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of predators? This article by Kennedy Warne. To protect their most precious birds, New Zealanders have marked key invasive predators for total eradication. Now the world's most ambitious conservation experiment is entering a brutally efficient new phase, one that could change how we decide what's worth saving. The trail was steep, overgrown and slippery from rain. I had to grip tree trunks and clumps of leaves to keep from sliding down the mountain side. It was springtime and in this forest

reserve in northern New Zealand, chicks were hatching. My friend and I were part of a volunteer effort to help protect them from a ruthless invasive predator, and packed accordingly. Our backpacks contained bags of orange scented rat poison, except our target wasn't rats at all. We were after stoats, small carnivorous mammals introduced to New Zealand in the eighteen seventies that are especially deadly to native birds. These animals are lean and lithe, with kitten like faces. They'd be

almost adorable if they weren't such devastating killers. A stoat can climb a sixty foot tree to take down a fully grown pigeon, grappling the bird off its perch before forcing it onto the ground below. Once the bird is subdued, the stoat typically sinks a pair of long canines into the back of its head to eat its brain, followed by bodily organs and eventually the remaining meat. Stoats were introduced to control rabbits, but became adept at killing ground

dwelling birds like our iconic bird, the Kiwi. The challenge with stoats is that they are weary of traps and toxins, so we were deployed a work around by stalking dozens of small bait stations molded plastic boxes screwed into the base of trees with toxic petals that rats find irresistible. Rats are another invasive predator, but more important for this gambit, stoats will also prey on them. If you can poison a rat happily enough, then any stout that eats it

will probably die too. That way, you can rid the forest of two predators in a single stroke. Such logic may sound heartless, but there is a much larger mission at stake for my entire country. Stoats rats another non native mammalian pass are destroying the unique ecology of New Zealand. Over the centuries since these animals were introduced, many of our indigenous species have been wiped out because they aren't

adapted to defend themselves against ground hunting mammals. We now find ourselves at a turning point with a chance to

accelerate steps to undo generations of ecological harm. Although the ethical quandary is around directly intervening remain complex, the strategies and technology for killing predators continues to improve life on the land that came to be called air Torawa, the Maori language name for the New Zealand archipelago, avowed for eighty million years in the complete absence of terrestrial mammals other than a few bat species. Then in the blink

of an evolutionary eye. That changed when humans started arriving around seven hundred fifty years ago, bringing with them, albeit sometimes inadvertently, wave after wave of new threats. Today, the most common invasive predators have hunted more than fifty five bird species to extinction, including some of the only flightless song birds ever to have existed, two kinds of flightless geese, and a remarkable bird called the Huya, one of a

family of wattle birds found only in New Zealand. This bird, highly sacred to Maori, had a most unusual feature. Male and female birds had dramatic different bills. Four fifths of the country's remaining endemic birds, including kiwis, are at risk of the same fate. Ninety four percent of native reptiles are similarly threatened, as are two of our three native species of frog. To counteract the destruction, New Zealand officials have mounted an offensive for humans to hunt the hunters

into total elimination. Almost a decade ago, in twenty sixteen, then New Zealand Prime Minister John Key announced the government's seemingly audacious goal of completely eradicating major predator species by twenty fifty. The seven invaders. Specifically targeted are three different types of rats, plus doats, ferrets, weasels, and possums. Key dubbed this the most ambitious conservation project attempted anywhere in

the world. The late New Zealand physicist Sir Paul Callaghan, one of the first to articulate the predator free vision, likened the difficulty of achieving that goal to creating an Apollo program our country's moonshot. The effort has been estimated to cost upwards of six billion dollars. New Zealand has a land area of a hundred thousand square miles, with invasive predators spread across not just mountains and forests, but also glaciers, dune lands, wetlands, and hundreds of urban areas.

