The Wonder List with Bill Weir (2015) s03e05 Episode Script
New Zealand: Preying on the Predators
1
[dramatic music]
[birds chirping]
- In the beginning
was the bird.
The bird was with God.
The bird was God.
No predators, no people
in the last undiscovered Ede.
But even far-away islands
eventually get discovered.
♪
And when man showed up,
things changed.
When white men showed up,
they changed even faster.
And the land of the bird becae
the land of human flight.
Welcome to New Zealand.
Whoo!
♪
It became a nation
of endless thrills
♪
Amid endless views.
And for years,
their biggest problem
is getting people to stay.
But now, the secret is out
and they are fighting
the changes,
turning back time.
And you won't believe
how far a Kiwi will go
to give it all back
to the birds.
[bird cawing]
My name is Bill Weir,
and I'm a storyteller.
I've reported
from all over the world,
and I have seen so much chang.
[upbeat rock music]
So I made a list
of the most wonderful places
to explore
right before they change
forever.
♪
This is "The Wonder List."
When Captain Cook was first
exploring the South Pacific,
he told his crew that
the first man to spot land
would get two gallons of rum.
So imagine the thrill
for a 12 year old
surgeon's boy named Nicholas
as he shouted, "Land ahoy!"
No record of how
young Nick handle the hangove.
♪
But a few centuries later,
I'm here to testify
that you don't need
a rum reward to get excited
the first time you see
New Zealand.
♪
In terms of land mass
and population,
this little nation tucked way
at the bottom of the world
may be a fraction the size
of neighboring Australia,
but when it comes to beauty,
they have an embarrassment
of riches.
[ethereal music]
In recent years, it's been
Hollywood location scouts
yelling, "Land ahoy!"
♪
Because if you need
a Middle Earth
or a Narnia
or a Pandora,
this is the place.
New Zealand is the last spot
on Earth to be discovered
and inhabited by human beings.
It happened some time
in the 13th century or so,
when some incredibly
talented sailors
came south from Polynesia,
hundreds of years before
the Europeans showed up.
And after arrival,
legend has it that
the dog of one of these young
Maori hunters
chased a kiwi into the bush
and then came back soaking wet.
That Maori went to investigate
and discovered this,
a wonderland of geothermal pools
and sulfur springs.
They called it Waiotapu,
"Sacred Waters."
And it is a rancid-smelling
reminder
that New Zealand is among the
most volcanic spots on Earth.
[upbeat music]
But while magma
forms mountains,
rivers cut valleys
- [whistling]
[bird singing]
- It is people who shape
the character
of a country.
♪
And the tiny society
on this seismic island
holds a passion
for conservation
unlike anyplace else
in the world.
The whole nation,
part of a radical plan
to save native wildlife
and preserve
stunning landscapes
as a crush of newcomers
discovers New Zealand.
♪
So this is a quest
to understand
the mind of the Kiwi,
uniquely formed by nature
and adventure.
♪
And we should start on
the scenic South Island,
around Queenstown
and Wanaka,
arguably the thrill-seeking
capital of the world
mecca for adrenaline junkies
everywhere
and their moms.
Thank you for having us
in your home.
- You're welcome.
- It's a pleasure to meet you.
- And you too.
- Meet Stacey.
How would you describe the
outlook of a New Zealander?
- There's no one
that lives in Wanaka
that just is happy
working in an office 9-5
and washing the car on Saturday
and going to church on Sunday.
It draws people into
being adventurous
and doing fun things and trying
to get the most out of life.
- Right.
Her proof can be found
in the family photo album.
Four boys. That means you must
have been trying
for a girl.
[laughter]
Because Stacey raised
and home schooled four boys
and all of them are among
the best in the world at thi.
♪
Jossi is an Olympian
and X Games gold medalist,
the eldest
of the Wells brothers.
♪
The youngest is Jackson,
who recently became
the first person ever
to land a freakishly
hard maneuver
called a Quadruple Cork.
♪
And so it goes without saying
that snowboarding dorks
like moi
have no business
sharing the same snow.
But Kiwis are kind.
And they've been
dodging slow pokes
and amateurs up here
since they were tots.
- 35 years ago or so
we came over here
and I got a job
on a ski patrol.
- That's Bruce, the dad.
- This was their backyard.
This was their playground.
And, you know,
from the age of about three
they were out just
having a blast out there.
- That's the thing about
learning to ski
when you're three years old,
your center of gravity
is about right here.
[laughter]
- Still there, bro.
- Still there!
[laughter]
- The U.S. team actually
does their summer training
in this treeless resort
called Cardrona.
Small by North American
standards,
but, man,
do they make the most of it.
Every bump,
every rail swarming
with the next generation
of Kiwi fun hogs,
all ready to take on the worl.
It's an attitude that also
applies to their surfers
and sailors
and beloved rugby players,
all among the very best.
- We've done pretty well,
you know,
as far as, you know,
the Olympic Games goes.
Medals per capita,
you know, we do pretty well
and I think that's just the
culture that's bred down here.
It's like, you know,
we got something to prove,
let's get out there
and prove it, you know?
- Watch this.
- Yeah, exactly.
- And part of it, I think,
too, is you had to
be innovators out here.
You had to be able
to fix something
with a piece of chicken wire.
- Know how, can do, man.
- Right? Yeah.
- Kiwi ingenuity.
♪
- They are constantly looking
for new ways
to thumb their noses
at gravity.
♪
Sometimes this involves
a mountain.
Sometimes it's a bridge.
- Adrenaline is
a heck of a drug.
- It is.
- And that's why
people come to New Zealand,
to do things like this.
- This is Tori.
She is a Tasmanian daredevil.
When did you start
throwing yourself off things?
- I started about 15 years
ago, skiing
off things
as fast as I possibly could.
- [laughs]
- Riding my bike off things,
driving my car.
It's an affliction, for sure.
- And why here?
What was the magnetic pull
to this place?
- It's physically stunning,
but it's
there's a freedom here.
You can get away with
pushing the limits
and pursuing your
boundaries as a human,
seeing what's possible, what's
not and having
fun doing it.
We're notwe got freedom
to do what we want here.
- Exhibit A:
The Kawarau Bridge.
This is birthplace
of the bungee jump.
- This is birthplace of the
bungee jump in New Zealand.
So it's moved to other
locations, but this is
its iconic, spiritual home.
- It's the equivalent
of jumping off
a 14-story building.
So what better place
to lose one's bung-inity?
- So we stand up.
- Okay.
- And then we walk
to the edge like penguins.
- Like penguins.
- Yep.
- What are your names?
- I'm Bill.
- I'm Tori.
- Bill and Tori.
Cool, awesome.
- Oh, my God. [laughs]
All right, this just hit me,
what I'm about to do.
- All right, you guys,
in three, two, one.
[heart thumping]
[dramatic music]
[upbeat music]
♪
- All right,
you guys, in three
- All right, here we go.
- Two, one, bungee!
both: Whoo!
[laughter]
♪
- Man.
- Oh.
- Thanks for inventing this.
- How was that?
- This was amazing.
That is Henry van Asch,
one of the founding fathers
of bungee jumping.
This is an honor.
I feel like I'm meeting
one of the Wright Brothers
in the garage
where flight was invented, here.
- Well, AJ would've
been here too,
but he's probably somewhere
flying around the world.
- Okay.
Well, I'll take one of you.
Back in the '80s,
he was just another
Kiwi ski bum, when his buddy
AJ Hackett said,
"I got an idea."
He had seen a tribal ritual
in Vanuatu called land divin.
And instead of vines
and a tree,
he wanted to duplicate
that rush
with rubber bands and a bridg.
- We always threw, you know,
a bag of potatoes off first
so we knew that it was safe
before we subjected ourselves
to the laws of gravity.
- Crash-test potatoes, yeah.
- Yeah, crash-test potatoes.
And then we brought
our friends into it.
And we just saw this
often, this transformation
- Mm-hmm.
- In people, where they're
absolutely terrified
and then they came out of it
into a state of elation
that, you know,
is pretty hard to replicate.
- After experimenting
with higher and higher jumps,
they decided to make
and international splash
with AJ's plunge off
a certain tower in Paris.
- One of the reasons
AJ jumped off the Eiffel Towr
was to impress
the beautiful French model
[laughter]
Caroline, who later
became his wife.
- Oh, it worked.
- The mother of his
three children.
- That jump brought love
and money
because in the years since,
they have sold 3 million jump,
and at $200 a pop,
their crazy idea
has also made this region
richer than anyone imagined
by luring a certain kind
of tourist.
