Rotorua’s wallaby war is ramping up as the pest continues to ravage native forests, forcing iwi and businesses to take matters into their own hands.
Control efforts were increased a few years ago in the Bay of Plenty, but there are calls for more urgent work as some say the region is close to “environmental collapse”.
“A lot of this this bush here is on life support … our bush here in Te Arawa needs to be resuscitated,” Charles Te Kowhai from Te Arawa Wallaby Control Kāhui told 1News.
“It’s an emergency response.”
Te Arawa Wallaby Control Kāhui is an iwi-led initiative battling to save what’s left around what it refers to as “ground zero” – lakes Ōkareka, Okataina, Tarawera, Rotoiti, and the Whakarewarewa Forest.
The kāhui is telling government organisations to “get out of the way, we’ll do it”, according to organiser Cyrus Hingston.
“We realised pretty quickly that we needed a coordinated effort … this land that was gifted by the iwi and it hasn’t been looked after,” he said.
Dama wallabies were first released near Lake Ōkareka in 1912 and are now well established across 260,000 hectares.
It is estimated there are around one million wallabies in the region, eating native seedlings, shrubs and grasses, preventing plant regeneration and damaging the health of New Zealand forests.
The government-funded focus right now is on stopping the spread beyond the containment zone, but the kāhui wants to eradicate them from the centre.
“If you got stage four cancer, you don’t work on the outer areas, you look at working from the core … it’s close to environmental collapse,” Hingston said.
Rotorua Canopy Tours is working to keep wallabies out of the forest it operates in, with general manager Paul Button saying “only takes one or two to get through, then the rest is history”.
“It kind of feels like they’re the predator that goes under the radar, you know, they’re cute and they’re sweet,” he told 1News.
“My drive is probably the fear of what will happen as they spread further.”
Plans for a wallaby-free Aotearoa were scaled up in 2020, and it’s estimated if no control work was undertaken, a third of the North Island could be impacted by the spread of the pest within 50 years.
In February, the government announced it’s putting $19 million into protecting biodiversity from it’s International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy.
Some of that is going towards stopping the spread of wallabies.
“When I heard the news that we were going to get some … I almost had tears of joy,” Hingston said.
“Finally we’re getting some traction.”
