Whanganui hill country was facing a population explosion of wild peafowl<\/a>.<\/p>\nNothing had changed since, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem\u2019s just getting worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Including peafowl in the plan wouldn\u2019t be enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re not worse than deer and goats, they\u2019re just another pest.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve got to put money towards research on a way of getting rid of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trapping of stoats and possums was effective, but it meant peafowl had fewer predators eating their eggs.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost farmers, from here right up to Raetihi, all over the show, have got problem peacocks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey eat a lot of grass, so the more grass they eat, the less grass we\u2019ve got for our stock.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peafowl are native to India and Sri Lanka. They became naturalised in Aotearoa mainly through \u201cbenign neglect of birds kept for display\u201d, according to New Zealand Birds Online.<\/p>\n
The largest populations are in wooded lowlands and coastal farmland in the North Island, including the upper Whanganui River catchment, northern Mahia Peninsula and South Kaipara Head.<\/p>\n
Kiwi geologist and ornithologist Charles Alexander Fleming recorded numerous peafowl east and west of the Whanganui River in a 1947 Birds New Zealand paper (formerly New Zealand Bird Notes).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe birds were in all cases wild, not associated with homesteads, and have apparently become well established, at least in a limited area,\u201d Fleming wrote.<\/p>\n
Dan Hurley, Horizons\u2019 team leader for pest animals, said the council had advised landowners on managing peafowl.<\/p>\n
The council was aware that some farmers had tried night shooting, live trapping and other methods.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeacocks can become wary very quickly, which makes future control harder.<\/p>\n
\u201cInvertebrates make up a large portion of their diet; they can cause damage scratching through soil. As with other birds like geese, fouling of pasture is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
The council had no robust estimate of the region\u2019s peafowl population, and knew of no standardised method for collecting numbers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIncreased concerns reported to Horizons from landowners indicate a large increase in numbers and a spread in distribution.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout an effective control method across different land uses and landscapes, the numbers grow unchecked.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other contributors could be the availability of food sources and nesting habitats, Hurley said.<\/p>\n
Council officers will now consider which species will be added to the proposed pest management plan before it goes out for consultation next year. <\/p>\n
Noam M\u0101nuka Lazarus (Ng\u0101ti Wh\u0101tua o Kaipara) is a multimedia journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThey\u2019re everywhere, and of course, no one has really been shooting them, so they\u2019ve grown in numbers.\u201d Peafowl…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[33846,806,115,13982,5205,163651,17240,226,111,139,69,411,291840,19028,2170,8467,763,6739,147,684,59797,1883,15391,406],"class_list":["post-592346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-along","tag-as","tag-calls","tag-continues","tag-council","tag-designated","tag-grow","tag-growing","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-peacock","tag-peacocks","tag-pest","tag-plan","tag-population","tag-reviews","tag-river","tag-science","tag-there","tag-unchecked","tag-whanganui","tag-wild","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}