- There was a "if you jump
naked, you can jump for free"
piece introduced by some
of the crew in the early years.
It did carry on for a while
but then it became
a bit of a safety issue
because, you know,
we want the guys focused
on safety.
- [laughter]
Right.
The last New Zealand inventin
to go global
is the human-sized
hamster ball
known as a zorb.
Just another branch
on the Kiwi family tree
that includes
Sir Edmund Hillary,
the first man up Everest,
and Bill Hamilton,
the inventor of this
♪
The jet boat, which can go
50 miles an hour
in three inches of water.
I've always wondered how
you managed to pull this off
and don't slam into trees
or rocks or people or
- 'Cause we're not allowed
to. It's in the paperwork.
- Okay.
[both laughing]
- All right, after you.
- Accidents do happen.
Back in the late 90s,
another company was running
in dangerously high water,
their boat flipped, and
a Japanese tourist was kille.
- There you go.
Jump on in.
Stand on the seats.
You're allowed on the furniture.
- But we climb aboard
with the assurance
that the thrill seeker
industrial complex
has learned its lesson.
- This is awesome.
- Captain Andy flips a switc.
Let's go!
Whoo!
And the world becomes a blur.
♪
Good day.
[laughter]
- Lots of adrenaline.
- But you were telling me
at lunch that
that comes with a price.
- It does come with a price,
especially for the female body.
I've now found out that you
can't run your system
into that fight or flight
mode constantly.
Eventually, your body's
gonna break down.
So I put myself into
adrenal fatigue this year.
- Adrenal fatigue is a real
like, a medical thing.
- It is. It's kind of
an emerging thing.
And so my endocrine
my hormonal system
just can't take it anymore.
I've had to learn to slow dow.
I had to learn what calm is,
and to find thrills
in other areas of life too.
- Yeah.
- And justbalance
is the key to everything too.
- How has this place changed
since you've been coming here
and what do you think's
gonna happen in the future?
- [sighs] It's changed in that
the rest of
the world
has cottoned onto
how amazing it is.
It used to be out own little
private playground.
So with more people,
there's gonna be the changes.
Hopefully no impact
on the environment.
I think New Zealand's in such
a privileged position
to be able to learn
to deal with this
intake of tourism, but not
have a negative impact
on the very reason
why people come here.
[dramatic music]
- Roaring jet boats don't sem
like the greenest of pastime.
But by and large,
New Zealanders like to be knon
for their deep love of natur.
These landscapes are their
playgrounds and their temple.
- It's so deeply
ingrained in us
that Kiwis tend
to work together,
be very collaborative.
- Mm-hmm.
- Not adversarial
towards the planet,
but sort of almost
collegial with the planet.
- Yeah.
- You know, you say
we defy gravity,
well, we actually don't.
We, you know, we sort of
harness it momentarily
- Yeah.
- For our own use, with respect.
[upbeat music]
- But if they have
such respect for nature,
why are they so determined to
kill every furry, wild creatue
they can find?
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
[waves rushing]
[percussive music]
♪
- Because of
its distant isolation,
anyone who ventures
to New Zealand
must possess
a certain bold determination.
Strength, smarts, grit.
[man shouting
in foreign language]
And this was especially true
of the first ones to find it,
Polynesian explorers,
who crossed thousands of mils
of open ocean in canoes,
using the stars as their GPS.
Strangers in a strange land,
they created
an entirely new culture.
They are the Maori.
[all shouting,
chanting in foreign language]
♪
- Do the hongi?
- Yeah, let's do it.
This is Wetini.
And this greeting
is called the hongi,
a handshake designed to share
the breath of life.
- And the first time,
it is you and I
remembering our loved ones
who have passed on.
- I see.
- So we acknowledge
those ones, there.
- Oh, okay.
- And then the second time,
you and I greet each other.
- That's it.
- Physical descendents
of those who have passed on.
- I'm just glad I had a mint
before I met you.
[laughter]
His particular iwi,
or tribe,
has turned their history
into a cottage industry,
giving tourists a taste
of how things used to be.
- So this sort of thing here
is only a hunting village.
- I see.
- They wouldn't have spent
all their time
in this area there.
They have another hunting
village somewhere else.
- Back when they survived
on their wits
and the bounty of the land.
- The silver fern,
unlike the rest,
is silver underneath.
- Yes.
- And there it is, there.
And at night, they would
turn it upside down
if they were traveling
through the forest
so they could find their way
out or back to the camp.
Now here's a typical
catching kereru.
Wood pigeon.
- Oh, really?
- Yeah.
- That's a trap?
- That's a trap, there,
so they've gotta drink here.
- Oh.
- And we haven't set these up
to catch anything so that they
don't kill themselves.
But we do have one or two
wood pigeon flying around.
[bird squawking]
[birds chirping]
- They became bird hunters
extraordinaire
because when they arrived,
there was nothing but birds.
Aside from a couple
tiny species of bat,
New Zealand has no native
land mammals.
And with no furry predators
to eat them,
many, like the kiwi,
never learned to fly.
When they first arrived, they
were the big birds, right?
both: The moa.
- Yeah, moa, yeah.
- How would they hunt them?
Spears or
- Trapping them.
- Traps.
- And then spears.
- While giraffes and elephans
evolved in Africa,
the moa was the resident
giant here.
500 pounds, 12 feet tall.
Its predator was
the Haast's eagle,
a monster raptor with
a ten-foot wingspan.
The Maori hunted both
to extinction.
Then the European
ships arrived.
Infested with rats and mice,
they introduced weasels
to control the rodents
and Australian opossums
to harvest their fur.
And suddenly, the kiwi and al
his fine-feathered friends
were in deep trouble.
Today, a quarter
of New Zealand's native birds
are extinct.
Almost 4,000 species
are threatened or at risk.
And that is
where this fence
in the capital city
of Wellington comes in.
It is five miles long
and it is designed to undo
centuries of human mistakes.
- Oh, can I get through?
- This is very
"Jurassic Park" here.
[both laughing]
- No T. Rexes today.
And here we are.
- Here we are.
It is called Zealandia,
a predator-free park
devoted to the birds.
- This is an opportunity
to experience
a slice of New Zealand
the way it used to be.
- Nic is with
the Department of Conservatio,
and she explains that
this place is an extension
of New Zealand's unique knack
for removing bird-killing pess
from small islands.
- And so this is a version
of an island, right?
- Right.
- 'Cause it's got
a fence around it.
- Right.
- And so when you take
the predators out,
the wildlife just goes
into overdrive.
- It does.
- Yeah.
- Even in a little pocket
in an urban city
like Wellington, it can happen.
- Yeah, in our capital.
- Yeah.
- Incredible.
[birds singing]
Oh, look.
- Oh, yeah. Here's a tui.
- [laughs] Hey.
Oh, listen to that song.
It's so beautiful.
- [whistling]
Oh, didn't like that.
[whistling]
[bird chirping]
[both laughing]
He's telling me off.
[laughs]
- What's this guy?
- This is a pretty special
opportunity.
This is a takahe.
They were only rediscovered
high in the mountains
in Fiordland in 1948.
And they're one of
our most endangered birds.
There's only 280
left on the planet.
- And it's not just the birds
on the brink here.
The tuatara is New Zealand's
most iconic reptile native.
Looks like a lizard,
but is really the sole survivr
of an order that goes back
to the dinosaurs.
- They're entirely endangered.
- Yeah.
- So the problem
for these guys is, again,
they evolved in the presence
of avian predators,
not mammals.
- Right.
- And so their response
when threatened, you know,
from above
when threatened at all
is to freeze.
- Freeze.
- If you freeze and you've got
a rat or a stoat
or a cat
behind you, it's game over.
♪
- So Zealandia is one of
the last few places
a tuatara or a takahe
can relax.
But Kiwis are not content
with just predator-free park.
They want to make New Zealand
a predator-free country.
♪
It is a plan
so audacious in scope,
it's been called New Zealand's
Apollo project.
That is, wipe out every rat,
every mouse,
every opossum, every weasel,
hundreds of millions
of predatory mammals
by the year 2050.
And to pull it off,
they'll have to spread
millions of tons of poison
all over this incredibly
beautiful country.
♪
But as much as Kiwis
love the kiwi,
not everyone thinks
this is a great idea.
♪
[guitar music]
♪
[light instrumental music]
♪
- So this is your diced
ox heart.
This is the artificial diet.
Doesn't look too bad.
