Pristine Places Models for New Zealand’s Future

“[Trapper and conservationist Darren] Peters was sailing with Heritage Expeditions as part of a line-up of conservationists on board to explain and interpret New Zealand’s singular ecosystem for guests,” Jamie Lafferty writes for the Financial Times. “The [88-cabin ice-strengthened expedition cruise ship] Adventurer was taking a week to visit the unendingly impressive Fiordland National Park, as well as some of New Zealand’s Subantarctic Islands, sightseeing on one hand, but deep-ending guests with complex conservation strategies on another.

“Chief among these was the hugely ambitious Predator Free 2050 project, which aims to see the whole country cleared of five especially damaging intruders: ferrets, possums, rats, stoats and weasels.”

Lafferty ends:

“On Stewart [Island] we’d seen people living with nature; Fiordland National Park we’d seen what happens when people had left an area to thrive. Snares was a truly wild place, so distant no pest could reach it, so inhospitable no person could live there. A pristine place. ‘And that,’ explained [former director general of the Department of Conservation] Lou Sanson, ‘is what we’re trying to get back to.'”

Original article by Jamie Lafferty, Financial Times, September 22, 2023.