Kia ZERO!, I’m Mariko — a permaculturalist sharing my journey of
“Playing, Living, Working and Learning” here in New Zealand!
And I’m the only Official Kiero Advisor living outside Japan.
The other day, I went to “Native Forests Want to Live”, a talk by Dean Baigent-Mercer from Forest & Bird, at Whanganui Kai Hub. At the talk, I learned how important it is to control rats and possums — our forests are disappearing, and possum numbers keep growing.
New Zealand has many native birds, starting with the kiwi. Or rather… it had.
Animals brought in from overseas — rats, stoats, and especially possums from Australia. Possums eat their way through trees and leaves. They breed fast and have no natural enemies. They eat the eggs of kiwi and other native birds. Kiwi and other native birds have declined, and many birds have gone extinct.
That’s why New Zealand has a goal called Predator Free 2050 — to remove introduced predators like rats, stoats and possums by 2050.
What we can do is stop rats from increasing. And to do that, we need to make sure we catch them. It may sound harsh, but these animals were never meant to be in New Zealand, and they are killing New Zealand’s native wildlife.
One question that always comes up at my Kiero workshops is rats.
Yes, rats will come. They come to compost bins too. But in a Kiero, food scraps break down so quickly that they’re usually gone before rats find them. Still, it’s not perfect. If you want to keep them out, you can put wire mesh over the triangle-shaped openings.
That’s what I normally tell people.
But after Dean’s talk, an idea came to me: what if the Kiero itself could become a rat trap? Set a rat trap inside the Kiero, and it could catch rats straight away as they come in through the triangle-shaped openings. Then dig a hole, put the rat in the soil, and cover it up?? Hmm… I don’t know if it would work, but it could be an interesting challenge!
It would be awesome if Kiero could help the wildlife and the forests too.
Living with a Kiero changes things. You’re doing something good for the planet, and along the way you find yourself getting along a little better — with the people around you, and with nature. And for such a simple system, it holds so many possibilities beyond food scraps. You and I can change the world!
