
New Zealand’s War on Rats (2017) - kposehn
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/new-zealand-predator-free-2050-rats-gene-drive-ruh-roh/546011/?single_page=true
======
lostlogin
I was lucky enough to be on one of our pest free island when the only resident
rat was caught. The effort and expertise of the rangers was truely amazing.
They knew the rats favourite foods (a particular brand of peanut butter) and
habits (avoided traps, went through monitoring stations). They tracked it over
several days with cameras and monitoring stations.

They customised a monitoring station and killed the rat with a trap in the
middle of it. The crack killer team spend their time tracking down and killing
hard-to-get pests in truely remote locations like Little Barrier Island.
[https://i.stuff.co.nz/environment/100925042/eraticated-
roden...](https://i.stuff.co.nz/environment/100925042/eraticated-rodent-
removed-from-protected-tiritiri-matangi-island)

~~~
nasredin
Your post read like a Navy SEAL operation!

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Eric_WVGG
My favorite book by the late Douglas Adams is "Last Chance to See," a
nonfiction project where he travelled around the world for a year looking for
various endangered species. The chapter about a fat sort of parrot called the
kakapo talks about the challenges of keeping rats out — boats are not even
allowed to dock on the New Zealand island where the last remaining kakapo
live.

(I once emailed Adams asking when a paperback edition of this book would be
made available; he replied three years later, saying that it was finally in
print behind "the ugliest cover I've ever seen in my life." The contemporary
cover is not quite so bad.)

[https://www.amazon.com/Last-Chance-See-Douglas-
Adams/dp/0345...](https://www.amazon.com/Last-Chance-See-Douglas-
Adams/dp/0345371984)

~~~
Hallucinaut
Kākāpō live on three islands these days, all having been made pest free.
Though where they were rediscovered in the 60s is absolutely not pest-free,
though is sparsely populated being at the extreme southern tip.

As a kid I used to go to the zoo and I remember the exhibit showing the
population dropping to 59 birds, and feeling a deep dread about potentially
losing them. It gives me hope that we've managed to bring them back to over
120 birds, I just wish other cultures had the luxury to be able to invest so
much into protecting them that NZ is able to.

~~~
justinator
[http://cultofthepartyparrot.com/](http://cultofthepartyparrot.com/)

~~~
EdwardDiego
Oh Sirocco, you sexy head-raping parrot you, what have you inspired.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T1vfsHYiKY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T1vfsHYiKY)

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skookumchuck
One possibility to stop a global eradication of rats is to isolate a
population of unaffected individuals in advance, so that when the global
eradication is over, they can be reintroduced.

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jessaustin
TFA obviously doesn't have enough information to evaluate this, but it seems
unlikely that a fertility-destroying mutation would sweep the globe. This
version of whatever gene they're modifying would be out-competed by literally
every other allele. If anything, one doubts it would sustain long enough to
affect the whole of New Zealand. They'd have to constantly replenish the
stocks of CRISPR rats, much like many fisheries do.

~~~
strken
IIRC the idea is that the "fertility-destroying" mutation really only stops
female rats from being born. Male rats with the mutation mate with healthy
female rats, the healthy female rats produce only male offspring, those male
offspring mate with healthy females, and so on.

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teslabox
... an Arizona company came up with an interesting approach to rodent control:
poison their reproductive organs. They got approval to sell their formula in
2016.

[https://senestech.com](https://senestech.com) and
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ContraPest](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ContraPest)

No gene editing required.

~~~
dpeckett
I wonder if the drug would work on felines, combined with the
technology/approach here
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnpJBI_502U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnpJBI_502U)
you may have an ethical way of dealing with what's a huge problem in
Australia. I've been keeping an eye on this technology for a while now.

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dmckeon
Esvelt's work also shows up in a proposal to modify mice on Nantucket Island
to reduce the incidence of Lyme disease, which affects 40% of the human
islanders.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/science/ticks-lyme-
diseas...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/science/ticks-lyme-disease-mice-
nantucket.html)

The gene drive technology looks like a classic "great power, great
responsibility" tech, with possibilities both for global benefits and global
disaster. We already have political struggles over managing long lived nuclear
isotopes, but genetic manipulation of wide-spread endemic species seems like a
space in which unforeseen problems have the possibility of becoming immortal,
modulo additional genetic tinkering.

We look back at how people in the Victorian era carried plant and animal
species around this planet, willy-nilly, and shake our heads. Will future
generations thank us, or revile us for how we use this tech?

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EdwardDiego
Okay, so I know rats have significance in some cultures - for example, to some
Maori tribes, kiore, the Polynesian rat found in limited locations in NZ (due
to being outcompeted by Norwegian and black rats) are considered taonga
"treasure" \- but honestly, what would the ecological harm be if rats went
extinct?

Do they fill a vital ecological niche? In New Zealand, they certainly don't,
they have supplanted a niche already occupied by our weta - an insect that
evolved to fill the niche normally occupied by rodents. (And to show how far
it goes, our native owls were the main predators of weta before mammals were
introduced, much as how owls worldwide are predators of mice and rats)

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ohiovr
Attract them in with an artificial flavor that rats just so happen to like.
Lead them into a trap and cremate the remains on site. You would still need to
stock bait and fuel but should this way you wouldn't have to go there
constantly to reset everything. Or introduce silicon based predators..

