for what she wanted was something that was transformational. All of us as Ngati Porou and Te Whanau-a-Apanui have a vested interest in our Raukumara because it's a tipuna. If it's not functioning, neither are we. Pest control's my bread and butter. And these hui are really cool. And I wanted to come along and essentially support the plan to to bring our ngahere back to abundance.
• 39:30 - 40:00 We're actually changing ourselves as an iwi, our relationship to the Raukumura and we're going to return to it and be part of it again. If it wasn't for Isaacs, is that the Orange-Fronts would be extinct, simple as that. The captive breeding that's basically keeping the population alive at
• 40:00 - 40:30 the moment. Where are you mate? Oh gidday. No more food sorry. Here in this aviary, we have Poldark and his mate Hazy, who is currently nesting. He took a while to get going, but now he's found he's found
• 40:30 - 41:00 a mate that he seems to like being with and is now producing the chicks that we hoped he would, which is great for the programme. Yeah, look at that. He's feisty as well, hey bud. It's mixed feelings, I guess, when we're sending birds out for release.
• 41:00 - 41:30 A lot goes into breeding these birds and the satisfaction comes from being able to produce these healthy birds to release. But at the same time, you know that a lot of them may not survive. We need to refocus our energy, our systems, our Matauranga, our science to giving back
• 41:30 - 42:00 to the planet, giving back to nature. We are the curators or the custodians of a whole lot of wonderful species that are found nowhere else in the world. The time is now and it's never been so critical. Many of our species are still declining. Karanga mai, piki mai ra.
• 42:00 - 42:30 Karanga mai, piki mai ra. They will come all the way out. Be safe. Build strong Whakapapa. It's an amazing moment,
• 42:30 - 43:00 oh, because it is a Taonga, and it's important for us and for the next generations to always have this Taonga, and for my grandchildren, for my mokopuna to one day to be able to see them. Brings tears to the thought of it.
• 43:00 - 43:30 We are at a tipping point in our society and in New Zealand generally, where we need to make some really big, bold decisions. If we want to reverse this decline, if we want to keep these things that we think of as the things that make us New Zealanders, then we need to do something substantially bold and different. So let's begin with the government's announcement that it wants to make
• 43:30 - 44:00 New Zealand, full stop, predator free by 2050. Every single part of New Zealand will be completely free of rats, stoats and possums. It is a plan so audacious in scope. It's been called New Zealand's Apollo Project. Predator free all of New Zealand in 34 years. Is that an achievable? I believe it is.