Managing new arrivals [split from "Plumed whistling duck, Otaki"]

[Jan]

I don't know where fras444 has been living for the last few decades, but he seems to think DOC are in charge of all non-native exterminations in NZ. In my experience regional councils deal to populations of introduced birds, such as Rooks, [shame], Cockatoos [perhaps necessary], and Greenfinches and Sparrows in farming situations. Councils have pest species lists which are different depending on the region. The comparison with Scotland is fatuous. There were species all over Northern Europe that went extinct in Scotland and are valid candidates for reintroduction. Beavers have been a great success. But to say that's why we need more species from Australia, that never ever occured here, is just incorrect. But Barn Owls are cosmopolitan in temperate ares of the world and it's surprising they haven't naturally colonised NZ before this.

[saul.ward]

I don't know where fras444 has been living for the last few decades, but he seems to think DOC are in charge of all non-native exterminations in NZ. In my experience regional councils deal to populations of introduced birds, such as Rooks, [shame], Cockatoos [perhaps necessary], and Greenfinches and Sparrows in farming situations. Councils have pest species lists which are different depending on the region. The comparison with Scotland is fatuous. There were species all over Northern Europe that went extinct in Scotland and are valid candidates for reintroduction. Beavers have been a great success. But to say that's why we need more species from Australia, that never ever occured here, is just incorrect. But Barn Owls are cosmopolitan in temperate ares of the world and it's surprising they haven't naturally colonised NZ before this.

It is Interesting to note other species that haven't colonised NZ yet too such as the Cattle Egret, PWD, Glossy Ibis, Aussie Pelican and many more, maybe the reason they haven't colonised is climate related, It's certainly colder and down south birds which prefer warmer areas would definitely prefer Northland for example, although I'm surprised Glossy Ibis haven't taken off like I expect they would. Cattle Egret is another example of this, they have been a visiting migrant for many years and haven't yet began breeding. Again I'm just assuming this is through climate related issues. Thoughts?

[fras444]

I don't know where fras444 has been living for the last few decades, but he seems to think DOC are in charge of all non-native exterminations in NZ. In my experience regional councils deal to populations of introduced birds, such as Rooks, [shame], Cockatoos [perhaps necessary], and Greenfinches and Sparrows in farming situations. Councils have pest species lists which are different depending on the region. The comparison with Scotland is fatuous. There were species all over Northern Europe that went extinct in Scotland and are valid candidates for reintroduction. Beavers have been a great success. But to say that's why we need more species from Australia, that never ever occured here, is just incorrect. But Barn Owls are cosmopolitan in temperate ares of the world and it's surprising they haven't naturally colonised NZ before this.

Can you please enlighten me as to where in that post did I mention or even hinted towards DOC and wanting to eradicate Rooks, Cockatoos and greenfinches??? Please find that in my previous post and highlight it..

On my various rants on the various facebook groups, I've painfully articulated that "regional councils" not 'DOC" should not be wasting resources on pointless bird eradication programs at an expense to mammal control.. not once have I made a statement in any form of DOC eradication/behind eradication on our introduced birds.
But...
To go down the rabbit hole of "necessary" control of birds and agricultural impact... Lets paint the very painful picture of our own endemic species, regarding conflicts on agriculture and how they have been, Kea especially almost exterminated from this country... I for one will be the first to stand up for all birds in this country and will fight against killing birds in the name of agriculture... Reading about the thousands of kea, kaka, kakariki culled during the agricultural revolution in NZ.. Where will rook exterminations stop when the day comes and kaka and kakariki rebound and start... godforbid wineries...
The only eradication program that NZ should ever embark on regarding birds is through ecological impacts ONLY
I am absolutely crying out for DOC to see Mallard ducks as what they are in the rest of the world, a significant invasive species that has caused many negative impacts on local duck populations throughout the world and even local extinctions and our grey duck, no matter how far down the evolutionary "subspecies" road they have gone down, the simple matter of fact, we are about to lose FOREVER a species of bird that probably far out dates the globally common white heron as a NZ native breeding species..

I think it is an absolute waste of money in countless eradication programs towards rooks (living in the UK for the last two years and seeing... no devastation towards farms) the countless "studies" on magpies and native bird behaviours and what not... Pointless money spent on stupid controls where that rate payers money would be far better allocated through local mammal controls.
I definitely see the rook eradication program as a serious threat to any potential influxes of native australian corvid species that our nation once had.. aka, a native species that would no doubt, end up being culled through misidentification...


Going from the Scotland thing as well, and you have taken that one out of context...

