On a wing and a prayer

A Gibson's Wandering Albatross swoops majestically, showcasing its 3.63m wingspan. Photo / NZ Herald

New Zealand fairy terns are slight, plucky birds the size of blackbirds, whose nests are shallow scrapings in the sand. Only 36 are left in the world. Earlier this year, some schmuck trod on one and killed it.

The chick was the size of a bumblebee and a few days away from being able to fly. Its brief life was played out in a fenced-off patch of Northland's Mangawhai beach, a Department of Conservation breeding project.

"It was devastating, awful, to see the parents hanging around for a few days after," recalls DOC volunteer Jane Vaughan.

Three other Mangawhai chicks survived.

The exquisite vulnerability of the fairy tern is the global conservation crisis in miniature. Creatures die out all the time, but many scientists believe we're in the midst of the sixth great mass extinction the world has experienced (the last one wiped out the dinosaurs).

Earth may lose nearly half its species within this century, they warn: half of all mammals and almost half all amphibians are in decline; species are dying out at a faster rater than ever.

Unlike past mass extinctions, this one is human-made. Plants and animals are assailed on all fronts: habitat destruction, over-fishing, over-hunting, introduced pests and human-borne disease.

Conservationists are scrambling to figure out which species are the most important to save, considering factors such as genetic distinctiveness or role in the ecosystem.

Says Otago university philosopher of biology James Maclauren: "Just how many species go extinct may not be the thing that impinges on you and me; it's which species go extinct."

Conservationism has its critics. In The Skeptical Environmentalist, former Greenpeace activist and eco-heretic Bjorn Lomborg argues on a strict cost-benefit analysis, the consequences of species extinction are not serious enough to warrant the expense of trying to stem them, and we're better off trying to adapt -eating other food sources, for example.

He accused conservationists of distorting evidence to invoke environmental apocalypse - and has been attacked for doing the same thing to advance his version.

We're not always rational about conservation. When the white tiger that fatally mauled Zion Wildlife Park keeper Dalu Mncube was shot last month, people wailed, "How could you?" Turns out the white tiger is a freak of nature rather than a separate species, but the upwelling illustrates the charisma effect: humans are suckers for pretty faces.

Charismatic animals - think tigers, kiwis, giant pandas - arouse more sympathy and donations than less obviously attractive, yet equally or more endangered species.

Yet we can't afford to be lookist when it comes to fending off extinction. According to DOC's last complete count, 2788 New Zealand plant and animal species are threatened to some degree, and they're not all pretty.

New counts are being made that rank species by level of threat, and flag at-risk species. So far, scientists have identified 77 types of birds threatened and 93 at risk; 180 plant families threatened and 651 at risk.

By a happy geological accident, because our islands have been isolated from other land masses for about 80 million years, New Zealand is an ecological mother lode of living fossils and weird wonders. The bulk of our species are endemic - found only here.

That isolation, combined with our world-renowned conservation efforts - notably our intensive pest eradication and control - means prospects are brighter for many of our endangered species than for those elsewhere.

But there is still urgency. DOC ecologist Colin Miskelly says if it weren't for pest control, including the use of 1080 poison, those numbers would be far higher for birds.

Forests without pest control are like "silent cathedrals", he says. "The trees are still there but the birds have gone."

DOC spent $135.6 million on managing our natural heritage in the year to June 2008, compared with $111 million on managing recreational opportunities (such as camping grounds).

Miskelly argues our unique biodiversity is part of our heritage and identity, worth protecting for that alone.

But if you don't get goose bumps from hearing a tui sing, there are more prosaic reasons for conservation. Our biodiversity is a big drawcard for tourists and immigrants. Certain endemic species may hold clues to medical breakthroughs, or other technological advances.

And conservation goals dovetail with our export interests. Our much-vaunted clean, green image is already tarnished by British supermarket bans on orange roughy fished in New Zealand waters because of sustainability concerns, for example.

Greenpeace is pressuring the two main supermarket chains here to sell only sustainable seafood. Oceans campaigner Karli Thomas argues the quota management system is failing to protect our fisheries.

Three out of eight orange roughy stocks (areas) have been fished to collapse, while southern bluefin tuna - mostly exported to Japan - is listed by the Australian Government as critically endangered.

And extinctions may reflect wider changes that will eventually hurt humans directly.

