Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by arfar | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

arfar

Hopefully not ALL the mammals. New Zealand does have some native mammals. The short tailed bat [0]

[0] http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/native-animals/bats/

View on HN

I hear there are also about 4 and a half million homo sapiens there, though presumably they are an introduced species.

And 40 million sheep, though this is down from 70 million in 1982.

This invasive species is slowly being relocated to Australia.

...they've started coming back.

Thanks Tony?

It would just be easier to reclassify NZ as Australian territory.

Being more serious NZ has the right to join as an Australian state when they want. It is really an historical accident that they never did.

I couldn't imagine they'd want to do that after all this time.

Australians and New Zealanders like to pretend that we are really different, but we are very similar. In reality we operate as a single country economically, but on the sporting field that we are two countries.

That is not reality at all, there is very close collaboration between the two countries but its like saying Canada and the US operate as a single country economically.

There are also significant differences ideologically between the societies as a stereotype.

New Zealand's economy maps closer to New South Wales' economy than NSW does to Western Australia's economy (these are Australian States). If you look on the back of any product for sale in Australia or New Zealand you will see they are made for both markets. Citizens from either country can go and work and live in either country without a visa. None of these apply to the USA and Canada.

Politically New Zealand and Australia are different, but I think a lot of that difference is due to Australian federation and our electoral systems. If New Zealand were to join as an Australian state and use the Australian system of preferential voting (instant runoff) I think we would see a convergence in politics. I don't see New Zealand joining the Australian federation anytime soon, but if there was a desire it could happen pretty easily.

A lot of people are also fond of the recreational hunting species (Red/fallow/sambar/rusa/sika/whitetail deer, chamois, tahr, goats, wild pigs, wild cattle... and maybe a tiny population of moose). They are controlled to some extent via the occasional cull, (and if they die as a result of the 1080 drops, DOC's official position is a shrug), but for the most part their numbers are kept low by recreational hunting, and economics...

...when deer population numbers get high, the animals become economically viable to harvest for meat by helicopter, so the WARO (Wild Animal Recovery Operation) flights take off, shoot all that they can, and then export it to Germany, who loves wild venison. The recreational hunters shake their fists at the helicopters, but it keeps the animal numbers at an acceptable level.

It's a bit of overstatement, but the general idea of getting rid of the invasive mammals would be great.

A massive project though, getting rid of animals trying to survive is incredibly hard - one of my uncles worked on clearing Motuihe in the Auckland harbour, and they had a hell of a time with the rabbits - when threatened, they go into a 2-week breeding cycle, and were hiding in holes halfway down the cliffs!

There was a great Nerdnite talk about those bats not long ago http://auckland.nerdnite.com/2014/10/05/nerd-nite-auckland-c...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com