The government of New Zealand has war on countryside pests. It wants to the country predator-free by 2050. It has an ambitious target to all non-native species from the country over the next three decades. New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key says he intends to strategies to introduced species, especially predators that threaten New Zealand's native birds. He said: "Rats, possums and stoats kill 25 million of our native birds every year, and on other native species such as lizards. Along with the rest of our environment, we must more to protect them." His government has $28 million to a company that will help his plans.
Mr Key told reporters: "This is the most ambitious conservation project anywhere in the world, but we if we all work together as a country, we can it." It will take the combined efforts of the private and public sectors as well as community groups. Few people in New Zealand more of the country's native birds to extinct. Since European settlers in the mid-nineteenth century and with them rats and other predators, New Zealand has a huge variety of birds. These the bush wren, the laughing owl and the mysterious starling. The country's national bird, the kiwi, currently under threat. Only five per cent of kiwi chicks survive to adulthood.