Says Otago University zoologist Phil Bishop, "Maybe all these emerging infectious diseases - Sars, swine flu - could be early warning signs that we're screwing around with things that we shouldn't be screwing around with and we need to wise up, otherwise they're really going to do us a nasty."

Ancients in evolution

To some, Archey's frog is an unlovely pipsqueak of an amphibian, mottled and smaller than a man's thumb.

To Phil Bishop, it is exquisite."It's like it is tattooed: a unique-looking frog much better than the horrible, rat-type kiwi."

Bishop, a zoologist at Otago University, is an unapologetic frog-man.

Once he revived an ailing Archey's frog with CPR, massaging its tiny heart.

Bishop discovered a frog in Africa, started New Zealand Frog Week, and was part of a team that discovered a cure for chytrid disease, the fungus that has hit frog populations the world over (the cure, bathing in eye drop solution, is only a stop-gap as it cannot be delivered to frogs in the wild).

Dedicated efforts from Bishop and others mean the steep decline in New Zealand frog numbers is stabilising, but more work is needed before frogs will be self-sustaining.

Bishop worries frogs will be the first to suffer from budget cuts to the Department of Conservation. He hopes a bank, or another corporate, will sponsor frogs in the same way BNZ sponsors kiwis.

"Our frogs are evolutionarily ancient: the basal linkage of modern-day frogs. They're an important piece of the jigsaw."

NATIVE FROGS

* Four native frogs, three extinct since humans arrived.
*
Archey's frog, up to 38mm long, is the world's most endangered amphibian.
* Very similar frogs co-existed with dinosaurs 200 million years ago.
* Native frogs lack external ears and communicate by smell rather than croaks.

Flying in the face of extinction

Majestic albatrosses are the best-known of our endemic seabirds. We're known as the world's albatross capital, with more than half of the 22 species breeding here.

Despite efforts by the fishing industry and conservationists, eight species face declining numbers from fishing threats. About 1600 albatrosses a year are killed in New Zealand waters.

As a scientist with the BirdLife Global Seabird Programme, Susan Waugh researches seabird bycatches: birds that get tangled in trawling cables or fatally wounded by hooks from long lines concealed in fish or squid.

Techniques such as night fishing and distractor streamers reduce the bycatch. But Waugh says a reluctance to change practices and a lack of monitoring at sea are the biggest impediments.

"There's this flagrant disregard for the rules because they know they're out of view."

Waugh admits to a lifelong "fatal attraction" to the birds. "They're very beautiful birds and they have very human life cycles."

When she researched her whakapapa and discovered her Te Atiawa ancenstry, with the iwi's special connection to albatrosses, it only reinforced her sense of obligation.

"It's a question of kaitiakitanga. How can we allow thousands of birds to be killed a year when albatrosses are knocking on extinction's door?"

SEABIRDS
* 37 seabird species breed only in New Zealand.
* Tens of thousands of seabirds a year are killed in our fisheries.
* The royal albatross weighs 9-12kg and can fly at 80km/h.

Fight for bottom line

For most of us, squid is either seafood or a grotesque freak-show from alien ocean depths. For Steve O'Shea, a marine biologist at Auckland University of Technology and world-renowned squid expert, they are a career-long fascination.

He predicted the existence of the 495kg, 10m-long colossal squid before one was hauled up by New Zealand fishermen in the Ross Sea two years ago, now on display in Te Papa.

In the 1990s he campaigned vociferously against bottom trawling and its indiscriminate destruction of deep sea life and habitat, knowing it was probably driving to extinction species that had not yet even been discovered.

Agitating took a toll on his health, but helped prod the rule-makers into action. Today, 31 per cent of New Zealand waters are protected from bottom trawling.

Because of the time it takes for populations to regenerate "it's too little, too late" for some squid. The best hope lies in aquaculture. "It has its costs but it's the lesser of two evils."

Or, more radically: "The kindest thing we should do is fish to extinction all of these commercial fish stocks, and then everything else is protected."

O'Shea would be happy to see humans eating only one fish species, one mussel, one prawn. "We don't need the luxury of consuming 100 different species. A fish is a fish."

SQUID
* 86 squid, 42 octopuses and one vampire squid occur in NZ waters.
* Five species face imminent extinction - three were discovered as recently as 1999.
* Squid is important in the diet of many other species, such as whales.