Kia Ora,

My name is Anna and I am a 13-year-old intermediate student from Auckland, New Zealand. I believe that every house should have a Rodent poison station around their houses. A goal By 2050, every single part of New Zealand will be completely free of rats, stoats, and possums. To help achieve this goal. all the houses should at least have one rodent station outside their house.

Rats eat all the native NZ birds, they eat wetas and other insects, snails, frogs, lizards, tuatara, birds, and bats, as well as the flowers, fruits, and seeds of plants. A lot of New Zealanders are passionate about protecting their unique native wildlife and the Predator Free vision will bring many benefits to Aotearoa. Achieving the goal of a predator-free New Zealand by 2050 will require a massive team effort. But we can't stop now, lots of our creatures still aren't safe from predators, we want to create a New Zealand, a safe predator-free sanctuary for our native birds and animals. 

Rats were first introduced in the country in the 13th century. Rats came to New Zealand with Maori voyagers while Norway rats and ship rats traveled to here on wailing ships with early European settlers. Before them, the only mammals on the island were tiny finger-sized bats! Rats breed easily, But in New Zealand, they are a logical disaster! Birdlife in New Zealand came incredibly diverse! But many of them are flightless, which means it's very hard to escape or run away such as kiwis.

Many of them don't exist anywhere in the world. They are easy prey for hungry rodents, they have wiped up a quarter of New Zealand natives, but if the rat problem isn't addressed many more of the uniques species are going extinct….. But New Zealand without rats allows its unique birds to fly and thrive again! You get to hear bird songs in places that are currently silent. 

If every house has at least one rodent poison station around their house it will all make a huge difference.

But how would you supply them?

The government could supply plastic stations and poison blocks to large hardware outlets such as Bunnings and Mitre 10 where people could collect them free of charge with a 2-month supply with poison bait. The hardware shop would benefit by people returning to buy more poison and substance prices to encourage them to keep using their bait stations. 

There are already people making huge differences. Achieving the goal of a predator-free New Zealand by 2050 will require a massive team effort. We can make New Zealand a safe place for animals who've called it home for millions of years. You can make a difference by setting traps in your garden and catching pests like mice, rats, possums, and stoats.

You have a chance to change it!

Anna