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NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665
February 17, 2000
Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University
©2000 Plains Folk
Just as I had hoped, a nor'wester was blowing when I landed in Christchurch, New Zealand. The hot wind blew the chill of the northern hemisphere right out of my bones. Sunny skies over the next few days dispelled all traces of light deprivation owing to the northern winter.
The purpose of this junket to the South Pacific was not merely to recharge my own biological batteries. Oxford University Press is preparing to publish an environmental history of New Zealand, and the authors were gathering in Christchurch to share their work and organize the project. Having studied the history of pest control and weed control in four nations, I was invited to write the chapter on pests and weeds.
Almost all the pests and weeds of New Zealand are of foreign origin--they came mostly from Europe, with a few from North America, South America or Australia. Coming from the plains of North America, a difficult environment with stubborn pests and weeds of its own, it has been amazing for me to see the havoc wrought by seemingly innocent animals and plants introduced into the wrong place. The animals, in particular, are spectacular nuisances.
Pigs, for instance. Brought to New Zealand by Captain Cook more than two centuries ago, they have been rooting up the native bush and tussock grasslands of the country ever since. The copy of New Zealand Pig Hunter magazine I bought at a newsstand, however, indicates that there are some Kiwis who like having pigs at large.
European red deer--closely related to American elk--are another animal problem. They were brought in the 1860s by organizations called "acclimatisation societies"--popular associations mainly made up of sportsmen devoted to the introduction of animals they liked from back home in England. The problem was that the plants of New Zealand evolved without any grazing or browsing mammals, and the country had no predators. So as deer numbers took off, the beasts ate the country up.
This led to massive campaigns aimed at destruction of deer, culminating after the Vietnam war with the deployment of helicopters and automatic weapons. Meanwhile, a few farsighted Kiwis bulldogged some of the feral deer for domestication, leading to the founding of a prosperous deer farming industry.
The two most persistent and destructive mammal pests are smaller ones--the Australian brushtail possum and the European gray rabbit. The possum carries bovine tuberculosis, eats up the native bush and is particularly fond of English roses, inspiring curses from country and city folk alike. The rabbit infests the grasslands and has ruined range and bankrupted sheep farmers from the time of its introduction by acclimatisation societies in the 1860s.
Traveling the grasslands this time, though, I saw few rabbits. In 1997, "a person or persons unknown," as the official reports say, brought in a disease particularly deadly to rabbits--the rabbit calicivirus. The government had considered importing the disease to control the pests but had rejected the proposition, saying it was biologically risky. Someone--presumably some frustrated sheep farmer--then took matters in his own hands. I get the impression from people in sheep country that this "person or persons unknown" is indeed known and that he has never had to pay for his own beer since then.
New Zealand is a peculiar and beautiful country, a joy to visit, but I go there to get new ways of looking at the world, to shake loose of assumptions accumulated by living in the same region my whole life. One of the new views I acquired this time involved rapid changes in altitude and challenges to my iron stomach--the subject of my next column.
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Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339
Editor: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136
Click here to download a photo of Tom Isern suitable
for printing.
(isern.tif - 512KB b&w photo)
Click here to download a photo of Tom Isern suitable for printing.
(isern-h.tif - 426KB b&w photo)