Adventures in the South Pacific: New Zealand's South Island

After spending a week in Australia, we traveled to New Zealand. This was a very different experience from Australia. In Australia, if you saw a new species, there was a fairly good chance that it was a native one. In New Zealand, on the other hand, the native species are almost gone, at least in the populated areas where I visited. The native ecosystems that do remain are few and far between, and are more common on the South Island than the North Island.
Humans arrived in New Zealand much later than they did in Australia, around the year 1200. These colonists, the ancestors of the Maori who still live in New Zealand today, had a devastating effect on New Zealand's wildlife. Among the casualties were the nine or so species of flightless moa, two turkey-sized omnivores called adzebills, giant grazing geese, and the immense Haast's eagle--the largest eagle that ever lived. All were wiped out by the Maori before Europeans so much as set foot on New Zealand, giving the lie to the notion that non-technological societies live in "harmony with nature."
But tracts of native forest still persist on the South Island, some still retaining so much of their primeval character that, hiking along a trail through one, I could easily picture a moa lumbering up it. The podocarps and tree ferns that once covered the islands are still present, and provide shelter for the surviving native birds-- fantails, pigeons, honeyeaters, robins, and the like. At night, kiwis forage for worms, grubs, and snails under the leaf litter, while the remaining predatory birds-- falcons, owls, and the ever-present swamp harrier-- reap their share of the smaller birds.
At first glance it seems New Zealand possesses a vibrant ecosystem, but in reality it is operating with a skeleton crew. Most of the larger herbivores and predators are now extinct, leaving New Zealand's ecosystems, even in the protected areas, feeling oddly empty. The trees are there, but there are no moas to feed on their leaves.


The Haast's eagle and the moa were once the largest predator and herbivore respectively in New Zealand. After they were killed off by human colonists, their extinction has left a major gap in the ecosystem.