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Rats vs Campbell Island Teal. . .And the Winner Is?
by Murray Williams, New Zealand Department of Conservation

Rats! Are any other mammals so adaptable and so widely distributed? And, what about their ubiquity as human camp followers?

The coincidental spread of humans and rats across the islands of the central Pacific during the past 2,000 years left in its wake an extinction holocaust. Na?ve island faunas were plundered— animals weighing more than 1 kilogram were taken by humans, those less than 150 grams, by rats (Rattus exulans), now far removed from their native Indonesian home. New Zealand, the last significant landmass to be settled, and its plethora of small near- and off-shore islands suffered from this exploitation as all other Pacific islands suffered. However, the recentness of the R. exulans invasion (800 years ago) and the additional introductions of other rats (R. norvegicus and R. rattus) by European mariners and settlers 150 to 200 years ago have ensured that their impacts are particularly well chronicled and understood. Today, restoration of New Zealand’s indigenous ecosystems hinges on one crucial management action—eradication of rats.

Twenty-five years ago, a conference of New Zealand’s conservation specialists concluded that the eradication of rats from islands was “impossible.” But, within 4 years of that conference, a flat 9-hectare island had been cleared of the vermin by laying a network of poison baits on the ground. Within 8 years, the placing of new-generation anticoagulant baits in small tunnels to ensure that other wildlife were not inadvertent casualties of the Rattus war resulted in a heavily forested and rugged 170-hectare island being pronounced “free of rats.” And within 15 years, helicopter pilots dropped cereal baits laced with a more potent anticoagulant on the 2,900-hectare Kapiti Island Nature Reserve near Wellington, the Nation’s capital. It worked!

Today, almost 100 islands around New Zealand have had their rats removed. No eradication effort, however, was more audacious than that which occurred at Campbell Island, 600 kilometers south of the mainland, in the tempestuous seas of the subantarctic. Five helicopter pilots snatched 5 flyable days in the winter of 2001 to spread 125 tonnes of bait over the entire 11,000 hectares of this remote, wind-swept, cliff-edged home of gracious royal albatrosses, lumbering sea elephants, and squabbling hordes of rockhopper penguins. And when, in mid 2003, not a single sign of a lingering rat could be found, arguably the world’s most ambitious, and certainly then the largest, rat eradication operation was pronounced a total success. It may have cost almost US$1 million, but it did the job.

Behind that success lay 25 years of experimentation by biologists from New Zealand’s universities, research centers, and wildlife management agencies. It relied on careful private-sector bait development and on the unerring skill of commercial helicopter pilots more accustomed to chasing deer in the mountains or spraying crops in fields. And, it was crucially dependant on U.S.- developed technology: the global positioning system.

As a consequence of that success, a 21-year-long dream for the world’s rarest and geographically most restricted duck, the flightless Campbell Island teal, will be realized. Confined by rats to the nearby, 23-hectare Dent Island for over 150 years, and in numbers probably never more than about 25 pairs, four of these 400- to 500-gram ducks were taken into captivity in 1983. Another four were collected in 1990 to provide the genesis of a captive population. Only one of three females laid eggs, but from her, a total of 24 first and second generation offspring was temporarily established on a small southern New Zealand island and another 40 retained in captivity. In September 2004, most will go back home. With this first of three planned introductory cohorts, the ecological restoration of Campbell Island, a part of New Zealand’s subantarctic islands World Heritage Site, will take another giant leap forward with the first return of one of its “lost” endemics.

For more information, contact Murray Williams, Scientist, Science and Research Unit, New Zealand Department of Conservation, P.O. Box 10420, Wellington, New Zealand, +64 4 471 3286, mwilliams@doc.govt.nz, www.doc.nz/index.html.

Soccer—A Kick for Conservation and Communities
Article and Photos by John Cancalosi

What do wildlife photography, soccer, and conservation have in common? I shall attempt to make the connection clear.

It was wildlife photography that took me—a person who does this sort of thing for a living—to a private game reserve in Zimbabwe some years ago. It was a passion for soccer that found me playing the game with staff working at the reserve.

The love of soccer created an instant bond among us. We played on the scorched earth under the searing midday sun, using a well-worn ball “inflated” with crumpled newspapers. Wondering how proper equipment might affect our scrimmages, I purchased a new ball. Its delivery to a nearby village was cause for celebration. The whole village—200 or so—turned out to watch the ball’s inaugural soccer game, and a great time was had by all. The cost of that ball was the best money I had ever spent.

Several years later, while in South Africa, it occurred to me that the love of soccer might be used to create goodwill between nature parks and the villages that surround them. With this in mind, I arranged to meet Brad Poole of Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife (KZN), the provincial wildlife authority in KwaZulu-Natal (Zulu Kingdom).

Brad shared my passions for soccer and for wildlife conservation, and after some discussion, we formed a partnership to develop a pilot project—Get the Ball Rolling—to donate books, soccer balls, and other sporting equipment to villages in the Ukhahlamba-Drakensberg region.

I arranged for the donations, and Brad organized their distribution. Contributions were generous. The English Football Association donated several dozen balls and T-shirts, and British Airways, a mountain of sportswear and other clothing. Biblionef South Africa contributed hundreds of children’s books written in the Zulu language, and South African Airways offered a significantly reduced cost for shipping the donations to South Africa.

Many of the donations were delivered to the mayor of a region near Pietermaritzburg, a man named Sipho Bhengu, with whom I developed a friendship. Mayor Bhengu was curious about what I did for a living, so I asked if he would like to accompany me to a blind I had set up to photograph endangered wattled cranes. As we traveled to the crane site, we were followed by two armed guards—the mayor also carried a weapon. As it became apparent the situation was safe, the guards left, and I was afforded a rare opportunity to spend a day birdwatching and photographing wildlife with Mayor Bhengu. Our conversation dwelled on natural history and conservation.

Later, I visited a number of schools in the Pietermaritzburg area with KZN’s Community Liaison Officer Dennis Mkhabela. I observed thousands of children studying under conditions that would try the souls of lesser humans. Their teachers were grateful to receive the educational materials and sports equipment we brought to them. The bulk of the partnership’s donations, however, were presented at a soccer tournament held in a stadium sitting in the shadow of the Ukhahlamba-Drakensberg Mountains.

During the tournament, a match was played between a team of villagers and a team of KZN employees. I don’t remember who won—it didn’t matter. A win-win atmosphere had enveloped the local residents and park workers. Following the game, the park staff and I were invited to dinner at the local Zulu chief’s office. The KZN staff told me that this was the first time they had ever received such an invitation from the village. It was gratifying to think that I might have contributed in some small way to fostering goodwill between them.

This experience leads me to urge those working for wildlife in rural Africa, or elsewhere in the soccer-loving world, to consider the connections that can be forged between communities and conservationists simply through a shared passion for soccer, the “beautiful game.”

For more information, contact John Cancalosi, cancalosi@earthlink.net. Visit www.kznwildlife.com to learn more about conservation in KwaZulu-Natal.