Apart from the Emu and if you hear me out on that one...
The Kaka, Kokako and the Kereru, the only birds remaining that our native trees with large seeds/fruits rely on to pass through, also... I mean, Robins and tomtits and that story that when your scratching the ground to attract Robins especially and a guide saying it is a hardwired evolutionary response to the moa days.. I mean.. Regardless of how true that is, that says a lot, Emu scratching the forest floor, swallowing whole fruits of our largest tree species and creating/exposing a ecosystem for insect species to exploit..
I wonder what impacts no moa has had on robins and the like and to think about all of those species of birds that we lost, especially the Moa azerbill family, we, through simple evolution will never get those back.. however.. you can still think outside the square and like Scotland have done and remember this.. Scotland lost the wolves and bears around the same time scientist have dated when some of the last Moa were still surviving along with all our other giant bird species.. You can, with science.. "bring back" ancestor species..
Just to put it into context, Scotland/UK lost its apex predators around the same time these islands lost the last of its giant birds and they are looking at restoring that key part towards a healthy biodiversity/ecology. Returning wolves that were, through thousands of years of being a isolated population that probably had very little common in genetics i.e a subspecies to their continental counterparts and there is a serious program in returning a species that probably were not in one bit genetically linked to the original wolf/bear/lynx populations..
Why cant NZ seriously look towards these sort of programs...
I'm not meaning let's' go cherry pick the species we want, and think.. "oh that looks cool" I'm meaning. Through proper research and what not, selecting species that australian has that through our recent extinct species, reintroducing those species that share a common ancestor to our extinct species and returning those species just like the uk with the beaver, specie that actually had a link to australian counterpart and returning them to our ecosystem..
Going of NZbirdsonline, it is almost just a handful waterfowl species that have a link to an australian counterpart, that we could bring back, which would be a far better choice than having an invasive species through the mallard duck.
So here are some options to use to fill voids that have been left behind our lost species North/South Island goose Cape barrets goose
Scarlett's duck (Pink ear duck) New Zealand blue-billed duck (Australian blue-billed duck) New Zealand musk duck (Australian musk duck) Finsch's duck (Australian wood-duck) New Caledonian owlet-nightjar for the closest nz relation of our very own nightjar Hodgens' waterhen (Dusky moorhen) New Zealand raven (Australian raven) Madagascar flufftail (closest relative to the adzebill) oh and the emu as a possible idea for a moa like species to fill a void that is still there, could even add one of those eagles that share the closest genetic links to our haast eagle....

[Jan]

I don't think it's worth discussing anything further. His theories are very strange and I would rather watch Shortland St. Weirdly it actually makes more sense.

[fras444]

As someone who is deeply fascinated with "self-introduced/native" species...

The Barn owl, along with the Nankeen night heron. I've spend many hours pondering their spread and where that may end up and where would be the "ultimate" habitat that would set them up/be the one thing where their numbers would just absolutely skyrocket...

Both...,
The Nankeen night herons and the Barn owl....
That Bay of Plenty/Waikato region would be that habitat that would well and truly set these birds here as an established species....
For the Barn owl, the BOP/Waikato has all the habitat, old conifer trees, barns and the like, along mice/rat infested milk sheds and barns for them to just explode as a population...
Same with the Nankeen night herons. But more in the form of the many dams along the Waikato river and all of those bush lined tributaries that flow through the Waikato farms into the Waikato, along with the mangrove estuaries of the BOP that are rich in habitat and food for the Nankeen night herons..., Once that population in Whanganui expands into the Waikato region.., Even into those native forest lined rivers that flow from Mount Taranaki... That would be the goldilocks zone in regards to the prefered Nankeen night heron habitat and, once those birds eventually spread into that habitat, that would well and truly establish that population and have the nankeen night heron population explode...

The hoary headed grebe, that one will have to be one of the more, delicate situations. There are a number of small dams dotted all around the current breeding population which, from what I understand is just the two pairs..., And lake Elterwater is the only real habitat of significance that has the right ecology for them... The closest option would have to be Lake Ferry... I feel that if a couple of pairs from the original pair, get over there.. that would be an ideal place for a large population to establish themselves.

Australian Wood duck... That population will just keep growing

Glossy Ibis... NZ definitely has the habitat and it's great that the Blenheim breeding colony is back at it... I guess once there is a good number of NZ breed birds, that population will hopefully spread to areas that would be their prefered breeding habitat

[andrewcrossland]

Thanks Somesbirder for that last post - yeah, its been a long time since Plumed Whistling Ducks were in captivity, so quite correct to point out that birds seen in the landscape now are definitely vagrants, not excapes.

Picking up a few things from the posts above (haha, it took a bit of reading and re-reading!), Chris made a good point alluding to the boom and bust in many Australian waterbird populations and the risk that one day a new boom might not come. Hopefully the flooding of Lake Eyre and other inland Australian waterways will give a much needed boom over the next year or more and the day the birds disappear is pushed further off. However, one thing I've noticed when the conservation prioritization lens is passed over NZ waterbirds in particularly is how fast some species which are also found overseas are passed over. The premise being that looking after them in NZ isn't a priority as they occur overseas so should be fine and don't need any help here. There's three obvious exceptions - 1) Fairy Tern where the fact we have a local sub-species put them in the rare and threatened endemic category; 2) the Australasian Bittern where it was realised that actually they're pretty rare in Australia and virtually extinct in New Caledonia so we'd better put some effort into their conservation in NZ; and 3) white heron which are super abundant through a big chunk of the globe but have both Maori and Pakeha cultural significance here, coupled with an inter-generational collective ignorance amongst the NZ human population that gives a narrative that birds like white herons (and pukeko, sacred kingfisher, crested grebes etc) are "unique" to NZ).

