Thread: new Science investigations about Moa diet and their influence on the NZ Forests

Originally Posted by planenutz

Rocket science it certainly is not.

A friend who is a vet spent many months during her university years studying the possible effects of Moa in the NZ bush, specifically around Fiordland. Back in the 1980's she explained how this concept we have about "pristine native bush" is quite wrong and that with Moa capable of browsing at least as high as a deer (if not higher) the bush would have been similar to what it is today. Clearly deer have simply taken taken the place of Moa and if kept in balance should be no more or less detrimental to the New Zealand bush.... despite what the tree-huggers will try and tell you. For all we know this might also hold true for alpine animals like the Chamois and Tahr as well because there must have been some Moa capable of living in that environment. I bet the greenies would have kittens if somebody pointed out that we need the Chamois and Tahr to help with the propagation of alpine plants.

Maybe we need to pay more attention to these topics and research the possibilities. That would make Ms Sage cough.

They have done shit sample studies of deer v moa, and they showed a differing diet with moa being more generalists and deer being more specialist ie eating more of fewer varieties.

However pretty much everything that deer eat Moa also ate so all the species evolved with some grazing pressure and hence can sustain a certain amount of grazing. This is all pretty established science and pretty solid. However it gets squirelly when they start talking about how much pressure is sustainable and the differing effects deer have on our flora makeup.

The forest definately doesnt look the same today as it did in moa's time but we are as much to blame for that as deer are, and even if we remove the deer the forests still wont look like they did when moa roamed. So if we are going to have altered forests either way, surely having altered forests with deer running around for hundreds of thousands of us to utilise as a resource, food and past time is the better option.