Extinctions have consequences

The Catastrophic Consequences of Moa Extinction in New Zealand

The extermination of New Zealand’s giant, flightless bird, the moa, was fast, but the consequences have lasted centuries.

The skeletal foot of a moa, propped up beside the river that it probably came to drink from (the Clutha) shortly before that river was flooded by a hydro dam. Photo: The author, Mike Pole)

Sometime back in the early 1970s, my sister (who was less than ten at the time) tripped over a moa bone. At least, that’s how the story got back to me, who was stuck in school. My mother and sister were walking across a New Zealand swamp (back in the days when no-one thought twice crossing unfenced farmland). Cattle hooves had probably compacted the surrounding peat so that the large bone had been left projecting upwards.

Moa was an entirely flightless bird that once lived in New Zealand — think ostrich, but far more massive, and quite unlike the ostrich, had no wings at all. Swamps in various parts of New Zealand have thousands and thousands of moa bones buried in their peat, representing many, many individuals. The treasure trove of bones that they preserve has been an absolute ‘gold mine’ in the study of this now extinct bird (see the book ‘The Lost World of the Moa’ by Trevor Worthy).

New Zealand, as it turns out, was the last large, habitable place on Earth, to have been discovered. Antarctica is bigger but is…