DEATH unleashed

• Published date: 22 January 2022
• Publication title: Mix, The

Bushey Park’s main homestead is not visible from the unsealed start of the dusty drive that climbs and curves through a mature stand of trees

Here at the old, pillared gateway, all that can be seen is a rabbit sunning itself that bolts from view as the car approaches.

Beyond the trees, on a north-facing lawn, is a large, gracious farm house built for Sir John McKenzie, one-time minister of lands.

Beyond it is the site of Bushey Park’s first grand home, built for the farm’s original colonial owner, Francis Rich.

Both spots look down across a large swathe of steep hills and rolling valley paddocks that comprise Bushey Park’s attractive, 1039ha, coastal Otago property, bounded to the north by the Shag River and to the east by the Pacific Ocean.

The present owner, Jim Ironside, who runs beef and sheep on the land, says a resurgent plague of rabbits in Central Otago has not yet reached his farm.

Although the rabbit calicivirus, smuggled into New Zealand in 1997, is killing rabbits on his property later each year, it is still effective against the furry, pasture-ravaging pests.

Not so further inland where rabbit numbers have reportedly jumped five-fold during the past decade, causing serious problems for some farmers and vintners.

It was at Bushey Park almost 140 years ago that the first large-scale attempt to control rabbits in New Zealand began with the disastrous importation and release of stoats and weasels.

It was a much-needed but ill-conceived and unsuccessful cure that the country is still trying to coax back into its Pandora’s box while New Zealand’s wildlife continues to pay the price.

Carolyn King has never been to Bushey Park, despite spending plenty of time in the South Island, primarily in the beech forests of Fiordland and Tasman.

But the Waikato University emeritus professor of zoology knows better than anyone the history-shaping events that took place at this farm during the last quarter of the 19th century.

Prof King was headhunted to come to New Zealand, in 1971, after completing her doctorate on weasels at Oxford University.

She admits to being ‘‘besotted’’ with weasels, but says it was quickly made clear to her that her New Zealand job and career was to be focused on eradication of weasels and stoats.

‘‘I’m here because they were my favourite animal from the beginning, and I’ve been paid for 50 years to find better ways to kill them,’’ Prof King says.

Stoats and weasels, both members of the mustelid family, which includes ferrets, have done enormous damage since being introduced.

Over millions of years, New Zealand had developed a ‘‘globally unique’’ feather and cold-blood-based ecosystem in which invertebrates, reptiles and birds filled all the ground-dwelling niches mammals occupied elsewhere, Prof King said.

Stoats, which are more common here than weasels or ferrets, have been called ‘‘public...