[Ag-eq] A little peep into New Zealand ecology

Sat Apr 20 19:23:45 UTC 2013

Jewel:

are there any theories on how the frog got to the island?

They weren't put there to be protected?

New Zealand sounds like a fasinating place.

We have a lot of plants and insects that have been introduced to the desert,
that are harmful to the native species.  There is a tuype of parrot that has
been released by humans and it seems to thrive here.  I don't know if they
cause any particular problem for the native birds.  There is also a breed of
rat that has made it's way here through loads of cargo.  They are quite a
problem in some neighborhoods.  They are worse in some of the most expensive
neighborhoods in the valley, which I think is funny.

Nella

Quoting Jewel <jewelblanch at kinect.co.nz>:

> We certainly do have more than our share of exotic pestilential plants, not
> to forget, of course,
> the insects that manage to get past the search, identify and destroy brigade,
> or those that are
> blown in on the wind.
> We even have had the occasional snake get in, but it never lasted long.
> I wouldn't gbe surprised if I have adult rabbits living in my paddocks, but
> rablets wouldn't have a
> chance of survival with all the cats that live around here:  not ferals:
> they all have good homes
> to go to, but cats being cats, they all like to hunt!
> Back in the spring, 2K, my own cat, didn't want her dinner for 4 nights in a
> row, and I suspected
> that she was helping herself to tender rabbit pie.
>
> New Zealand does have a native frog:  Hamilton's: that now is confined to
> Stevens' Island, one of
> our offshore island
> sanctuaries.
> One of its peculiarities is that it makes its home under rocks on  the summit
> of Stevens' which, of
> itself, is the peak of an undersea mountain.  The nearest water is several
> thousand feet below
> where it lives, and it wouldn't be the wisest thing that the frog had ever
> done were it to venture
> down there as it is killed if exposed to salt water, so, therein lies a
> mystery, how  did it cross
> the 3km of briny between the island and the mainland?
>
>        Jewel
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: <nfoster at extremezone.com>
> Sent: Saturday, April 20, 2013 6:31 PM
> To: "Jewel" <jewelblanch at kinect.co.nz>; "Agricultural and Equestrean Division
> List"
> <ag-eq at nfbnet.org>
> Subject: Re: [Ag-eq] A little peep into New Zealand ecology
>
>
>   Jewel:
>
> Does New Zealand really have tuataras?
>
> You're saying the only mammals before discovery were 3 types of bats?
>
> So this means that before discovery New Zealand only hhad birds, lizards and
> bats?
>
> How very interesting; I love learning stuff like this.  We humans really know
> how to screw up ecosystems.  I'm sure all kinds of harmful plants wer
> introduced as well.
>
> Does your property get over run with rabbits?
>
> I would love to hear more about this.
>
> Nella
>
>
>
> Quoting Jewel <jewelblanch at kinect.co.nz>:
>
> > New Zealand broke away from the southern supercontinent of Gondwanaland and
> > floated off to make its
> > own way in the evolving world about 80 million years ago.
> >
> > This isolation gave rise too many unique species of birds, ranging from the
> > rifleman, about the size
> > of a humming bird to the giant Moa, the largest of which weighed in at 500
> > pounds and topped 12 feet
> > in height;  interestingly, the female far exceeded the male both in weight
> > and height.  Her ladyship
> > was 1 and a half times the weight and 2.8 times the height.
> > There was only one predator, and a fiercesome one at that:  the giant
> forest
> > eagle:  Haast's eagle:
> > whose sole prey was the Moa, so as the other birds had nothing to fear, and
> > their food supply being
> > within walking distance on the ground or in the trees, many of them gave up
> > flight altogether, and
> > the others were very poor fliers just retaining enough flight to be able to
> > jump from one tree to
> > the next! therefore, while Australia gave rise to many and varied species
> of
> > marsupial, New Zealand
> > became the home of the flightless and ground-nesting bird.
> > This was an idyllic place for these flightless birds:  that is:  idyllic
> > until this paradise was
> > discovered by Koti, a polynesian explorer.
