Little Barrier Island is an "ecological disaster" and some tuatara may have to be sacrificed to save other rare species, says a leading scientist.
Victoria University Professor Charles Daugherty yesterday stepped into the row over rat extermination on the island, strongly backing the Department of Conservation's planto dump millions of poison pellets to wipe out kiore, or Polynesian rat.
"No one likes poisons but the choice is, you lose a few tuatara by poisoning and then the population recovers or you just go on feeding them to the rats," he said.
Instead of being the jewel in New Zealand's conservation crown, Little Barrier Island ought to be a "national embarrassment", said Professor Daugherty.
A professor of ecology and acting dean of science at the university, Professor Daugherty was one of the scientists who rediscovered tuatara on the island in the early 1990s after they were thought to have been wiped out.
DoC had come under strong political pressure over kiore eradication on Little Barrier, or Hauturu, and had "bypassed" it for 10 years while it tried to work through the issues with local iwi, he said.
Ngati Wai Trust Board member Hore Parata wants DoC to opt for control of kiore instead of eradication because the rats are regarded as taonga, or treasure, to tangata whenua.
Yesterday DoC hit back at critics of the plan to carry out an aerial drop of 35 tonnes of brodifacoum pellets on the 2817ha island.
"The risk to tuatara from poisoning during the planned eradication is negligible, but unless kiore are removed from the island tuatara will never flourish out of captivity," said Auckland conservator Rod McCallum.
Friends of the Earth director Bob Tait has said the plan should be stopped after brodifacoum was blamed for causing the deaths of three tuatara at Auckland Zoo even though it had not been used there for two years.
Yesterday local hapu Ngati Manuhiri member Christine Baines said many tangata whenua supported DoC.
"Maybe there will be a few losses but isn't a beautiful native New Zealand what everyone wants? It's what we want and at the end of the day there is a bigger picture."
DoC officer Richard Parrish said before rats were removed from some of the islands in the Hen and Chickens group, off the Northland east coast, tuatara juveniles made up less than 2 per cent of the population. After rat eradication that shot up to 43 per cent.
Other threatened or rare species on Little Barrier include the chevron or striped skink, Duvaucel's gecko, titi (Cook's petrel) and giant weta.
