Weka v dogs

Forest and Bird, Issue 278, 1 November 1995, Page 3

Weka v dogs

I was horrified on reading the update in your August issue on Forest and Bird’s weka project, that a rogue dog, which had killed most of the weka released in the first two years, had been found a home out of the Karangahake district. I cannot understand why that dog was not destroyed. Dogs and cats will never be extinct, but our precious native birds will be if we all do not take more responsibility. Ann McNair Te Kouma, Coromandel Ann Graeme responds: We entirely agree. But we faced a dilemma. The weka project relies on the support and goodwill of the local community. The offending dog was not roaming, but killing weka crossing its own property, and its owner was cooperative. Destroying the dog risked alienating neighbours and jeopardising the project. We therefore found the dog a good city home, further away from vulnerable wildlife. The situation illustrates the huge and often unrecognised threat that all dogs, not just "rogue" ones, pose to ground birds such as weka, kiwi and penguins.