- Mmm.
[both laugh]
Ox heart.
New Zealanders
are known as Kiwis.
But with fewer than 70,000
of their namesake birds
left in the wild,
most Kiwis have never
seen a kiwi.
So the best way
to get a glimpse
is to show up
at breakfast time
at a place called
Rainbow Springs.
Wakey, wakey,
eggs and bakey.
Ahh, there he is.
Good morning.
How adorable.
Look at you.
Hi. Good morning.
- Do you hear those
- Yeah, little
- Little vocalizations.
- [laughs] A little yawn.
- Oh, he's a bit tired.
- I know the feeling.
Can I get you a cappuccino?
[camera shutter clicks]
Adorable.
And this one's how old?
- This one is seven days old.
- Hatched. Seven days old.
First solid food.
These birds lay
the biggest eggs
relative to mom's weight,
the equivalent of a human
giving birth
to a 35-pound baby.
And then Dad sits on that egg
for 2 1/2 months,
three times longer
than a chicken.
Very progressive, very
feminist. I
like it.
- Yeah. Absolutely.
- [laughs]
The upside of all
that incubation
is that they are ready
to explore the world
just a few days after hatchin.
Oh, look at that.
He's shotgunned it.
Very good.
- That's fantastic
for his first feed.
- Wow.
- They've actually got this
special sixth sense
at the tip of their bill.
There's basically lots of
nerve endings at the tip
- Yeah.
- That pick up on the
movement of the invertebrates
and he's actually
a little bit more interested
in the pulse in my fingers.
And that's their primary sense
for finding their
invertebrates in the soil.
- They seem so fragile here,
but once this guy puts on
a couple pounds,
he can take care of himself.
In fact, here's one going
Chuck Norris on a opossum.
So it is a fitting
national symbol, right?
- Absolutely.
- Cuddly looking,
but will kick your ass
if challenged.
- Absolutely. Yeah, I mean,
maybe not ideal
to have on our Air Force
as it is,
because they don't fly.
- They don't fly. [laughs]
- But it's a fantastic,
fantastic bird.
- Predators kill, on average,
about 20 per week.
And 95% of baby kiwis
don't make it past six month.
- So if you guys
wanna head through.
There are locked doors between.
It's not for people,
it's for pests.
♪
- So for the last decade or s,
anyone who found
an egg in the wild
would bring it here,
where it would hatch
and stay long enough
to grow a fighting chance.
♪
- Here we go.
- Oh, wow. Ooh!
That's a biggun.
Hey, Croucher.
- Hi.
- What's going on?
Croucher is ready for releas.
And as a testament to the
trusting nature of human Kiwi,
they've asked me
to give her a ride.
Thank you for trusting us
with this.
This is, uh
- It's nerve-racking,
I can tell you.
- I haven't been this nervous
since I brought my baby
home from the hospital.
- And you're driving on
the other side of the road.
Maybe you should give us
a call when you get there.
[laughter]
- This is exciting.
But rearing and releasing
is just one front
in this war for survival.
The Predator Free
New Zealand project
hopes that everyone
in the country
will take part in killing
just about everything
with fur and four legs.
And if my local guide,
Eleisha, is any indication,
that's not a hard sell.
- We learn to drive, kind
of, in rural
back roads.
And we were driving on day and I
swerved so I didn't hit a bunny.
And Dad said, "No! You don't
ever swerve for bunnies.
You mow those things down
and squash them flat!"
And so that's what
I've always done.
You know, you see a opossum,
or a rabbit on the road,
and you kill that thing.
- 'Cause it doesn't belong here.
- Because it doesn't
belong here.
And theyyeah,
they harm our environment.
- Rabbits don't eat birds,
obviously,
but they do damage
enough farmland
that every Easter,
one New Zealand town
holds an Easter Bunny hunt.
Last year's winning team
shot 900 in a day.
So imagine how much they hate
pests like this.
- So you've got slightly
sun-faded stoat
up there,
and you can just see
those sharp, pointy teeth.
- Can I pull him down?
Do you mind?
- Yeah, no, absolutely.
Have a look at this guy.
- This is James.
He is a conservation biologis.
And when it comes to
whacking predators,
he's a nationally renowned
assassin.
- And so the ferrets
are the big ones.
- Right.
- The stoats are
the medium-sized ones,
and the weasel
are the little ones.
- Oh, I see.
- And we have all three of them
in New Zealand.
They were unfortunately
introduced
to control the rodents.
But the critical mistake there
is these guys
hunt during the day and the rats
are active at night.
And so it was much easier
to go for tasty birds
which didn't know how
to hide from them.
- The law of unintended
consequences, right?
- Absolutely.
You've come on a good day.
I have to refill up
the bait stations.
So I got a bucket of bait here.
- Okay. All right.
And woe unto any critter
who wanders into his backyar.
- The animal comes in
and you can just hear
that once they step on
that plate there
[metal clanging]
- Ow.
- They're gonna know about it.
- Yeah.
- But that's just part of
our broad view
on biodiversity.
We really love biodiversity
and it's what makes
New Zealand unique.
When you go to France,
you wanna see the Eiffel Tower
or the Louvre.
When you come to New Zealand,
you wanna see these wild spaces,
these bizarre birds
like the kea
and the other species
that are around.
If we can't protect this,
then we're just
gonna become another kind of
McDonald's stop in the world
such as a place
where you can come
and just see rock pigeons
and sparrows
- Right.
- And these species like that.
So we have armies of volunteers
in New Zealand
which are doing this
every weekend.
It's actually a new sense
of community.
- Is that right?
- People say, "Yeah, this is
an opportunity for me to get
together with my neighbors."
- But the government thinks
teams of rat-trapping neighbos
aren't enough.
So they drop poison
from the sky.
Each year, helicopters spread
tons of cereal bait
or carrot chunks
laced with 1080,
a toxin so deadly
it's banned in most countrie,
and tightly controlled
in the U.S.
New Zealand uses 80%
of the entire global supply.
♪
- Putting 1080, a
broad-spectrum metabolic poison
that kills everything,
including insects,
birds, animals,
It's bad.
It's bad stuff.
It really is.
- Fiona is a professor
of rheumatology
and since her husband
found poisoned deer
and other native birds
on a hunting trip,
she joined the small
but vocal ranks
of 1080 opponents.
- You can't plaster 1080
over the whole place
because it's very poisonous
to people
and to our domestic animals
and to livestock and so on.
- She points to the anti-1080
movement's own video clips
of a suffering cow
and poisoned deer
as proof of the grizzly
collateral damage.
But most of her
countrymen shrug
and Fiona's ideas
are considered fringe.
- It's very hard to get
onto the mainstream media
in New Zealand because of
the pervading perception that
if you're anti-1080, then
you're sort of
off the wall.
- Virtually every politician
in the country is pro-1080.
- Nice to see you.
- Great to meet you.
Including the man
at the very top,
Prime Minister John Key.
Dropping poison from the sky
seems like a really
- Sounds radical, yeah.
- Crazy thing.
What do you say to the folks
who have a problem
with that?
- Well it's not without
its controversy
because there are some people
who say, you know,
"I don't like doing that."
It's a means to an end.
1080 works highly effectively.
It kills rats, stoats, opossums,
but the issue has been
it does kill some birds,
but the bird life comes back
very, you know, strongly
so it's been
actually finally havesupported
by the environmental groups
in New Zealand.
- You guys order a live kiwi?
[laughter]
In a nation of such passionae
nature lovers,
this attitude seems
so curious.
So let's keep digging
and let's meet those devoted
to turning Croucher
into a wild kiwi.
♪
[upbeat music]
♪
[ethereal music]
- The snow is still thick
in the southern Alps.
♪
And we touch down near
a gorgeous alpine lake.
As soon as the racket
of the engine goes quiet,
we get company.
[birds cawing]
They are kea, the world's ony
mountain parrot,
and one of the most clever.
With their sharp beak
and claws,
they've been known
to attack lambs,
which is why they were hunted
to the brink in New Zealand.
They are protected now,
but opponents of 1080
point to poisoned kea
as evidence
that the government's
aerial campaign
is an indiscriminate killer.
- The downside is yes,
unfortunately,
if a few kea die,
that's really sad,
but if we don't control
the stoats and the rats,
they're gonna kill
the kea anyway.
So we're kinda stuck
in this catch-22
where we have to do something.
So we choose
the least damaging method.
- I think the most recent one,
we lost four kea
in a 1080 operation.
- Mm-hmm.
