The Hauraki Gulf is studded with over 50 islands from grand barrier isles such as Aotea to small rocky islets, swept by salt spray. These islands are like sparkling jewels in the gulf’s conservation crown; many being havens for native biodiversity, either freed from invading pests through eradications, or never having suffered invasions by our worst mammal pests including browsers such as possums, or predators such as cats, rats, mice, stoats, and dogs.
Not far from our biggest city, about 20 km to the Northeast, lies a little island called Maria/Ruapuke. A former WWII bombing practice target, roughly 150 metres long by 100 metres wide it doesn’t look like much, but it’s here that the dream of a predator free New Zealand began.
In 1960, Ruapuke/Maria Island was successfully cleared of rats that had been decimating the population of takahikare/white-faced storm petrels that breed there. In 1964, the island and the nearby David Rocks were declared the first islands in the world to have rodents eradicated from them, a new idea for conservation science. The approach to rat eradication became a model for other predator eradication programs globally.