A small brown duck that cannot fly and doesn’t quack used to paddle the shores of an isolated and precious New Zealand island that is 660km south of Bluff in the Subantarctic.
Then, in the early 19th century, ships arrived and rat stowaways scurried ashore and ate the Campbell Island teal for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Thought extinct, less than 100 ducks were found in the 1980s, clinging to an islet mostly surrounded by 100m cliffs and 2km away.
After a touch-and-go captive breeding programme, and the rats being poisoned in 2001, 159 ducks were released back to Motu Ihupuku / Campbell Island.
Many more birds on the brink of extinction are not yet so lucky.
They are still in desperate need of pest eradication on island havens where they need to breed — but now there is a chance it might happen.
Multiple conservation agencies, in different countries including New Zealand, have banded together to achieve the Island-Ocean Connection Challenge (IOCC), which hopes to fundraise for rewilding of 40 islands in five years.
Pest eradication is a vital part of the plan.
This month, the Otago Daily Times joined a multi-agency mission called Operation Endurance that took conservationists to New Zealand’s Subantarctic Islands, including one that is pest-free and one that is five times the size, riddled with pests and on the IOCC list.
There were stark differences.
Pest-free Campbell Island was teeming with birds.
Maukahuka/Auckland Island had mice running under your feet.
The Department of Conservation’s (Doc) national eradication manager Stephen Horn stresses that the Subantarctic Islands are vitally important for biodiversity at a global scale.
New Zealand has more species of seabird that breed here than anywhere else in the world, and some range vast distances well beyond our territory.
He also stressed the importance of the ODT being on Operation Endurance.
"If people don’t know, they can’t care.
Pest-free island life
Everyone arriving on Campbell island has their bags checked by Doc staff in a closed room, just in case there are hidden rodents waiting to jump out.
There were no mice or rats found and there was a welcome party of teal bobbing about in the appropriately-named Perseverance Harbour.
On land, there were albatross sitting on chicks with zero risk of being nibbled to death by rats.
Dozens of brown pipits hopped around and, occasionally, the long-beaked Campbell snipe burst out of bushes, unexpectedly at knee level.
Before the rat eradication there were only a few snipe left.
They had resorted, like the teal, to living on another sheer-cliffed islet out at sea and were discovered in 1997.
They are now repopulating Campbell — unlike the flightless teal, the snipe could fly back home on its own.
The island is also a precious home for the hoiho yellow-eyed penguin — the poster-child on New Zealand’s $5 banknote.
The health of its population here is critical to know because it is on the brink of being lost on New Zealand’s South Island.
There are only 160 breeding pairs left on the South Island and Rakiura Stewart Island after a rapid, 20-year decline, says the Yellow-Eyed Penguin Trust.
The most recent survey of hoiho on Campbell was — astonishingly — 33 years ago.
At that time, there were 400 breeding pairs.
Now, a six-strong research team has been undertaking a new survey of Campbell’s hoiho numbers that a Doc report from last year says is "eagerly anticipated ... although suggestions are that numbers have declined".
The team was on the island when the Operation Endurance visited.
Its senior science adviser Dr Mel Young said her team had spent 15 weeks, in two stints over two years, spread across the island searching for hoiho.
The team has also been collecting samples of disease found on the birds.
She remembered an to look at hoiho in 2008 and "being glued" to her hut window, watching a hundred coming up the beach.
Another hoiho survey team member Thor Ruru explains how gruelling the work can get now, trying to find them on Campbell.
"I fell over on the rocks trying to catch a penguin, it then flipper-bashed my injured knee and I had to do a 12km walk back."
In better news, Mr Ruru has also undertaken an "incidental" research project about the teal, based on timed photographs he took of them.
The research is expected to find that the duck, previously observed to be nocturnal, is now partying all-day-long.
"They have reclaimed the island and are conspicuous during the day.
"Seeing a little duck that doesn’t seem to care about anything is quite uplifting when having a low day, in the rain.
"They are still breeding and we need to keep protecting them."
Mr Ruru — Te reo Māori for New Zealand’s native owl, the morepork — changed his name from Elley recently, to honour his love of birds and also his own Māori heritage.
