TO CATCH A PREDATOR

Al Bramley pulls up in Hokitika with a cage of female rats and a shopping list that includes permanent markers, tinned beans, and enough Whittaker’s dark chocolate for three days in the bush. He and his team are currently living in a Franz Josef hotel, so anyone coming through Hokitika becomes a mule for DIY necessities. Bramley is heading for a site in Perth River Valley, 12,000 hectares of West Coast wilderness nestled against the backbone of the Southern Alps, and a ninehour walk from the nearest town. For Bramley’s organisation, Zero Invasive Predators, known to locals as ZIP, the area is also a laboratory for technological developments that could prove essential in achieving Predator Free 2050, the target formalised by the National government in 2016 which Sir John Key has called “the most ambitious conservation project attempted anywhere in the world”.

Since 2015, ZIP’s predator-control specialists have been experimenting with elimination techniques using everything from artificial intelligence to mayonnaise. And for the last two years, ZIP and other like-minded organisations around the country have had a stowaway: documentary filmmaker Peter Young, who is attempting to answer the question hanging over the entire Predator Free 2050 movement. Is it really possible to rid Aotearoa of the ever-multiplying torrent of invasive