- But to keep that
in perspective,
in areas that we don't do
pest control,
we lose 60% of all kea nests.
- Mm.
- Anywhere between
60% and 95%,
depending on the area.
- Right.
- So while the loss of
individual birds
is not nice and obviously,
you know,
we work for conservation,
we don't like losing
individual birds.
The benefit to
the entire population
far outweighs that loss.
- The greater good.
- Well, that's their line, but
I don't think that's correct.
I don't think that's true.
I think they believe it
because I think that this
is a culture
that has developed in the
department of conservation
over the last 20 years.
- I think the response
is purely emotional.
They've been wound up by a lobby
who don't want this
because it affects
their hunting prey.
And so it appeals to a very,
you know, basic human instinct
that throwing poison around
into drinking water must be bad.
- Mike Joy
is a freshwater ecologist,
professor, and sometime-critc
of New Zealand's
environmental policy.
But after years
of research on 1080,
he insists the fear
is unfounded.
- The reality is it breaks down
almost immediately in water
and then it's not harmful.
[piano music]
- Most voice hope
that Kiwi innovation
will eventually
make 1080 obsolete
with inventions like
the Goodnature trap,
which uses
a gas-powered piston
to kill and reset
over a dozen times.
- So you just have to set
this out once in the forest.
And then you can leave it
for 6 or 12 months
and it does all the work.
- But in the meantime,
it's telling that
in a world full of doubts,
most Kiwis support
their scientists
and trust their government.
- I love the concept,
and even if we don't
particularly reach it,
the fact that we're
gonna get after it is gonna be
awesome for the country.
- Really?
- You know.
- I hear that sentiment
everywhere,
from the mountains down sout,
to the forests up north,
where the privilege
of releasing a kiwi
forms strange alliances
between environmentalists,
timber company reps,
and tribal leaders.
- I believe that
predator-proofing New Zealand
is not impossible, it's a dream.
It's what we call a wawata,
which is a dream.
And it is a possible dream.
[percussive music]
- With Croucher in her box,
we hike into the woods.
♪
Oh, look at that.
Wow.
Past poisoned opossums,
and a squashed rat.
♪
Until we find a lovely spot
in a steep hollow.
♪
There is a Maori prayer
to Papatuanuku
the Earth Mother
asking her to protect
one of her children.
- [speaking Maori]
♪
- Shows you how strong
their legs are, eh?
- Yeah, is that
did she draw blood?
- Kicked me.
- [laughs]
We hurt the ones we love.
♪
Good luck, girl.
It was good meeting you.
♪
Well, with any luck, she'll be
laying eggs for 50 years, right?
- Mm.
- [laughs]
This whole exercise
is a perfect example
of the can-do sense
of community
that has flourished
in this tiny, distant land.
♪
Mission accomplished.
Congratulations, guys.
- Guess we better leave her
alone time to sleep.
- Yeah.
[laughs]
But now that so many people
wanna live down here,
could Kiwi culture
become endangered?
[guitar music]
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
[light instrumental music]
- It is beautiful.
♪
And it is fun,
so you gotta wonder,
how is it that
for generations,
the biggest national crisis
in New Zealand
was getting people to stay?
- It's kind of a combination
of things.
There's a lot more
opportunities overseas
and when you grow up
in an island nation
at the ass-end of nowhere,
all you really wanna do
is get out.
- Eleisha is one of the many
who left here
for an early-20s
right of passage called OE,
overseas experience.
And as Nick here explains,
many found that
the grass was greener.
- If you're a technical person,
you know, we have
a good education.
And you go onto a job, you don't
have that many options.
Not everyone wants to design
a milking factory,
a dairy shed or whatever.
So I mean, obviously,
there's money,
so generally,
you go to Australia,
you get more money.
- The great Kiwi brain drain
had the best and brightest
fleeing by the planeload.
But then something
dramatic happened
on this rolling hillside
full of sheep.
It was an average Saturday
in 1999
when someone pulled up
to the Alexander farm here
and knocked on the door.
It was a location scout for a
director named Peter Jackson,
who had done an aerial tour
of these hills and realized
it would be a perfect setting
for a hometown
of hobbits.
And much like Gandalf's visit
to Bilbo Baggins,
that knock changed everything
in New Zealand.
It launched an explosion
in filmmaking and tourism.
It reminded people just how
special this country really is.
And these days,
as a result,
if Hobbiton was anything
like Auckland,
the average hole would go for
around $1 million.
♪
As a director
and proud native son,
Peter Jackson was eager to shw
off the beauty of his homelan.
And since he did,
the booming film industry
has helped tourism surpass
milk as the biggest industry.
Those visitors
then spread the word,
and before they knew it
- Okay, onto New Zealand I go.
[laughs]
- They had Americans like Sarh
and Frances moving in.
- When you tell people you're
moving to New Zealand,
they're like, "Why would you go
across the world
when you're from New York?"
But it's so beautiful.
Physically, it's so beautiful.
But the Kiwis are definitely
more laid back compared
to New Yorkers, at least.
- So laid back.
[laughter]
They leave work and they don't
think about work
or talk about work.
- Yeah.
- We want people to come here
and say it's a friendly place.
I mean, if you walk down
the street in New Zealand,
someone says hello to you,
that's normal.
You walk down the street in
New York and someone says hello,
you think you're
about to be mugged.
You know, that's
the sort of difference.
- Easy, easy.
[both laughing]
- I like New York,
but you know.
- Yeah, no, we're not mean,
we're just busy.
- You're busy, okay, yeah.
Now, if you go into
a bar in New York,
they'll loosen up.
- Absolutely
- They're willing to
buy you a drink,
you never mind.
- Right.
- But yeah,
it's that kind of place.
It's a little place
and it's fun and it's nice.
- As the first nation
to give women the vote,
this is among
the most progressive
and least religious
places on the planet.
So when world politics
gets tense,
New Zealand gets popular.
The number of Americans seekig
immigration information
jumped with the rise
of Donald Trump.
- The last spike was during
the last Bush presidency.
- Really?
- And so you had
liberal Americans saying,
"Well, where else would we
might we want to live?"
- Paul is a national expert
on demographics
and he chooses
an Asian strip mall
to discuss the relative flood
of newcomers.
- The two largest countries
who supply migrants
to New Zealand
are India and China.
You can probably see
as much Chinese script
as you'll see
as English script.
This has occurred very,
very rapidly for New Zealand.
But we don't have
the social cohesion issues
that you would see
in most countries.
Generally,
people here are welcoming,
so you would get about 2/3
of people saying
immigration is good
for New Zealand,
whereas in parts of Europe
it would be 1/3.
- Maybe that's because
they still have
plenty of room to grow.
New Zealand has twice as much
land as England,
with a tenth of its populatio.
And with borders protected
by vast oceans,
they have the luxury
of pick-and-choose immigratio,
taking only the people they
want in more ways than one.
New Yorker Frances
is dating Kiwi Nick.
Do you feel like
the secret is out?
You feel like
- It's getting out,
I feel like.
- Everybody's gonna come?
- People are onto it.
- Yeah.
- I've noticed it,
even just in my 20-odd years.
Living here, the beaches
in like, South Island,
just absolutely packed.
But I don't mind it.
I mean, I wouldn't have
met Frances, I guess.
- Aww! Very sweet.
[laughter]
- I think, you know,
that the real point here
is not so much about
a finite number of,
you know, how many is the right
number for New Zealand?
I mean, we always say
we welcome people
if they bring skills,
if they bring capital,
but most of all if
they bring the right attitude.
And so we get a big range.
- Right, right.
Well, look, if the world
ends, I'm coming here.
So that's the ultimate
compliment, I guess, right?
- Yeah,
you'd be most welcome.
- And I would be welcome.
- You have many
Americans here, you'd be
very, very welcome.
- I saw somebody hitchhiking
the other day.
I haven't seen a person
hitchhike in the United States
since I was nine years old.
So hold onto that.
As long as you can.
- Yeah. You're still able
to do that here. Yeah.
I'll tell you now, man,
it's a good country, eh?
- Oh, it's
- A beautiful place.
- I wanna move here.
- All friendly people.
Don't matter what race you
are, all friendly people.
You know, not too many
rat bags around here.
[laughter]
[light piano music]
- Whoo!
♪
Yes, New Zealand gives new
meaning to the old phrase,
"This place is for the birds"
In a crowded, chaotic world,
they have soul
♪
And spirit
♪
And so much unspoiled space.
♪
Long may it last.