Ngāi Tahu representatives were also on Operation Endurance, strengthening past and important connections with the southern islands, learning more about the islands’ biodiversity and helping clear tracks for conservation work.
Vincent Leith is descended from several early Ngāi Tahu whanau who resided around Te Ara A Kewa (Foveaux Strait) and Te Akau Tai Toka (Catlins coast) and his whanau still live at Waikawa.
He says he feels a deep pride in his heritage and a strong commitment to the whenua/land and the islands’ restoration.
Elders, including his Taua/grandmother Hazel Leith had shared stories about living off the land and it was "difficult to come to terms that not all the birds and fish in the stories were around or abundant today".
Botanist Brian Rance, who had joined the Ngāi Tahu team on the mission, talked to the ODT about an example of the island’s recovery — its brightly-coloured, unique plants including herbaceous megaherbs with big leaves and showy flowers.
It has not been a good flowering year, for unclear but probably climatic reasons.
"Hopefully we will see the same on Auckland island next, where you only see these special plants on cliffs now.
"Things will just boom away after pest eradication there."
The challenge of Auckland
Even weevils have disappeared from Auckland island, thought to be eaten by the mice.
"Good things come in small packages," says conservation dog handler Fin Buchanan, talking about his small dog Piki, not weevils.
Mr Buchanan has been training and using conservation dogs to sniff out rodents on islands for decades.
The proficient Piki, a small, quiet, wiry dog that loves a cuddle and is described by Mr Buchanan as a "purpose-bred mongrel", trotted her way round Campbell Island, nose to the ground, and found no rats, thankfully.
Piki’s Auckland adventure was a different, high-adrenaline experience.
She was passed down a short ladder from the top of the Navy ship HMNZS Canterbury on to a Navy RHI boat.
The boat was then winched out and down into the Southern Ocean before jetting across the ocean at high speed with Piki’s paws on the hand rail.
"It did make me wonder what we were doing," said Mr Buchanan with a slight smile.
Very soon, after landing, Piki spotted a mouse on the other side of a tussock.
The mouse ran under a conservation workers’ hut but there was little point in Piki killing it.
The island is full of them and the only solution is to poison them all.
It’s a fact, but mysterious, that mice, not rats, made it to Auckland, but rats, not mice, made it to Campbell.
Spotting the mouse was a reward for Piki after not being able to find any on Campbell Island, said Mr Buchanan.
The treat for Auckland Island’s biodiversity will be when all the mice are gone, along with the pigs and feral cats — all three must be eradicated to revive the island.
There are 25 native bird species that can no longer breed here and are clinging on for dear life on smaller islands, desperately in need of coming home to Auckland Island.
Eradication manager Mr Horn said the challenge on Auckland Island was to ensure pests were entirely eradicated and a clever few pests didn’t learn how to get away and start breeding again.
There were "complex" problems to be overcome, but a feasibility study had been undertaken to determine a method that would work.
Firstly, temporary infrastructure needed to be installed on the island, including hangars for helicopters and accommodation for around 20 workers.
Subject to funding, the pests will then be eradicated in this order: pigs, which will take a year or two; mice, the following year; then the feral cats.
Some of the island’s forest was wind-sculpted and "mind-bogglingly impenetrable" and a feasibility study had proven that cats ranged in there and came up with the best solutions.
A grid of cameras at 500m intervals would provide a remote surveillance network giving real-time data about where any surviving cats were hiding.
A new feral cat poison that can be deployed from the air was also being trialled.
At the end, a few caught and tagged pigs may need to be released again, temporarily.
They are sociable animals so the technique could help flush out any remaining pigs.
The feasibility study was funded by the New Zealand government but the start date of the plan is dependent on the IOCC-backed fundraising plan and there is an urgent need to attract more donors from New Zealand and overseas.
Mr Horn stresses the global importance of the planned pest eradications on Auckland and also on the other New Zealand islands on the IOCC list, including Rakiura/Stewart Island.
"These are pioneering operations at a new level of complexity but New Zealand is a world leader out of necessity.
"They will preserve unique wildlife and achieve their habitat protection on a scale that enables whole ecosystems to recover."
