Rudman's city: The only good ferret is a dead ferret

By BRIAN RUDMAN

When it comes to unwelcome caterpillars and mosquitoes, there's no shortage of Government funds to aid their extermination. And apart from a few sensitive people living in the spray path, we as a community agree it is the proper thing to do.

But when it comes to cute furry killers who feed on kiwis, little blue penguins and rare lizards, all we do is wring our hands and worry about pet owners' rights.

If any good can come from the lunatic behaviour of the people who took five ferrets for a stroll on environmentally sensitive Great Barrier Island two Sundays ago, it is the lesson that the environment is too precious to be left hostage to the whims of such people.

When confronted, we're told, the pet-owner claimed to be ignorant of the ban on taking pets to the protected islands of the Hauraki Gulf. I find that hard to swallow. Surely every Aucklander knows the gulf islands, particularly the remote ones such as Great Barrier, are rare havens of native animal life. They are such jewels only because they escaped the disastrous invasion of exotic predators such as ferrets, possums and Norway rats.

Also, as owners of five ferrets, these people are obviously ferret nuts and well aware of the history of these carnivorous killers. It's hard to conceive their not being up to date with the chequered past of their little friends' position in this country. Particularly because, being owners of more than three ferrets, they are required by law to have a permit from the Department of Conservation, certifying them as fit and proper to be ferret owners.

In obtaining this permit one presumes they had to satisfy DoC of their awareness of the at-risk status of our native fauna.

Whether certified owners - or illegals - their behaviour shows what little regard they have for the systems put in place to protect wildlife and both they and their pets should be dealt with accordingly.

My hope is that the irresponsible behaviour of these people will provide the trigger to encourage the Government to declare open season on all domestic and farmed ferrets. Of all the crazy decisions of the Lange Government, the 1985 regulation permitting the keeping of ferrets as pets or as farm animals was one of the wackiest.

Just over 100 years before, the New Zealand Agent-General in London had somehow managed to round up 1217 ferrets to send home as part of the biological warfare then being waged against the imported rabbit. That was the first year. The next year, another 4000 were sent.

To give the domesticated ferret stock being sent to New Zealand a bit of get up and go, the migrants were forced to share quarters with wild European polecats. It was the resultant cross-breed progeny that spread out through the grasslands of Canterbury and Otago and into the forests beyond to do their worst.

Until 1903 these killers were protected by law. But as the birdlife died out, the first control campaigns began in the 1930s. Then 50 years later, fitch (farmed ferrets) farming was hailed as one of the answers to our economic woes. By the late 1980s, the short-lived fitch fur fashion fad in Europe died and with it the New Zealand industry.

The ferrets - some new imports, others recaptured descendants of the 19th-century polecat halfbreeds - either escaped or were let loose from the ruined farms into the neighbouring fields and bush. Northland forests, formerly ferret-free, were hit particularly hard, resulting in a rapid decline in kiwi numbers.

Pet ferrets are supposed to be desexed. Maybe, but as far as I know, that process doesn't remove their bird-killing teeth. Ferret fanciers also claim that domesticated ferrets are too soft to survive in the wild. We have 120 years of mayhem in our fields and forests to put the lie to that piece of wishful thinking.

In 1999, the Minister of Conservation of the day, Nick Smith, introduced a discussion paper entitled "What can we do about our ferrets?" He said: "There needs to be substantially tighter controls on keeping ferrets than at present. There is a need to balance people's rights to keep ferrets with New Zealand's responsibility to protect our wildlife."

We are still awaiting the response of his successor, Sandra Lee.

Let's hope that the incident at Great Barrier Island strengthens the case for ferret extermination. I'm all for rights and freedoms. But Dr Smith's talk of some God-given right to keep ferrets is ridiculous.

What next? That we have the right to keep lions and tigers and anthrax spores? Over the past 1000 years we humans have brought the local ecosystem to its knees. Eliminating domestic ferrets is hardly a giant step in the right direction. But it is a start.