DEER VS MOA
My guess is that unless you’re steeped in the world of biology or ecology, you’re much the same. To ground us in the discussion, here’s what I’ve learned, starting with a brief backstory of the moa.
THERE WERE ESSENTIALLY THREE PHASES OF MOA HISTORY :
1. New Zealand separated from Gondwanaland around 80 million years ago. Following this, moa evolved and became a key part of New Zealand’s ecosystems, where they had few predators. With no unnatural processes or interventions, the system operated within the natural rhythms of life. The moa population was controlled by the availability of food, but they also had to contend with a formidable predator, the world’s largest but now extinct species of eagle, Haast’s eagle. Research has shown that for approximately 6,000 years prior to the arrival of humans in New Zealand the moa population was relatively stable. As for how big that population was, we’ll get to that later.
The first human settlers, the Polynesians, arrived in the 13th century. They established infrastructure, cleared land (mostly by burning), introduced dogs (kurī) and rats (kiore), but, curiously, not chickens (which are called moa elsewhere in Polynesia), and hunted. With the first human influence on the isles in millions of years, the ‘natural’ balance of the ecosystems began to shift. Not only did things merely shift, but it is widely accepted that the moa were driven to extinction through some combination of hunting, habitat loss or change, and perhaps competition with kiore - thus disrupting a
