Predator-Free 2050 has developed a four-part research strategy to save New Zealand's biological heritage.
The plan is made up of smaller goals, one of which is to have eradicated one mammalian predator from the mainland by 2025.
Photo: 123rf
To explain exactly what's involved in the plan and why it's a milestone in the fight against pests is project manager, Dr Dan Tompkins.
He says that the goal "isn't to achieve the eradication (of one species) by then but to show with confidence that we have the tools, approaches and strategy that would could go on to do it."
"We've got two technical arms to the strategy," explains Dr Tompkins "one acknowledges that our approaches have done pretty well so far. The second is the technical side, the new genetic control tools but it's a very young area of research."
"The approaches developed over the last few decades dealing with possums, rats and stoats with traps and toxins and other approaches do a pretty good job, the question is can we progress these a bit further and actually use these methods to eradicate?"
So which animal comes first in the list? Dr Tompkins says it's likely to be the possum. Possum numbers have declined across New Zealand because of strategies designed to stop them spreading BV. The problem is that research has been focused, not on eradicating possums but eradicating the disease from them.
Dr Tompkins talks of "eradicating the one percent" and how hard it is to get those last few numbers down.
"With toxins or traps we can quite reliably gets possum numbers down quite low but it can leave surviving individuals and only a few is all you need for the population to come right back. If we can work out how to remove that one percent we can push on with eradication."
"At the moment we aren't convinced that one way will work so we are using a diverse range of techniques so we don't hedge our bets and we maximise the chance of success."
Dr Thompson stresses the emphasis on "detection and surveillance, how do you know you've got rid of them all? And can you safely say that's done and be sure they won't come back and then move on to your next piece of space."
Of using the new genetic tools, Dr Thompson says the research is less than two years old and their focus is on researching how it could fit into the current eradication plans. "We're realists, nothing is ever going to be a silver bullet for anything - but there may some contexts in which we're comfortable in using some of these tools, if they are effective, to go alongside everything else."
You can find more information about the strategy here