♪
Long live the Kiwis.
♪
[waves rushing]
[dramatic music]
[birds chirping]
- In the beginning
was the bird.
The bird was with God.
The bird was God.
No predators, no people
in the last undiscovered Ede.
But even far-away islands
eventually get discovered.
♪
And when man showed up,
things changed.
When white men showed up,
they changed even faster.
And the land of the bird becae
the land of human flight.
Welcome to New Zealand.
Whoo!
♪
It became a nation
of endless thrills
♪
Amid endless views.
And for years,
their biggest problem
is getting people to stay.
But now, the secret is out
and they are fighting
the changes,
turning back time.
And you won't believe
how far a Kiwi will go
to give it all back
to the birds.
[bird cawing]
My name is Bill Weir,
and I'm a storyteller.
I've reported
from all over the world,
and I have seen so much chang.
[upbeat rock music]
So I made a list
of the most wonderful places
to explore
right before they change
forever.
♪
This is "The Wonder List."
When Captain Cook was first
exploring the South Pacific,
he told his crew that
the first man to spot land
would get two gallons of rum.
So imagine the thrill
for a 12 year old
surgeon's boy named Nicholas
as he shouted, "Land ahoy!"
No record of how
young Nick handle the hangove.
♪
But a few centuries later,
I'm here to testify
that you don't need
a rum reward to get excited
the first time you see
New Zealand.
♪
In terms of land mass
and population,
this little nation tucked way
at the bottom of the world
may be a fraction the size
of neighboring Australia,
but when it comes to beauty,
they have an embarrassment
of riches.
[ethereal music]
In recent years, it's been
Hollywood location scouts
yelling, "Land ahoy!"
♪
Because if you need
a Middle Earth
or a Narnia
or a Pandora,
this is the place.
New Zealand is the last spot
on Earth to be discovered
and inhabited by human beings.
It happened some time
in the 13th century or so,
when some incredibly
talented sailors
came south from Polynesia,
hundreds of years before
the Europeans showed up.
And after arrival,
legend has it that
the dog of one of these young
Maori hunters
chased a kiwi into the bush
and then came back soaking wet.
That Maori went to investigate
and discovered this,
a wonderland of geothermal pools
and sulfur springs.
They called it Waiotapu,
"Sacred Waters."
And it is a rancid-smelling
reminder
that New Zealand is among the
most volcanic spots on Earth.
[upbeat music]
But while magma
forms mountains,
rivers cut valleys
- [whistling]
[bird singing]
- It is people who shape
the character
of a country.
♪
And the tiny society
on this seismic island
holds a passion
for conservation
unlike anyplace else
in the world.
The whole nation,
part of a radical plan
to save native wildlife
and preserve
stunning landscapes
as a crush of newcomers
discovers New Zealand.
♪
So this is a quest
to understand
the mind of the Kiwi,
uniquely formed by nature
and adventure.
♪
And we should start on
the scenic South Island,
around Queenstown
and Wanaka,
arguably the thrill-seeking
capital of the world
mecca for adrenaline junkies
everywhere
and their moms.
Thank you for having us
in your home.
- You're welcome.
- It's a pleasure to meet you.
- And you too.
- Meet Stacey.
How would you describe the
outlook of a New Zealander?
- There's no one
that lives in Wanaka
that just is happy
working in an office 9-5
and washing the car on Saturday
and going to church on Sunday.
It draws people into
being adventurous
and doing fun things and trying
to get the most out of life.
- Right.
Her proof can be found
in the family photo album.
Four boys. That means you must
have been trying
for a girl.
[laughter]
Because Stacey raised
and home schooled four boys
and all of them are among
the best in the world at thi.
♪
Jossi is an Olympian
and X Games gold medalist,
the eldest
of the Wells brothers.
♪
The youngest is Jackson,
who recently became
the first person ever
to land a freakishly
hard maneuver
called a Quadruple Cork.
♪
And so it goes without saying
that snowboarding dorks
like moi
have no business
sharing the same snow.
But Kiwis are kind.
And they've been
dodging slow pokes
and amateurs up here
since they were tots.
- 35 years ago or so
we came over here
and I got a job
on a ski patrol.
- That's Bruce, the dad.
- This was their backyard.
This was their playground.
And, you know,
from the age of about three
they were out just
having a blast out there.
- That's the thing about
learning to ski
when you're three years old,
your center of gravity
is about right here.
[laughter]
- Still there, bro.
- Still there!
[laughter]
- The U.S. team actually
does their summer training
in this treeless resort
called Cardrona.
Small by North American
standards,
but, man,
do they make the most of it.
Every bump,
every rail swarming
with the next generation
of Kiwi fun hogs,
all ready to take on the worl.
It's an attitude that also
applies to their surfers
and sailors
and beloved rugby players,
all among the very best.
- We've done pretty well,
you know,
as far as, you know,
the Olympic Games goes.
Medals per capita,
you know, we do pretty well
and I think that's just the
culture that's bred down here.
It's like, you know,
we got something to prove,
let's get out there
and prove it, you know?
- Watch this.
- Yeah, exactly.
- And part of it, I think,
too, is you had to
be innovators out here.
You had to be able
to fix something
with a piece of chicken wire.
- Know how, can do, man.
- Right? Yeah.
- Kiwi ingenuity.
♪
- They are constantly looking
for new ways
to thumb their noses
at gravity.
♪
Sometimes this involves
a mountain.
Sometimes it's a bridge.
- Adrenaline is
a heck of a drug.
- It is.
- And that's why
people come to New Zealand,
to do things like this.
- This is Tori.
She is a Tasmanian daredevil.
When did you start
throwing yourself off things?
- I started about 15 years
ago, skiing
off things
as fast as I possibly could.
- [laughs]
- Riding my bike off things,
driving my car.
It's an affliction, for sure.
- And why here?
What was the magnetic pull
to this place?
- It's physically stunning,
but it's
there's a freedom here.
You can get away with
pushing the limits
and pursuing your
boundaries as a human,
seeing what's possible, what's
not and having
fun doing it.
We're notwe got freedom
to do what we want here.
- Exhibit A:
The Kawarau Bridge.
This is birthplace
of the bungee jump.
- This is birthplace of the
bungee jump in New Zealand.
So it's moved to other
locations, but this is
its iconic, spiritual home.
- It's the equivalent
of jumping off
a 14-story building.
So what better place
to lose one's bung-inity?
- So we stand up.
- Okay.
- And then we walk
to the edge like penguins.
- Like penguins.
- Yep.
- What are your names?
- I'm Bill.
- I'm Tori.
- Bill and Tori.
Cool, awesome.
- Oh, my God. [laughs]
All right, this just hit me,
what I'm about to do.
- All right, you guys,
in three, two, one.
[heart thumping]
[dramatic music]
[upbeat music]
♪
- All right,
you guys, in three
- All right, here we go.
- Two, one, bungee!
both: Whoo!
[laughter]
♪
- Man.
- Oh.
- Thanks for inventing this.
- How was that?
- This was amazing.
That is Henry van Asch,
one of the founding fathers
of bungee jumping.
This is an honor.
I feel like I'm meeting
one of the Wright Brothers
in the garage
where flight was invented, here.
- Well, AJ would've
been here too,
but he's probably somewhere
flying around the world.
- Okay.
Well, I'll take one of you.
Back in the '80s,
he was just another
Kiwi ski bum, when his buddy
AJ Hackett said,
"I got an idea."
He had seen a tribal ritual
in Vanuatu called land divin.
And instead of vines
and a tree,
he wanted to duplicate
that rush
with rubber bands and a bridg.
- We always threw, you know,
a bag of potatoes off first
so we knew that it was safe
before we subjected ourselves
to the laws of gravity.
- Crash-test potatoes, yeah.
- Yeah, crash-test potatoes.
And then we brought
our friends into it.
And we just saw this
often, this transformation
- Mm-hmm.
- In people, where they're
absolutely terrified
and then they came out of it
into a state of elation
that, you know,
is pretty hard to replicate.
- After experimenting
with higher and higher jumps,
they decided to make
and international splash
with AJ's plunge off
a certain tower in Paris.
- One of the reasons
AJ jumped off the Eiffel Towr
was to impress
the beautiful French model
[laughter]
Caroline, who later
became his wife.
- Oh, it worked.
- The mother of his
three children.
- That jump brought love
and money
because in the years since,
they have sold 3 million jump,
and at $200 a pop,
their crazy idea
has also made this region
richer than anyone imagined
by luring a certain kind
of tourist.
