Pest Animals

Over the years, numerous pest animals have been brought to New Zealand. Some were let go on purpose and some escaped by mistake, but now many introduced animals live wild in our native forest and wild places. Rats were the first and after them came stoats, ferrets, weasels, cats, dogs, pigs, possums, deer, goats, thar and more.

For many of these animals, life in New Zealand is bliss, because they're less likely to be struck down by diseases. Plus,  they don't have their natural enemies around. These predators can feast on our native species without the worry of being eaten themselves, the deer don't have wolves to eat them and so on. 

Our poor native animals! As well as being eaten by these newcomers they have to compete for food with other pest animals like deer, thar and possums. This has led to some of our native species becoming extinct or dwindling in numbers until they are increasingly rare.