April 27, 2015
Don't judge an island by its size. Or, something like that.
Conservationists in New Zealand are turning a tiny, 200-acre island into a bold experiment to create and manage a new ecosystem of endangered species, The Guardian reports.
Rotoroa Island, off the coast of New Zealand, is being populated with an array of endangered species, some of which were never there to begin with.
“We are deliberately aiming not to recreate an ecosystem, but to create an ecosystem anew,” Jonathan Wilcken, the director of the Auckland Zoo, told The Guardian. “We don’t frankly care very much whether those species existed on Rotoroa Island.”
The zoo, in partnership with the island’s private managers, the Rotoroa Island Trust, is aiming to create an entirely new, managed ecosystem.
The “rewilding” experiment on Rotoroa began with kiwi. Not actual kiwi at first, but just talks of kiwi. The trust approached Auckland Zoo about the potential of bringing New Zealand’s most famous bird – and one threatened with extinction – to the island.
Jo Ritchie, the head ecologist of the program, said that the process of bringing animals to the island has been successful thus far.
“[The animals] seem to love the island," she told The Guardian. "It’s wonderful after all the hard graft of the initial work to walk and hear saddlebacks and whiteheads, see tui [a seasonal bird on the island] gorging themselves on flax flowers, know that kiwi chicks are present and see shorebird nests.”
The island welcomes visitors.
Read more from The Guardian.
