Pristine Islands

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We're the third major island on

the planet.

In New Zealand, the one right at the bottom.

Welcome to

Stewart Island in New Zealand.

I'm Jim Metzner, and this

is the pulse of the planet.

Peter Tate, a former

forest ranger and fisherman,

has been a long-time Stewart Island

resident and nature guide.

Stewart Island's got a, something

of a mystique in the country. I'm not

quite sure why. It's just

that we're only 20 miles off the mainland,

so we're not that remote.

But it's always been seen as

a wee bit of a special place.

We've got a very small population

of about 400 people live here.

It's a big island. It's

440,000 acres.

We all live within

28 kilometres, so we're

quite a compact little community.

On Stewart Island and

nearby Ulver Island,

it's possible to experience birds

close up. Ulver Island's

about 600 acres.

Most of it is

national park. It's as

close,

as to pristine, as any place in New Zealand

you'll ever be allowed into.

And by pristine, I don't mean the

robins come to meet us and there's a few

parakeets around. By pristine, I mean

the way New Zealand was before people

came here. It's as close as you

can get to it.

That up there is a parakeet.

There's also yellowhead mohua

calling here.

That's a parakeet.

Yellowhead.

Parakeet.

Yellowhead.

Parakeet.

Kaka.

Yellowhead.

Originally, New Zealand was relatively predator-free.

New Zealand is a funny country.

We broke away from Gondwanaland something like 85 million years ago.

What's the name?

Gondwanaland.

It's the great southern continent.

Australia, New Zealand, South America, Antarctica,

all part of Gondwanaland.

We separated into four different areas now that we have.

We separated about, I understand, about 85 million years ago,

and we brought with us none of the precursors of mammals,

or if we did, we didn't retain them.

So we're a country of birds.

We do have three land mammals, three species of bats.

So we're a country of birds,

and we actually don't have a great deal of variety.

We don't have a great deal of variety in our bird life either.

Because of the lack of predators,

there were a number of flightless birds in New Zealand,

including the legendary moa.

The moa was a big bird.

The biggest could browse up to three metres off the ground,

up to nine feet off the ground, sort of like ostriches.

They were found right through New Zealand,

probably not Stewart Island,

although there has been bones found here,

but they were found right through New Zealand.

And you can imagine,

when Māori arrived from the Pacific,

here was these whacking great lumps of protein wandering around

that were relatively easy to kill

because they had no sense of fear of...

They didn't know what mammals were.

And mammals were completely outside of their experience

and probably were pretty much ignored.

The moa was hunted to extinction by the Māori,

who first arrived in New Zealand about 950 years ago.

They brought rats with them on their canoes,

and when European settlers,

who arrived in the 1600s,

they brought more mammals to the islands,

many of which preyed on local birds.

When the Europeans arrived,

they brought two more species of rats.

They also brought cats with them, domestic cats.

They brought dogs.

They brought all the normal livestock.

Also deer, rabbits, stoats, weasels.

We've had huge damage done in our forests

by browsing, grazing animals.

Quite apart from the damage done to bird life by predators.

So, on Stewart and all the islands and elsewhere,

New Zealand began a process of eradication of predatory species.

One pregnant rat in theoretically ideal conditions in 12 months

can have between 13,000 and 17,000 descendants.

And in six to eight years,

that island would have been completely wiped

of those bird species that we put over there.

So, we've had to learn how to deal to them.

And poisons, quite frankly, are the only way.

Department of Conservation, as a government department,

charged with protecting our wildlife

and our backcountry areas.

And they have developed the systems

that has actually been exported all over the world.

Now, after the rats and other predators

have been mostly eliminated on Stewart and Nova Islands,

bird populations have begun to be restored.

New Zealand's most iconic bird, the kiwi,

is still a threatened species.

They're a large bird, about the size of a turkey, and flightless.

Have a look at a kiwi.

The leg bones are solid.

So, they're not hollow leg bones, they're solid leg bones.

There is no muscle across the breast at all.

So, no muscle for flights.

They do have little, almost like little claws in place of the wings.

So, if you fossick through the feathers,

you'll find these tiny little claw-like appendages.

And the rib cage of a kiwi is so weak

that if you do to it, you've just killed your kiwi.

The kiwis mate for life.

The pair will control personal territory of anything up to 50 acres.

They don't feed together as a pair.

They'll separate, but they do communicate.

And their call is designed, I think, to travel through forest.

It's a high screaming call.

So, here's a male kiwi.

Although it's rare to see a kiwi or hear its call,

what you will hear on Stewart and all of the islands

are tuis, kakas, bellbirds, parakeets,

and the other species of birds that make the New Zealand soundscape so extraordinary.

They don't just from a bird's eye view.

We see them everywhere around the world.

A few of them are on the

north coast.

. . .

Our thanks to nature guide Peter Tate from Stewart Island, New Zealand.

I'm Jim Metzner, and this is The Pulse of the Planet.