Disaster on four small paws
September 2021
New Book Release
Invasive Predators in New Zealand: Disaster on four small paws
Carolyn M. King
Paperback
ISBN 9781990048180
$50
Otago University Press
The story of invasive species in New Zealand is unlike any other in the world. New Zealand’s endemic fauna evolved in isolation until first Polynesians, and then Europeans, arrived with a host of companion animals such as rats and cats in tow, which devastated the fragile populations of unique birds, lizards and insects.
Carolyn M. King brings together the necessary historical analysis and recent ecological research to understand this long, slow tragedy.
Carolyn King has written a book that is as much social and environmental history as it is excellent ecology. She describes in fascinating detail how colonists in 19th Century New Zealand created an ecological disaster that the present Predator Free initiative, at a cost of billions over multiple decades, will attempt to address. Professor King warns that the same law of unintended ecological consequences that plagued our ancestors may confront our present eradication efforts. This landmark book deserves to be read with other classics of New Zealand environmental history – Elton’s The Ecology of Invasions, Guthrie-Smith’s Tutira, and Caughley’s The Deer Wars. – Professor Emeritus Charles Daugherty
Media
OAR - Jeff Harford interviews Carolyn M. King on The OARsome Morning Show
https://bit.ly/CarolynMKing
An extract from the book on The Spinoff
https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/28-09-2021/teeth-and-claws-and-tenacity-how-rats-came-to-new-zealand/
Review (of hardback edition): Forest & Bird Magazine Issue 377 Spring 2020, p59
