Inquiry #2
My Pest Inquiry
Introduction
For our pest inquiry, we have chosen to do wallabies, if you don't know what a wallaby is you can think of it as a small kangaroo or a big rabbit.
What defines a wallaby as a pest ?
Why are wallabies a pest?There are a few reasons why they are a pest but the first one is they eat a lot, well to be exact they eat 10x more than a rabbit which is a lot. So why is that so bad? There are a lot of other animals that live amongst the wallabies however because the wallabies eat a lot the other animals don’t get the food they need. The second and last reason is they are ripping up our land like rabbits but again worse than rabbits, it would be ok if there was only a hundred but no there's thousands unfortunately.
What are we doing to stop them ?
People were using guns, poison and traps, but why did they stop using these devices?
Well with the guns they weren't killing them fast enough so they reduced the use of guns for the wallabies. The poison with the poison they were killing them but they were killing other non targeted species by spraying it from the sky or putting it on food they eat. with the traps they had to go out very day to reset them and going out every day to reset a hundred traps is kind of hard. So now they are using a bait station, which is a trap with an anticoagulant toxic pindon. These devices are very good because they don’t require someone going out every day to reset it. The poison can survive through rain and reduces the rate of killing non targeted species.
Do wallabies live in New Zealand?
The answer is yes, but no one ever sees them, but why? Because they are nocturnal.this makes it very hard for pest control to hunt them and get on top of them because they put up a website so people can report sightings of wallabies, but no one ever sees them so how do they report them, and when people do see them they don’t report them because they don’t know there a pest.
When did wallabies get into New Zealand ?
The first wallabies came to New Zealand with sir george grey 140 years ago.
They were released in Christchurch and Rotorua, in Christchurch they released the bennets wallaby and in Rotorua they released the dama wallaby. Since the dama wallaby has arrived they have spread over to the kamais and around waikato. The experts say that in 50 years the dama wallaby will have spread over 3,265km to 11,100km of our land.
What should we do to help stop them?
We should tell people what they're doing to our land and native wildlife, so if people see a wallaby they can report them or advertise by putting posters around to get people to help with this issue.
Bibliography
www.stuff.co.nz › farming › wallaby-problem-could-become-a-plague
www.stuff.co.nz › environment › plague-of-w
Rampant wallaby populations bringing New Zealand natives ...
www.tvnz.co.nz › one-news › rampant-wallaby-populations-bringing-...
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