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richjdsmith
They should get in touch with Alberta, and perhaps consider calling it Rat
Patrol like they did in 'Berta.

[https://www.domyown.com/images/content/rat_distribution_map_...](https://www.domyown.com/images/content/rat_distribution_map_global.png)

~~~
toomanybeersies
I've looked into this and what worked for Alberta wouldn't work for NZ. Rats
in Alberta can only survive around human habitation as it gets too cold in the
winter for them to survive.

New Zealand is warm enough that rats can live in the forest year round.

~~~
lostlogin
They do.

And as a result it’s all about killing them. While poison works, there are
some places you can’t use it and it’s preferable not to if avoidable. While
vastly harder there are some excellent traps available. The standard has been
the DOC 200, which avoids killing the good guys but gets the bad guys in a
relatively humane manner (at the end of the day, you’re killing it).

[http://www.doc.govt.nz/documents/conservation/threats-and-
im...](http://www.doc.govt.nz/documents/conservation/threats-and-
impacts/animal-pests/doc200-predator-trap.pdf)

Some of the new devices are vastly more efficient and don’t have to be reset
nearly as often. Like this gas powered one.
[https://www.goodnature.co.nz](https://www.goodnature.co.nz)

[https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/313828/self-
resettin...](https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/313828/self-resetting-
rat-traps-20-times-better-than-standard-traps-study)

Take the pricing with a big pinch of salt - the A24 is more like $200, and the
DOC 200/Victor costs about $100 for Joe average as the cited price excludes
the box. Don’t go making your own box without thinking carefully, as the
dimensions need to be correct unless you want to kill your neighbours cat.

~~~
toomanybeersies
Killing your neighbour's cat would also help preserving out native birdlife.
Wouldn't be great for preserving your relationship with your neighbour though.

~~~
lostlogin
Agreed. There are many reasons on top of this, like it spraying my shoes.

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kwhitefoot
What about the imported herbivores?

~~~
EdwardDiego
* Possums (the Australian brushtailed possum) - large drops of 1080 combined with intensive trapping. Control is either by the Department of Conservation (DOC) or by Animal Health Boards (AHBs) as possums can spread tuberculosis to cattle.

* Deer (red, fallow, sika, rusa, whitetail, and wapiti/elk) - largely managed by recreational hunting and/or "wild animal recovery operations" (WARO) - where commercial hunters shoot them from helicopters, retrieve and process the carcasses and then ship the meat to countries like Germany that love a bit of wild venison

* Chamois - managed primarily by recreational hunting, with the occasional WARO to supply the market for "gamsbart" in Austria

* Tahr - managed by recreational hunting, especially trophy hunting (one of NZ's premier trophy species), but also culled by DOC when numbers get too high for their environment

* Wild pigs - mainly recreational hunting, some control by AHBs to prevent TB.

* Wild goats - recreational hunting and culling by contractors working for DOC

* Wallabies - Unsure of any official eradication plans, but often hunted recreationally

* Wild horses - Only really exist in the Kaimanawa ranges. Population managed by DOC. When overpopulated, they round up horses and resettle them with interested owners. If not enough horses can be resettled, they cull.

* Wild cattle - Mainly controlled by recreational hunting. Apparently wild beef is lean and tasty as hell. Very limited range, but I'd love to try it sometime.

* Rabbits - Recreational hunting, professional cullers, poison drops, biological controls (calicivirus etc.), and oh, that time that settlers released ferrets, stoats, and weasels into NZ to control the rabbits. The stoats and weasels decided that rabbits were way harder to catch than our native birds, but ferrets and feral cats still eat a lot of rabbit.

Not sure if I'm missing any other imported herbivores that could be considered
a pest.

~~~
knz
> Not sure if I'm missing any other imported herbivores that could be
> considered a pest.

I don't believe they are omnivores but stoats and ferrets are also a huge pest
in New Zealand.

~~~
EdwardDiego
Yeah, they're very much carnivores.

DOC controls them in two ways - firstly by controlling rodent numbers,
secondly by directly controlling mustelids.

The rodents - a spike in mice/rat populations causes a spike in mustelid
populations. Then when they run out of rodents to eat in the forest, they go
for the birds. And our native trees (the Nothofagus beech trees) often "mast"
\- that is, all the trees drop their seed all at once, which is a major food
source for rodents. So a mast year will always lead to a massive spike in mice
and rats, which then leads to a massive spike in stoats and weasels.

As for mustelid control - it's primarily done via trapping (although there can
be significant mustelid bykill from large poisoning operations targeting
rodents or possums). DOC has a standard trap that works well when baited with
an egg - but trapping is very manpower intensive and DOC is not very well
funded.

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Applethief
Go New Zealand!

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guidedlight
New Zealand also announced it was going to be the first Smokefree country by
2025. I wonder how that’s going.

~~~
Nition
The campaign is called "Smokefree New Zealand" but it's a little bit of a
misnomer. The actual goal is not 0% by 2025 but <5%.

~~~
lopmotr
Vaping is very popular here, so that may supplant it. You can often see
teenagers using it, and even in low income neighborhoods, it's rare to see
cigarette smokers outside in the daytime.

------
refurb
_" And I would rather humanely kill the rat than have the rat inhumanely kill
a bird."_

What? This guy is going to get real upset when he realizes what nature is
really like.

~~~
quixoticelixer-
Yes, that New Zealand doesn't have rats.

