Peer-reviewed paper. Joanna C. Pollard, Conservation 2025, volume 5, issue 3, article 47. Published online 3 September 2025.

Towards Ethical and Effective Conservation of New Zealand’s Natural Heritage

This is the international, peer-reviewed account of the case for changing New Zealand conservation management. The journal version is the citation of record. The abstract below is reproduced unchanged.

Pollard, J.C. Towards Ethical and Effective Conservation of New Zealand’s Natural Heritage. Conservation 2025, 5(3), 47.
https://doi.org/10.3390/conservation5030047

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In brief

The paper examines seventy years of aerial poisoning aimed at possums and rats, and the increase in intensity, frequency and scale being trialled under Predator Free 2050. It sets out the case for a shift to targeted, monitored and more humane management, with remote monitoring and self-resetting kill traps among the tools, and with all relevant stakeholders involved, in order to protect what remains of New Zealand’s natural heritage.

Abstract

Major human impacts on New Zealand’s ecology began about 800 years ago with immigration firstly from Polynesia, then Europe starting a few centuries later. The humans cleared habitat, hunted species to extinction, and introduced biota, including plants, birds, fish, invertebrates, and mammals. Over the last 70 years, government-funded campaigns have been waged against some of the introduced mammals that became considered harmful to native biota. These campaigns spread poisonous food baits from aircraft to kill and suppress target animals (mainly brushtail possums (Trichosurus vulpecula) and rats (Rattus spp.)) over large areas. Increased intensity, frequency, and scale of poisoning are being trialled under a new conservation strategy (Predator Free 2050) to eradicate several mammalian species. The present study investigates the opportunity for a paradigm shift in conservation, emphasizing the rationales for transitioning from spreading of pesticides to a more targeted approach. NZ’s poison- and predator-focused ecological management has been criticized internationally as cruel and unnecessary, while independent NZ ecologists have called for, and outlined, a new system of conservation management based on ecological knowledge, which embraces all threats to native biota. A central tenet of proposed new methods is the engagement of all relevant stakeholders. Efficient management tools include remote monitoring, and smart, self-resetting kill traps for targeted small mammal control. Ecology-driven, commercially sound, targeted, monitored, relatively humane management can be implemented to protect the remnants of NZ’s natural heritage.

This abstract is reproduced unchanged from the published paper. The paper is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). Cite the author, the journal and the DOI above. No changes have been made to the abstract.