> > He wasted no time in sailing back to his people in polynesia with news of
> > this wonderful land he had
> > stumbled across"  a land "flowing with milk and honey" not really but you
> get
> > my drift, just sitting
> > there a hop, step and a jump away in the south-west Pacific waiting for
> them,
> > so they packed their
> > belongings into, what is known as The Great Fleet" and came!
> > Whether it was intentional or not, and I think that it, probably, was
> > intentional as it would have
> > been a food source, they brought bush rats:  Kiore: [pronounced i as in
> > steel, o as in stork and e
> > as in step].
> > I doubt that the Kiore had to much of an effect on the bird population as
> it
> > is, primarily, a seed
> > eater, but these rapacious human beings who were now spreading throughout
> the
> > land were a  very
> > different story.
> > The birds were just so easy to catch, and the Moa, in particular, provided
> > such a huge return for
> > the  easy hunt that they were exterminated within a couple of hundred years
> > of the arrival of the
> > Maori, and with the Moa went the forest eagle:
> > "No moa Moa, no moa eagle!"
> > The tenuous remnants of this once bird's heaven was to be, even more,
> > severely threatened with the
> > arrival of Europeans.
> > Firstly, the british navigator Captain James Cook released pigs and goats,
> > and after him came
> > whalers and sealers with their ubiquitous hangers-on of Norwegian ship
> rats,
> > and then in the second
> > half of the 19th century, with the rapid escalation of European
> > settlement,Clansy lowered the boom!
> > The founding fathers, in their wisdom,  HOLLOW  LAUGHTER!   started by
> > importing 6 pairs of rabbits,
> > the progeny of which were intended to provide * sport for the gentlemen
> > farmers, but the 6 pairs of
> > rabbits vanished into the countryside, and got on with what rabbits are
> > supremely good at, and
> > before too many years had past, there were millions of bunnies chewing
> their
> > way through the land.
> > This flood of voracious mouths had to be stopped, so, in what proved to be
> a
> > futile, attempt at
> > control,  weasels, stoats and ferrets which were very efficient predators
> at
> > home in Britain were
> > imported, but it was no time at all before these little killing machines
> > figured out that, rather
> > than use up energy pursuing the fleet-footed and crafty bunny, there were
> > much easier meals just
> > sitting around with signs out saying:  "DINE  HERE!"  and once they had
> > dispatched the adult bird,
> > there was a damned good chance that, not far away, they would find a nest
> of
> > chicks or eggs:  Oh
> > goody goody gum drops:  life is so sweet!
> > Another introduced animal which has become, yet one more, of the list of
> > exotic animals that have
> > become a plague of biblical proportions is the Australian Ringed-tail
> possum.
> > Some bright spark thought that possums could provide material for a fur
> > industry!  Oh the sorrow
> > that hare-brained thought has given rise to!
> > I can't even dream of how many millions of dollars have been spent trying
> to
> > control the feral
> > population, but none of the controls have much noticeable effect.  They do
> > untold damage to the bush
> > by stripping it of thousands of tons of leaves and flowers, and now it has
> > been found that their
> > apetite doesn't stop at leaves and flowers, but they are rather partial to
> > little chicks and eggs as
> > well!
> >  New Zealand does not have, and never has had snakes;  our only reptiles
> are
> > several varieties of
> > geckos and skinks, along  with the pseudoreptile,  the one and only Tuatara
> > which existed at the
> > time of the dinosaur and has, note the present tense,  far outlived it!
> Our
> > only native mammals are
> > 3 species of bat;  one is thought to be extinct, but healthy colonies of
> the
> > remaining two have,
> > recently, been discovered.  One of them, the short-eared bat I think, is,
> > like so many of the birds
> > that completed the process thousands of years ago, , moving towards giving
> up
> > flight.  It, rarely,
> > takes to the air, and just scuttles around on the ground
> >
> > Jewel.
> >
> >
> >
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