Crowdsourcing for a predator-free New Zealand
Image - Cissy Pan.
Invasive predators such as possums, rats, and stoats pose a serious threat to the survival of New Zealand’s native biota. In efforts to protect its native wildlife, New Zealand has coincidentally become a world leader in predator eradication from offshore islands, several of which are now havens for endangered species. On the mainland, predator management is limited to site-based control resulting in mixed outcomes for native biota. After decades of this approach, New Zealanders face the important challenge of determining how to better control these devastating predators by using their limited resources more creatively.
Determining the future of predator management in New Zealand requires research that puts greater emphasis on economic and social factors, including the humaneness of control options, the ways in which control is funded, and the ways in which local citizens can be involved. Identifying novel approaches that creatively integrate technological, social, economic, and legal solutions is paramount in increasing the chances of creating a predator-free New Zealand. One strategy to achieve this is to encourage community-led conversations to generate new ideas that could guide future research and management.
Online crowdsourcing to engage people in idea generation is a methodology being used to produce novel and creative ideas that professionals have not come up with. In 2011 Landcare Research used this technique to engage nearly 1000 people in developing 9000 ideas over 24 hours in generating ideas about the Christchurch rebuild. Recent research led by Rebecca Niemiec and her colleagues, in partnership with the Innovation Challenge Team, Marshall Business School, University of Southern California and the Kenan-Flagler School of Business, University of North Carolina, sought to understand if crowdsourcing could increase diverse citizen engagement to develop novel solutions for predator management. Landcare Research used the online ‘Brightideas’ platform to run a 13-day crowdsourcing challenge called ‘The Predator-Free New Zealand Challenge’. The challenge, which ran from 11 to 23 February 2014 on the website pestchallenge.org, asked participants to post facts, trade-offs, short ideas, questions, and integrative solutions on any of four topics – research and technology, social values, financial incentives, and laws, regulations and policies – related to predator management.
Over the course of the Challenge, 258 citizens registered, 99 actively participated by offering their ideas and comments, and 71 filled out the pre-challenge survey, providing information about their perspectives and previous involvement with predator management. The most represented occupations of participants were ‘Researcher’ (22.5%), ‘Student’ (9.9%), and ‘Farming, Fishing, Horticulture, and Forestry’ (8.5%). Participants were highly involved in pest management (70.4% had laid bait or traps for vertebrate pests) and were also highly informed about the negative impacts that pests have on the economy and native ecosystems. Before participating in the entire Challenge process, 52.1% of participants felt strongly that New Zealand should strive to eradicate all pests, 90% strongly believed that some pests at their current population levels were a threat to native birds and plants, and 53.5% strongly believed that unmanaged pests could be a threat to New Zealand’s overseas agricultural trade.
The Challenge encouraged discussions on diverse topics relating to predator management with 134 ideas posted and 564 comments generated. The most active discussions included: school education programmes about pests; improved research for biological control and sterilisation techniques; aerial 1080 use and non-target impacts on native birds; automated species-specific toxin delivery devices; hunter and citizen pest monitoring and control; rolling fronts and cheaper predator-proof fences; and a focus in planning on eradication on offshore islands first. Management of feral and household cats was also discussed in multiple highly commented threads, including possibilities for stricter legislation, desexing, and microchipping.
Initially, Rebecca and her team were concerned that researchers were a primary participant group in the Challenge. However, they discovered that the public wanted an opportunity to engage researchers in conversation – often difficult in face-to-face meetings because of the roles of the participants. However, in a crowdsourcing platform with pseudo-anonymity (the participants have screen names), there can be greater openness to debate issues.
While the posts offered by Challenge participants were not always new, they provided an indication of community values and so are worth considering further. These include: ‘backyard’ pest monitoring and control; citizen or school programmes that provide citizens with monitoring methodologies; nationwide conversations to define goals on how to focus management efforts; laws regarding microchipping or desexing of cats or mandatory cat curfews or cats bells; nationwide or tourist levies for predator management or tax breaks for landowners doing their own control; and an initial focus on offshore island eradications and the use of these to learn how to scale-up eradication methodologies to large areas and to showcase what a Predator-Free New Zealand would look like. Currently, ideas from the challenge are being shared with representatives from Department of Conservation, TBfree New Zealand, and community-based pest controllers. Results from the Challenge will continue to be distributed to interested citizens and groups, so please email Rebecca if you would like to receive updates.
This work was funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (C09X1007), the National Science Foundation (Award Id: 1219832), and the James P. Reynolds Foundation at Dartmouth College.
Rebecca Niemiec, Bruce Warburton, Andrea Byrom, Jennyffer Cruz and Bob Frame
Contact: Rebecca Niemiec
niemiecr@landcareresearch.co.nz
