Berkley Center

One common trait among New Zealanders I found while abroad is that they pride themselves on being a bit different than everyone else—and this self-pride goes beyond human beings. Both in Auckland and in more remote areas of the country, I could see that New Zealanders consider respect and preservation of their native landscape to be an essential part of what it means to be a Kiwi.

Eighty million years of isolation has meant that New Zealand’s plants and animals have evolved in such a way that author Jared Diamond describes the country’s natural environment as the closest thing on Earth to “life on another planet.” Apart from a pair of species of bat, New Zealand has no indigenous mammals; and without any ground predators around, many of its birds—including the iconic kiwi—evolved to be flightless. This evolutionary quirk served them well until humans (both Maori and European) settled the country, introducing small mammals like rabbits, rats, and possums to the area. The European rabbit population soon exploded and became a major problem for farmers, which prompted them to introduce ferrets and stoats to the countryside in order to tame the rabbit population. While these predators did kill some rabbits, they found New Zealand’s native birds, who again were not used to ground predators, to be easy prey. Unforunately, most people at the time were focused on turning New Zealand into a second England, replete with European game animals and a bountiful logging industry. They cared very little about preserving New Zealand’s natural flora and fauna for its own sake.

New Zealand’s native wildlife suffered immensely until a conservation movement took off in earnest during the 1960s at the same time similar movements started across the globe. One of my professors told us that it was also around this time that the average New Zealander began to appreciate how truly special their surroundings were, and how their environment was extremely important for growing the country’s tourism industry. Ever since this collective “awakening,” enthusiastic volunteers and government employees have waged a hard battle against mammals and other introduced pests.