- There was a "if you jump
naked, you can jump for free"
piece introduced by some
of the crew in the early years.
It did carry on for a while
but then it became
a bit of a safety issue
because, you know,
we want the guys focused
on safety.
- [laughter]
Right.
The last New Zealand inventin
to go global
is the human-sized
hamster ball
known as a zorb.
Just another branch
on the Kiwi family tree
that includes
Sir Edmund Hillary,
the first man up Everest,
and Bill Hamilton,
the inventor of this
♪
The jet boat, which can go
50 miles an hour
in three inches of water.
I've always wondered how
you managed to pull this off
and don't slam into trees
or rocks or people or
- 'Cause we're not allowed
to. It's in the paperwork.
- Okay.
[both laughing]
- All right, after you.
- Accidents do happen.
Back in the late 90s,
another company was running
in dangerously high water,
their boat flipped, and
a Japanese tourist was kille.
- There you go.
Jump on in.
Stand on the seats.
You're allowed on the furniture.
- But we climb aboard
with the assurance
that the thrill seeker
industrial complex
has learned its lesson.
- This is awesome.
- Captain Andy flips a switc.
Let's go!
Whoo!
And the world becomes a blur.
♪
Good day.
[laughter]
- Lots of adrenaline.
- But you were telling me
at lunch that
that comes with a price.
- It does come with a price,
especially for the female body.
I've now found out that you
can't run your system
into that fight or flight
mode constantly.
Eventually, your body's
gonna break down.
So I put myself into
adrenal fatigue this year.
- Adrenal fatigue is a real
like, a medical thing.
- It is. It's kind of
an emerging thing.
And so my endocrine
my hormonal system
just can't take it anymore.
I've had to learn to slow dow.
I had to learn what calm is,
and to find thrills
in other areas of life too.
- Yeah.
- And justbalance
is the key to everything too.
- How has this place changed
since you've been coming here
and what do you think's
gonna happen in the future?
- [sighs] It's changed in that
the rest of
the world
has cottoned onto
how amazing it is.
It used to be out own little
private playground.
So with more people,
there's gonna be the changes.
Hopefully no impact
on the environment.
I think New Zealand's in such
a privileged position
to be able to learn
to deal with this
intake of tourism, but not
have a negative impact
on the very reason
why people come here.
[dramatic music]
- Roaring jet boats don't sem
like the greenest of pastime.
But by and large,
New Zealanders like to be knon
for their deep love of natur.
These landscapes are their
playgrounds and their temple.
- It's so deeply
ingrained in us
that Kiwis tend
to work together,
be very collaborative.
- Mm-hmm.
- Not adversarial
towards the planet,
but sort of almost
collegial with the planet.
- Yeah.
- You know, you say
we defy gravity,
well, we actually don't.
We, you know, we sort of
harness it momentarily
- Yeah.
- For our own use, with respect.
[upbeat music]
- But if they have
such respect for nature,
why are they so determined to
kill every furry, wild creatue
they can find?
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
[waves rushing]
[percussive music]
♪
- Because of
its distant isolation,
anyone who ventures
to New Zealand
must possess
a certain bold determination.
Strength, smarts, grit.
[man shouting
in foreign language]
And this was especially true
of the first ones to find it,
Polynesian explorers,
who crossed thousands of mils
of open ocean in canoes,
using the stars as their GPS.
Strangers in a strange land,
they created
an entirely new culture.
They are the Maori.
[all shouting,
chanting in foreign language]
♪
- Do the hongi?
- Yeah, let's do it.
This is Wetini.
And this greeting
is called the hongi,
a handshake designed to share
the breath of life.
- And the first time,
it is you and I
remembering our loved ones
who have passed on.
- I see.
- So we acknowledge
those ones, there.
- Oh, okay.
- And then the second time,
you and I greet each other.
- That's it.
- Physical descendents
of those who have passed on.
- I'm just glad I had a mint
before I met you.
[laughter]
His particular iwi,
or tribe,
has turned their history
into a cottage industry,
giving tourists a taste
of how things used to be.
- So this sort of thing here
is only a hunting village.
- I see.
- They wouldn't have spent
all their time
in this area there.
They have another hunting
village somewhere else.
- Back when they survived
on their wits
and the bounty of the land.
- The silver fern,
unlike the rest,
is silver underneath.
- Yes.
- And there it is, there.
And at night, they would
turn it upside down
if they were traveling
through the forest
so they could find their way
out or back to the camp.
Now here's a typical
catching kereru.
Wood pigeon.
- Oh, really?
- Yeah.
- That's a trap?
- That's a trap, there,
so they've gotta drink here.
- Oh.
- And we haven't set these up
to catch anything so that they
don't kill themselves.
But we do have one or two
wood pigeon flying around.
[bird squawking]
[birds chirping]
- They became bird hunters
extraordinaire
because when they arrived,
there was nothing but birds.
Aside from a couple
tiny species of bat,
New Zealand has no native
land mammals.
And with no furry predators
to eat them,
many, like the kiwi,
never learned to fly.
When they first arrived, they
were the big birds, right?
both: The moa.
- Yeah, moa, yeah.
- How would they hunt them?
Spears or
- Trapping them.
- Traps.
- And then spears.
- While giraffes and elephans
evolved in Africa,
the moa was the resident
giant here.
500 pounds, 12 feet tall.
Its predator was
the Haast's eagle,
a monster raptor with
a ten-foot wingspan.
The Maori hunted both
to extinction.
Then the European
ships arrived.
Infested with rats and mice,
they introduced weasels
to control the rodents
and Australian opossums
to harvest their fur.
And suddenly, the kiwi and al
his fine-feathered friends
were in deep trouble.
Today, a quarter
of New Zealand's native birds
are extinct.
Almost 4,000 species
are threatened or at risk.
And that is
where this fence
in the capital city
of Wellington comes in.
It is five miles long
and it is designed to undo
centuries of human mistakes.
- Oh, can I get through?
- This is very
"Jurassic Park" here.
[both laughing]
- No T. Rexes today.
And here we are.
- Here we are.
It is called Zealandia,
a predator-free park
devoted to the birds.
- This is an opportunity
to experience
a slice of New Zealand
the way it used to be.
- Nic is with
the Department of Conservatio,
and she explains that
this place is an extension
of New Zealand's unique knack
for removing bird-killing pess
from small islands.
- And so this is a version
of an island, right?
- Right.
- 'Cause it's got
a fence around it.
- Right.
- And so when you take
the predators out,
the wildlife just goes
into overdrive.
- It does.
- Yeah.
- Even in a little pocket
in an urban city
like Wellington, it can happen.
- Yeah, in our capital.
- Yeah.
- Incredible.
[birds singing]
Oh, look.
- Oh, yeah. Here's a tui.
- [laughs] Hey.
Oh, listen to that song.
It's so beautiful.
- [whistling]
Oh, didn't like that.
[whistling]
[bird chirping]
[both laughing]
He's telling me off.
[laughs]
- What's this guy?
- This is a pretty special
opportunity.
This is a takahe.
They were only rediscovered
high in the mountains
in Fiordland in 1948.
And they're one of
our most endangered birds.
There's only 280
left on the planet.
- And it's not just the birds
on the brink here.
The tuatara is New Zealand's
most iconic reptile native.
Looks like a lizard,
but is really the sole survivr
of an order that goes back
to the dinosaurs.
- They're entirely endangered.
- Yeah.
- So the problem
for these guys is, again,
they evolved in the presence
of avian predators,
not mammals.
- Right.
- And so their response
when threatened, you know,
from above
when threatened at all
is to freeze.
- Freeze.
- If you freeze and you've got
a rat or a stoat
or a cat
behind you, it's game over.
♪
- So Zealandia is one of
the last few places
a tuatara or a takahe
can relax.
But Kiwis are not content
with just predator-free park.
They want to make New Zealand
a predator-free country.
♪
It is a plan
so audacious in scope,
it's been called New Zealand's
Apollo project.
That is, wipe out every rat,
every mouse,
every opossum, every weasel,
hundreds of millions
of predatory mammals
by the year 2050.
And to pull it off,
they'll have to spread
millions of tons of poison
all over this incredibly
beautiful country.
♪
But as much as Kiwis
love the kiwi,
not everyone thinks
this is a great idea.
♪
[guitar music]
♪
[light instrumental music]
♪
- So this is your diced
ox heart.
This is the artificial diet.
Doesn't look too bad.
- Mmm.
[both laugh]
Ox heart.