But we should be aware that for some species NZ represents the eastern-most or southern-most part of their international range and may be a safe haven for them long term as they succumb to habitat loss, hunting/harvesting, and disease faster in other countries. For a bunch of species you'll see accounts in Fieldguides and conservation reports where they are simply said to be "also found" in places like Australia, The Pacific Islands, New Guinea, Wallacea, the Sundas and the Philippines. But when you go to those places it becomes pretty apparent that many are in much lower levels of abundance than is the case in NZ, and many probably wont last too many decades more under the pressures they're facing - whether it be drought and climate change impacts in Australia, over-hunting in Indonesia or disturbance and habitat loss in the Pacific.

[Brendan T]

Really appreciate the wisdom and experience in Andrew's comment there.

Just chiming in to say, re. the bittern situation in Aus that Andrew mentions, you kiwis really put we Aussies to shame with your bittern conservation. I've dipped on them so many times in Australia, yet seen them in habitat here that you'd only be dreaming of seeing them in in Aus. Their situation is obviously still precarious here, but it's nice to acknowledge when some good work is being done.

[fras444]

Thanks Somesbirder for that last post - yeah, its been a long time since Plumed Whistling Ducks were in captivity, so quite correct to point out that birds seen in the landscape now are definitely vagrants, not excapes.

1) Fairy Tern where the fact we have a local sub-species put them in the rare and threatened endemic category; 2) the Australasian Bittern where it was realised that actually they're pretty rare in Australia and virtually extinct in New Caledonia so we'd better put some effort into their conservation in NZ; and 3) white heron which are super abundant through a big chunk of the globe but have both Maori and Pakeha cultural significance here, coupled with an inter-generational collective ignorance amongst the NZ human population that gives a narrative that birds like white herons (and pukeko, sacred kingfisher, crested grebes etc) are "unique" to NZ).

That last sentence regarding the white heron is what basically sums up my anger at DOC and fish and game for not starting a breeding program for the grey duck putting them on the protected list and basically declaring the mallard duck as an invasive species.

The grey duck well, pacific black duck is facing some significant challenges in Australia where the mallard duck is just kinda started to really put the pressure on the species as a whole and it is also documented that our grey duck population although it's sorta been disproven as a subspecies in its own right, does have some plumage differences that well.. are different from the Australian birds..

But the point is.. NZ could become a genuine concern for mallard free grey/pacific black duck safe haven.. Especially now that the Australian birds are now facing an uncertain future.... Something that DOC should definitely be concerned with

Now that there are official records of brown teal mallard hybrids and DOC culling those birds.. seems incredibly counterproductive considering the tens of thousands spent on Brown Teal conservation projects and the trapping programs that went with it... I'm guessing the Brown Teal will now never become common with the pressure mallard duck populations are putting on them... Not the stoats or cats or rats... even though.. those are just as bad..
But the mallard duck and the ability to hybridize and effectively breed out another species.. that is probably worse than stoats and cats predating on Brown Teal... at least we can manage stoats, rats and cats.. We can't manage plan to tackle an invasive introduced species that is weirdly protected how messed up is that???

We as humans, like you said... We see white herons as this incredibly rare and iconic species that NEEDS protecting... yet.. it is a globally.., well, one of those most naturally global reaching species in the world/one of the most commonest species of bird yet our conservation as much as it leads the world.. We are allowing.. sorry no other words to use... We are allowing a species of bird that would easily pre date the white heron and even some of our subspecies.. in becoming extinct...
How embarrassing is that...
It is such a great shame.. it is a great shame that 1000s of years of being on these islands, and just simply for the fact that it is because the grey duck is a unassuming brown bird with nothing iconic about it... it's okay for the grey duck to become extinct as a NZ native breeding species...

I honestly feel and it is proven with like the brown/auckland/campbell teal and even with the blue duck. the grey duck would be an easy species with the least amount of work/specialized diet.. would readily take to a captive breeding program... so many of our zoos and wildlife breeding programs have a wetland habitat, Grey duck would require the least amount of resources.. all we need to do is capture as many purebred examples as possible and breed them.

All it takes is a one mindset change and especially with all the evidence to show that the Mallard duck is in the same category as Stoats, cats and rats... A species that is causing the extinction of a native and endemic species... that in my eyes is all that is needed to place the mallard duck on the invasive species in NZ list and eradicate them..