Any solutions would need to operate effectively on all of those frontiers. Nine years after the predator Free campaign launched. However, conservationists agree that existing control strategies, even deploying poison to kill two predators at once and other techniques developed in recent decades, won't get us to zero by twenty fifty,

or possibly at all. The geographical scale is too small, the available resources too thin, the collateral damage too difficult to manage, but achieving any moonshot has always required rethinking just about everything. Right now, That's what a cologist's, biologists, trap makers, ethicists, and engineers are doing, combining their strengths to learn from the past while accelorating the pace of innovation. Despite the obstacles, the progress their making has them imagining

a hopeful new future. Birds safe, Predators Gone. No creature captures the predicament of New Zealand's native animals evolving in isolation better than the Kiwi, the epitome of beloved, weirdness and vulnerability. Kiwis are about the size of a chicken and have attributes similar to the mammals that were largely absent during New Zealand's evolutionary history. There are five species. All are nocturnal and flightless, with catlike whiskers and fur

like shaggy feathers. They even have marrow in their leg bones, all unbirdlike features. To encounter a kiwi in the wild, watching it probe the leafy rumas pushing its five inch bill almost to the hilt as it hunts for grubs is to be transported to an Arcadian epoch when birds

had no need to escape ground dwelling threads. But that protective environment changed abruptly when humans arrived from Eastern Polynesia, with the first recorded invasive predator, the ciuree rat, which may have been carried on their voyaging canoes as a food source. The danger grew with the arrival of Europeans, who introduced black and brown rats that likely traveled with them as stowaways on ships. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,

more intentional animal introductions also went awry. Colonial settlers unleashed a deadly triumvirate of ferret's weasels and of course, stoats, in an ill conceived effort to keep rabbits, which themselves were introduced for food and sport, in check. The proposed control agents barely dented the rabbit numbers, turning their attention to birds and other fauna, which were much easier to

catch and had no natural defenses against them. Then, in an attempt to establish a fur industry, Colonial New Zealanders imported the Australian brush tail possum, which is a bit larger than its American cousin, with a furry tail and

luxuriant pelt. These omnivorous eaters quickly spread through the country's forests, but the nineteen eighties, more than fifty million possums were estimated to be in the wild, consuming twenty three thousand tons of vegetation every night, along with birds and their eggs, snails and other invertebrates. The accumulative damage inflicted by these animals is almost beyond comprehension. At least twenty five million chicks and eggs of native birds are believed to be

consumed by such predators each year. It has been estimated that ninety five percent of kiwis that hatch in areas where stoats are active do not live to adulthood. Every New Zealand habitat is under siege, says Colin Muirk, a landscape ecologist at the University of Canterbury. The initial attempt to eradicate predators began sixty five years ago on many of the country's small offshore islands. The techniques and devices used were rudimentary hardware snap traps for rodents, bigger, more

powerful versions for stoats. Toxic baits dropped from low flying aircraft to blanket an entire island with rudenticide, but the effort worked. More than three hundred New Zealand islands are now predator free and have become sanctuaries for vulnerable creatures, such as the tuartara, a lizard like reptile that's evolved little since the age of dinosaurs, and the owl faced cacapo,

the world's only flightless parrot. The elegant tieca or North Island saddleback, which is named for a chestnut blaze of feathers across its jet black plumage, once survived on only one predator free island. It has since been reintroduced to others as those areas have become safe to inhabit. On the mainland, gains have been slower and hard won. In Miramar, a four square mile peninsula in the country's capital city, Wellington.

It took workers for Predator Free Wellington four years to fully rid the area of black and brown rats, stoads, and weasels. Doing so required installing more than eleven thousand bait stations and traps in residence yards, schools, shopping centers and even the studios where sets for the Lord of the Rings were constructed. These had to be checked weekly for at least six months before project staff began the extended process of locating any animals that had evaded traps

and toxins. At least a thousand Miramar households formed their own volunteer network to help out through careful management. Key predators have also been removed from a three hundred fifty square mile swath of wilderness in the country's mountainous southwest, proof that eradication is possible in both urban and back country regions, but all told, the area cleared so far is still less than half a percent of the whole country. Tens of thousands of New Zealanders have proved willing to

engage in this effort. Many schools teach students how to humanely trap and kill predators as part of a conservation curriculum. Now, eradication experts want to accelerate progress by increasing the impact