New Zealanders
are known as Kiwis.
But with fewer than 70,000
of their namesake birds
left in the wild,
most Kiwis have never
seen a kiwi.
So the best way
to get a glimpse
is to show up
at breakfast time
at a place called
Rainbow Springs.
Wakey, wakey,
eggs and bakey.
Ahh, there he is.
Good morning.
How adorable.
Look at you.
Hi. Good morning.
- Do you hear those
- Yeah, little
- Little vocalizations.
- [laughs] A little yawn.
- Oh, he's a bit tired.
- I know the feeling.
Can I get you a cappuccino?
[camera shutter clicks]
Adorable.
And this one's how old?
- This one is seven days old.
- Hatched. Seven days old.
First solid food.
These birds lay
the biggest eggs
relative to mom's weight,
the equivalent of a human
giving birth
to a 35-pound baby.
And then Dad sits on that egg
for 2 1/2 months,
three times longer
than a chicken.
Very progressive, very
feminist. I
like it.
- Yeah. Absolutely.
- [laughs]
The upside of all
that incubation
is that they are ready
to explore the world
just a few days after hatchin.
Oh, look at that.
He's shotgunned it.
Very good.
- That's fantastic
for his first feed.
- Wow.
- They've actually got this
special sixth sense
at the tip of their bill.
There's basically lots of
nerve endings at the tip
- Yeah.
- That pick up on the
movement of the invertebrates
and he's actually
a little bit more interested
in the pulse in my fingers.
And that's their primary sense
for finding their
invertebrates in the soil.
- They seem so fragile here,
but once this guy puts on
a couple pounds,
he can take care of himself.
In fact, here's one going
Chuck Norris on a opossum.
So it is a fitting
national symbol, right?
- Absolutely.
- Cuddly looking,
but will kick your ass
if challenged.
- Absolutely. Yeah, I mean,
maybe not ideal
to have on our Air Force
as it is,
because they don't fly.
- They don't fly. [laughs]
- But it's a fantastic,
fantastic bird.
- Predators kill, on average,
about 20 per week.
And 95% of baby kiwis
don't make it past six month.
- So if you guys
wanna head through.
There are locked doors between.
It's not for people,
it's for pests.
♪
- So for the last decade or s,
anyone who found
an egg in the wild
would bring it here,
where it would hatch
and stay long enough
to grow a fighting chance.
♪
- Here we go.
- Oh, wow. Ooh!
That's a biggun.
Hey, Croucher.
- Hi.
- What's going on?
Croucher is ready for releas.
And as a testament to the
trusting nature of human Kiwi,
they've asked me
to give her a ride.
Thank you for trusting us
with this.
This is, uh
- It's nerve-racking,
I can tell you.
- I haven't been this nervous
since I brought my baby
home from the hospital.
- And you're driving on
the other side of the road.
Maybe you should give us
a call when you get there.
[laughter]
- This is exciting.
But rearing and releasing
is just one front
in this war for survival.
The Predator Free
New Zealand project
hopes that everyone
in the country
will take part in killing
just about everything
with fur and four legs.
And if my local guide,
Eleisha, is any indication,
that's not a hard sell.
- We learn to drive, kind
of, in rural
back roads.
And we were driving on day and I
swerved so I didn't hit a bunny.
And Dad said, "No! You don't
ever swerve for bunnies.
You mow those things down
and squash them flat!"
And so that's what
I've always done.
You know, you see a opossum,
or a rabbit on the road,
and you kill that thing.
- 'Cause it doesn't belong here.
- Because it doesn't
belong here.
And theyyeah,
they harm our environment.
- Rabbits don't eat birds,
obviously,
but they do damage
enough farmland
that every Easter,
one New Zealand town
holds an Easter Bunny hunt.
Last year's winning team
shot 900 in a day.
So imagine how much they hate
pests like this.
- So you've got slightly
sun-faded stoat
up there,
and you can just see
those sharp, pointy teeth.
- Can I pull him down?
Do you mind?
- Yeah, no, absolutely.
Have a look at this guy.
- This is James.
He is a conservation biologis.
And when it comes to
whacking predators,
he's a nationally renowned
assassin.
- And so the ferrets
are the big ones.
- Right.
- The stoats are
the medium-sized ones,
and the weasel
are the little ones.
- Oh, I see.
- And we have all three of them
in New Zealand.
They were unfortunately
introduced
to control the rodents.
But the critical mistake there
is these guys
hunt during the day and the rats
are active at night.
And so it was much easier
to go for tasty birds
which didn't know how
to hide from them.
- The law of unintended
consequences, right?
- Absolutely.
You've come on a good day.
I have to refill up
the bait stations.
So I got a bucket of bait here.
- Okay. All right.
And woe unto any critter
who wanders into his backyar.
- The animal comes in
and you can just hear
that once they step on
that plate there
[metal clanging]
- Ow.
- They're gonna know about it.
- Yeah.
- But that's just part of
our broad view
on biodiversity.
We really love biodiversity
and it's what makes
New Zealand unique.
When you go to France,
you wanna see the Eiffel Tower
or the Louvre.
When you come to New Zealand,
you wanna see these wild spaces,
these bizarre birds
like the kea
and the other species
that are around.
If we can't protect this,
then we're just
gonna become another kind of
McDonald's stop in the world
such as a place
where you can come
and just see rock pigeons
and sparrows
- Right.
- And these species like that.
So we have armies of volunteers
in New Zealand
which are doing this
every weekend.
It's actually a new sense
of community.
- Is that right?
- People say, "Yeah, this is
an opportunity for me to get
together with my neighbors."
- But the government thinks
teams of rat-trapping neighbos
aren't enough.
So they drop poison
from the sky.
Each year, helicopters spread
tons of cereal bait
or carrot chunks
laced with 1080,
a toxin so deadly
it's banned in most countrie,
and tightly controlled
in the U.S.
New Zealand uses 80%
of the entire global supply.
♪
- Putting 1080, a
broad-spectrum metabolic poison
that kills everything,
including insects,
birds, animals,
It's bad.
It's bad stuff.
It really is.
- Fiona is a professor
of rheumatology
and since her husband
found poisoned deer
and other native birds
on a hunting trip,
she joined the small
but vocal ranks
of 1080 opponents.
- You can't plaster 1080
over the whole place
because it's very poisonous
to people
and to our domestic animals
and to livestock and so on.
- She points to the anti-1080
movement's own video clips
of a suffering cow
and poisoned deer
as proof of the grizzly
collateral damage.
But most of her
countrymen shrug
and Fiona's ideas
are considered fringe.
- It's very hard to get
onto the mainstream media
in New Zealand because of
the pervading perception that
if you're anti-1080, then
you're sort of
off the wall.
- Virtually every politician
in the country is pro-1080.
- Nice to see you.
- Great to meet you.
Including the man
at the very top,
Prime Minister John Key.
Dropping poison from the sky
seems like a really
- Sounds radical, yeah.
- Crazy thing.
What do you say to the folks
who have a problem
with that?
- Well it's not without
its controversy
because there are some people
who say, you know,
"I don't like doing that."
It's a means to an end.
1080 works highly effectively.
It kills rats, stoats, opossums,
but the issue has been
it does kill some birds,
but the bird life comes back
very, you know, strongly
so it's been
actually finally havesupported
by the environmental groups
in New Zealand.
- You guys order a live kiwi?
[laughter]
In a nation of such passionae
nature lovers,
this attitude seems
so curious.
So let's keep digging
and let's meet those devoted
to turning Croucher
into a wild kiwi.
♪
[upbeat music]
♪
[ethereal music]
- The snow is still thick
in the southern Alps.
♪
And we touch down near
a gorgeous alpine lake.
As soon as the racket
of the engine goes quiet,
we get company.
[birds cawing]
They are kea, the world's ony
mountain parrot,
and one of the most clever.
With their sharp beak
and claws,
they've been known
to attack lambs,
which is why they were hunted
to the brink in New Zealand.
They are protected now,
but opponents of 1080
point to poisoned kea
as evidence
that the government's
aerial campaign
is an indiscriminate killer.
- The downside is yes,
unfortunately,
if a few kea die,
that's really sad,
but if we don't control
the stoats and the rats,
they're gonna kill
the kea anyway.
So we're kinda stuck
in this catch-22
where we have to do something.
So we choose
the least damaging method.
- I think the most recent one,
we lost four kea
in a 1080 operation.
- Mm-hmm.
- But to keep that
in perspective,
in areas that we don't do
pest control,
we lose 60% of all kea nests.
