Helping people and wildlife live together

Researchers at Victoria University are uncovering new knowledge about the relationship between people and wildlife and the benefits that could result from good management of the interaction.

And Wayne Linklater, Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences, says the burgeoning population of kaka in Wellington is a good example of the issues being explored by the team.

Wellington is thought to be one of the only cities with a breeding population of the rare, native parrots but Dr Linklater says Wellingtonians’ delight at having kaka back in the city may turn to frustration with the damage they can cause.

"Kaka are already stripping the bark of some exotic trees to get at insects or sap and have ring-barked a number of eucalypts in Wellington reserves and the city’s Botanical Gardens, incurring costs for the city council in tree removal and replanting.

"It’s only a matter of time before we get complaints about them stripping rubber off meter boxes or damaging electrical wire."

One of Dr Linklater’s students, Kerry Charles, is finding out more about the scale of the problem, how big it is likely to get, and which kaka are causing damage – adults or juniors – to help the Wellington City Council decide if action is needed.

This work, funded by the Wellington City Council, is part of a bigger research programme to investigate how biodiversity can be better managed in urban areas by integrating social science with ecology.

Wellington’s feral pigeons (or Spanish rock pigeons) have been a focus, says Dr Linklater, as researchers look for ways of managing conflict between the birds and residents, especially business owners.

"There are frequent complaints from café owners and retailers about pigeon faeces and acidic aromas. However, when culls have been proposed in the past, there’s been a public outcry.

"We are trying to understand how tolerant the public would be to things like destroying eggs, or nesting sites and netting or poisoning pigeons."

But the team is also researching a much simpler strategy that could solve the problem in a couple of years.

"We believe Wellington is at the limits of the kind of environment the Spanish rock pigeon can thrive in. It could be that they are doing so well because people are feeding them so much.

"Public rubbish bins and those put out by food businesses tend to be covered but there are still plenty of people ignoring the signs asking them not to feed the pigeons. If they got less food the population might decline quite rapidly."

The Victoria researchers are also collaborating with colleagues at the University of California, Berkley, to find out more about the relationship between residents of San Francisco and the urban deer population.

Dr Linklater says that strand of the programme has highlighted the fact that public perceptions of a wildlife problem don’t always match the reality.

"Just because complaints increase, it doesn’t mean the problem has got worse. In California the deer population is actually declining but people’s perception is that numbers are as strong as ever.

"It’s important to understand the real situation. Managing wildlife/human conflict is as much about managing people as it is about managing wildlife."