of these volunteers. Dan Tompkins, science director of Predator Free twenty fifty Limited, a company that allocates government funding toward future innovations, says one of the top priorities is to draadically reduce the time spent servicing killing devices in the field, self resetting traps with dispensers to automatically bait them are already doing that. The devices can operate autonomously for months, while sharing their catch status and other data, giving projects

staff a continuous update on predator numbers and activity. One popular variety has the trap mechanism housed in a wire mesh cage that is screwed to a tree at shoulder height to keep it out of reach of curious ground birds such as kiwis. A wooden ramped leads predators up to the device, which they enter from below, lured by the promise of food. The specially formulated bait, appealing to

both rodents and possums, is a flavored mayonnaise. When the animal crosses a light beam, the trap triggers a kill bar, crushes the skulls of rats and mice, and strangles the much larger possum. Once it has been triggered, a motor rebates and resets the trap, rewinding the kill mechanism. The carcass then drops out of the trap enclosure to the ground.

These traps are being deployed across the country. In the Southern Lakes region of New Zealand's South Island, Paul cavanaught the direct project director for a consortium that supports over one hundred volunteer groups and conservation minded organizations, estimates that self resetting traps are forty nine times more effective than

traditional devices. Our self resetting traps have been catching two to six possums per night, and we might not need to check the trap more than once every six months, he told me at a project field site in the hills beyond Queenstown. In contrast, a single set trap might make one kill and then be out of service for a month until a volunteer comes to reset it. Other lower tech devices require even more work. Leg holed traps, commonly used in the fur trade but also sometimes in

pest control, don't kill animals outright. New Zealand law requires they be checked every twelve hours so the animal can be dispatched without undue suffering. Collectively, the four hundred self resetting traps at Kavanaughs Field sides dispatched more than seventy two hundred pests in twelve months. It's game changing technology, he said. We used to say you can't trap your way to predator elimination. These traps are challenging that idea.

Until now, traps have also needed to be placed inside boxes or structures with openings just wide enough to admit the target predator but prevent non target species from being snared accidentally. The problem is many predators are trap shy, disinclined to enter the confines of a box or other housing despite the temptation of a tasty treat. That's changing with artificial intelligence recognition, which allows for a trap that

is completely open. These traps, expected to debut this year, will trigger only when the target predator approaches them and an AI powered camera confirms the identity of the species. In addition, whereas traditional traps require the target animal to push, pull, or stand on a trigger to activate them, AI traps do not demand that level of interaction. They ensure an instant killed with few near misses, and importantly create less

collateral damage. While some inventors focus on trap technology, others use their understanding of predator behavior to advantage. One product that's close to being released commercially is the Spitfire. It's designed to turn the grooming impulse of furry animals into a fatal last act. The device could use peanuts, but to attract predators to reach it, an animal must stand

on a platform which weighs records its weight. This then triggers an infrared beam to assess height, accurately determining whether this is a desired target, all within a fraction of a second. Once a positive identification is made, the device sprays toxin onto the animal's belly, prompting the critter to groom and in so doing, in just the toxin spitfires can deliver up to a hundred lethal doses and be

left in the field an attendant for a year. When development that excites Tompkins is the impending commercial release of the world's first rat selective toxin, a chemical called norbormide. It was discovered by accident in the nineteen sixties but fell out of use because of inconsistent effectiveness and the evergence of second generation anti coagulants. Now it shows promise in reducing the collateral damage of eradication efforts. A rat toxin that puts no other speed at risk is a

game changer, he says. For example, the rat toxin I carried through the forest could accidentally poison a range of birds and animals, including dogs, which might scavenge a poisoned carcass. A rat specific toxin could be deployed to remove the last holdouts in a rodent population and prevent re invasion once an area has been cleared to ensure the removal

is permanent. New Zealand is now poised to automate the mass killing of animals on an unprecedented scale, but some animal rights experts argue that the predator eradication community has always addressed the obvious ethical implications. I'm not opposed to the principles of predator Free twenty fifty, says Nio Busserli, co director of the Animal Welfare, Science and Bioethics Center

