Thread: Whataroa kea

Originally Posted by ethos

It’s a gamble. “Best environmental outcome” is right up there with “Net benefit”: unmeasurable of course.
The tagged kea ARE measurable though so fingers crossed they are ok - and all the other untagged uncounted ones.
I’m sure ZIP and DOC very much don’t want to kill kea, Equally with poison drops we know they sometimes do, they average between 12-13% per drop from previous drops where they actually tagged, mostly they don’t count, sometimes they kill en masse ( and blame human interaction, never mind prefeeding them or shooting animals for them)
I’ve not seen a single post hoping for the worst, this just looks shabby.

I agree its shabby theme, but its a theme that exists none the less. I agree with the rest of your post although I'm not aware of Kea being killed en masse and DOC blaming human interaction?

As far as en masse : 7 of the 9 tagged birds died of 1080 at North Okarito 2011 during that study.
The blaming human interaction was the Fox Franz kea deaths in 2008 I think or maybe Otira deaths 2013 some press release or other, it sounded like bullshit anyway.
This article was as close to the truth as it is possible to find, its DoCs researchers internal communication saying kea benefit is “uncertain” from poison, read the whole thing, it’s quite different from the PR that gets officially released https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/...ions-uncertain

“They said it was not advisable to expose nationally critical or endangered birds to aerial 1080 baiting unless evidence showed the birds did not consume non-toxic baits.”

So no, DoC clearly don’t know what they are doing when they are not taking their own advice
Roll the dice.