- Mm.
- Anywhere between
60% and 95%,
depending on the area.
- Right.
- So while the loss of
individual birds
is not nice and obviously,
you know,
we work for conservation,
we don't like losing
individual birds.
The benefit to
the entire population
far outweighs that loss.
- The greater good.
- Well, that's their line, but
I don't think that's correct.
I don't think that's true.
I think they believe it
because I think that this
is a culture
that has developed in the
department of conservation
over the last 20 years.
- I think the response
is purely emotional.
They've been wound up by a lobby
who don't want this
because it affects
their hunting prey.
And so it appeals to a very,
you know, basic human instinct
that throwing poison around
into drinking water must be bad.
- Mike Joy
is a freshwater ecologist,
professor, and sometime-critc
of New Zealand's
environmental policy.
But after years
of research on 1080,
he insists the fear
is unfounded.
- The reality is it breaks down
almost immediately in water
and then it's not harmful.
[piano music]
- Most voice hope
that Kiwi innovation
will eventually
make 1080 obsolete
with inventions like
the Goodnature trap,
which uses
a gas-powered piston
to kill and reset
over a dozen times.
- So you just have to set
this out once in the forest.
And then you can leave it
for 6 or 12 months
and it does all the work.
- But in the meantime,
it's telling that
in a world full of doubts,
most Kiwis support
their scientists
and trust their government.
- I love the concept,
and even if we don't
particularly reach it,
the fact that we're
gonna get after it is gonna be
awesome for the country.
- Really?
- You know.
- I hear that sentiment
everywhere,
from the mountains down sout,
to the forests up north,
where the privilege
of releasing a kiwi
forms strange alliances
between environmentalists,
timber company reps,
and tribal leaders.
- I believe that
predator-proofing New Zealand
is not impossible, it's a dream.
It's what we call a wawata,
which is a dream.
And it is a possible dream.
[percussive music]
- With Croucher in her box,
we hike into the woods.
♪
Oh, look at that.
Wow.
Past poisoned opossums,
and a squashed rat.
♪
Until we find a lovely spot
in a steep hollow.
♪
There is a Maori prayer
to Papatuanuku
the Earth Mother
asking her to protect
one of her children.
- [speaking Maori]
♪
- Shows you how strong
their legs are, eh?
- Yeah, is that
did she draw blood?
- Kicked me.
- [laughs]
We hurt the ones we love.
♪
Good luck, girl.
It was good meeting you.
♪
Well, with any luck, she'll be
laying eggs for 50 years, right?
- Mm.
- [laughs]
This whole exercise
is a perfect example
of the can-do sense
of community
that has flourished
in this tiny, distant land.
♪
Mission accomplished.
Congratulations, guys.
- Guess we better leave her
alone time to sleep.
- Yeah.
[laughs]
But now that so many people
wanna live down here,
could Kiwi culture
become endangered?
[guitar music]
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
[light instrumental music]
- It is beautiful.
♪
And it is fun,
so you gotta wonder,
how is it that
for generations,
the biggest national crisis
in New Zealand
was getting people to stay?
- It's kind of a combination
of things.
There's a lot more
opportunities overseas
and when you grow up
in an island nation
at the ass-end of nowhere,
all you really wanna do
is get out.
- Eleisha is one of the many
who left here
for an early-20s
right of passage called OE,
overseas experience.
And as Nick here explains,
many found that
the grass was greener.
- If you're a technical person,
you know, we have
a good education.
And you go onto a job, you don't
have that many options.
Not everyone wants to design
a milking factory,
a dairy shed or whatever.
So I mean, obviously,
there's money,
so generally,
you go to Australia,
you get more money.
- The great Kiwi brain drain
had the best and brightest
fleeing by the planeload.
But then something
dramatic happened
on this rolling hillside
full of sheep.
It was an average Saturday
in 1999
when someone pulled up
to the Alexander farm here
and knocked on the door.
It was a location scout for a
director named Peter Jackson,
who had done an aerial tour
of these hills and realized
it would be a perfect setting
for a hometown
of hobbits.
And much like Gandalf's visit
to Bilbo Baggins,
that knock changed everything
in New Zealand.
It launched an explosion
in filmmaking and tourism.
It reminded people just how
special this country really is.
And these days,
as a result,
if Hobbiton was anything
like Auckland,
the average hole would go for
around $1 million.
♪
As a director
and proud native son,
Peter Jackson was eager to shw
off the beauty of his homelan.
And since he did,
the booming film industry
has helped tourism surpass
milk as the biggest industry.
Those visitors
then spread the word,
and before they knew it
- Okay, onto New Zealand I go.
[laughs]
- They had Americans like Sarh
and Frances moving in.
- When you tell people you're
moving to New Zealand,
they're like, "Why would you go
across the world
when you're from New York?"
But it's so beautiful.
Physically, it's so beautiful.
But the Kiwis are definitely
more laid back compared
to New Yorkers, at least.
- So laid back.
[laughter]
They leave work and they don't
think about work
or talk about work.
- Yeah.
- We want people to come here
and say it's a friendly place.
I mean, if you walk down
the street in New Zealand,
someone says hello to you,
that's normal.
You walk down the street in
New York and someone says hello,
you think you're
about to be mugged.
You know, that's
the sort of difference.
- Easy, easy.
[both laughing]
- I like New York,
but you know.
- Yeah, no, we're not mean,
we're just busy.
- You're busy, okay, yeah.
Now, if you go into
a bar in New York,
they'll loosen up.
- Absolutely
- They're willing to
buy you a drink,
you never mind.
- Right.
- But yeah,
it's that kind of place.
It's a little place
and it's fun and it's nice.
- As the first nation
to give women the vote,
this is among
the most progressive
and least religious
places on the planet.
So when world politics
gets tense,
New Zealand gets popular.
The number of Americans seekig
immigration information
jumped with the rise
of Donald Trump.
- The last spike was during
the last Bush presidency.
- Really?
- And so you had
liberal Americans saying,
"Well, where else would we
might we want to live?"
- Paul is a national expert
on demographics
and he chooses
an Asian strip mall
to discuss the relative flood
of newcomers.
- The two largest countries
who supply migrants
to New Zealand
are India and China.
You can probably see
as much Chinese script
as you'll see
as English script.
This has occurred very,
very rapidly for New Zealand.
But we don't have
the social cohesion issues
that you would see
in most countries.
Generally,
people here are welcoming,
so you would get about 2/3
of people saying
immigration is good
for New Zealand,
whereas in parts of Europe
it would be 1/3.
- Maybe that's because
they still have
plenty of room to grow.
New Zealand has twice as much
land as England,
with a tenth of its populatio.
And with borders protected
by vast oceans,
they have the luxury
of pick-and-choose immigratio,
taking only the people they
want in more ways than one.
New Yorker Frances
is dating Kiwi Nick.
Do you feel like
the secret is out?
You feel like
- It's getting out,
I feel like.
- Everybody's gonna come?
- People are onto it.
- Yeah.
- I've noticed it,
even just in my 20-odd years.
Living here, the beaches
in like, South Island,
just absolutely packed.
But I don't mind it.
I mean, I wouldn't have
met Frances, I guess.
- Aww! Very sweet.
[laughter]
- I think, you know,
that the real point here
is not so much about
a finite number of,
you know, how many is the right
number for New Zealand?
I mean, we always say
we welcome people
if they bring skills,
if they bring capital,
but most of all if
they bring the right attitude.
And so we get a big range.
- Right, right.
Well, look, if the world
ends, I'm coming here.
So that's the ultimate
compliment, I guess, right?
- Yeah,
you'd be most welcome.
- And I would be welcome.
- You have many
Americans here, you'd be
very, very welcome.
- I saw somebody hitchhiking
the other day.
I haven't seen a person
hitchhike in the United States
since I was nine years old.
So hold onto that.
As long as you can.
- Yeah. You're still able
to do that here. Yeah.
I'll tell you now, man,
it's a good country, eh?
- Oh, it's
- A beautiful place.
- I wanna move here.
- All friendly people.
Don't matter what race you
are, all friendly people.
You know, not too many
rat bags around here.
[laughter]
[light piano music]
- Whoo!
♪
Yes, New Zealand gives new
meaning to the old phrase,
"This place is for the birds"
In a crowded, chaotic world,
they have soul
♪
And spirit
♪
And so much unspoiled space.
♪
Long may it last.
♪
Long live the Kiwis.
♪
[waves rushing]