at New Zealand's Massy University. But if you're going to undertake something that has potential impacts for millions of sentient animals, then there's an ethical obligation to do the as you can for them. The eradication effort, at least as conducted so far, hasn't met the correct standard of compassion. Critics argue the campaign in New Zealand to exterminate all non native animals relies on the use of poisons, which are

known to cause intense suffering and agonizing deaths. Conservationist Jane Goodall stated in her own ethical review of the eradication programs. As I read more and more about this plan, I became increasingly concerned. For now, despite their welfare issues, toxins

remain indispensable to the predator free mission. But as James Russell, an ecologist and National geographic explorer who works to restore endangered populations, explained to me, there are two kinds of animal welfare to consider, that of the predator and that of the prey. The harm that predators inflict on native species far exceeds the harm we inflict in managing them. He argues. The presence of mammalian predators in air Heroa

is an historical environmental injustice. Russell said, just as we try to correct historical social injustices, I believe we should try to correct historical environmental injustices. On a late May day, I was helping Russell catch and band gray faced petrels, one of the few burrowing seabirds that still nest on the mainland. A petrel may transfer traverse thousands of miles of ocean in its lifetime. To hold one in your

hands reinforces this feeling of environmental responsibility. Not acting in it is ethically fraught to doing nothing about predators gives them a license to kill, says Brent Beavin, who manages the Predator Fee twenty fifty project for the government's Department of Conservation. You make a choice, and it's inactive choice either way. Indigenous species are animals that don't belong here. Which one will it be? Either way, you're condemning animals

to death. Mori have another perspective on the issue. For them. The natural world to Tayo is literal kin in the mayor e. In the Maori world view, human and non human are woven together like fibers in a traditional cloak. Break any individual thread and the whole garment starts to unravel. On Iota, or in Western terms, Great Barrier, an island off the coast of Auckland, Mayori are taking the lead and removing predators so that the unraveling may be halted

and the cloak restored. They call the project to my Taunga. Let the treasured ones stand strong. They were here before us. As Marilyn Davies Stephens, one of the projects leaders of the indigenous species, there are tupuna, the Mayori term for ancestors. A wrong has been done to our tupuna. We need to turn it around. There is escalating momentum now. Sixty years ago, when the first New Zealand island was cleared of rats, a tiny speck of land at the size

of four football fields, the attempt had seemed futile. In the result miraculous. Each decade since, the size of islands cleared of predators as increased by an order of magnitude. New Zealand technologies and expertise have been employed for island eradications around the world. Success can be measured in other powerful ways. When I was a child, a kiwi egg used to hang on a nail in the family beach house in the Bay of Islands. The shell was huge,

almost five inches from end to end. Kiwis lay the largest eggs relative to body size of any bird, up to a fifth of the mother's weight. I marveled at that egg, but never saw the bird. By then, stout predation had rendered kiwis in the North a rarity, but our efforts have changed that. Now in the Bay, I hear them every night. Where eradication is working, some two million invasive predators have been eliminated in a phased and accelerating effort to read New Zealand of the unwelcome hunters.

By twenty fifty, the greatest progress has been made on islands and peninsulas. Up next the rest of the mainland. Next, a star among stars. The race to save one of the world's largest sea stars from extinction just got interesting.

The Sunflower sea star, which can span more than three feet across, is a ravenous roving apex predator able to devour armored animals like urchin, snails, clams, and crabs, but a mysterious wasting disease thought to be worsened by climate change, has led to an estimated global population decline of over ninety percent since twenty thirteen. In a bid to restore these hunters, which range across the northeastern Pacific West Coast,

scientists are learning to breed them in captivity. The entire aquarium heard us cheering, says Melissa Torres, senior aquarist at UC San Diego's Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, when her team produced its first fertilized eggs in twenty twenty four, following the lead of Washington State scientists with more than three hundred juveniles now growing across six partner institutions. The hope is to one day release the species back

into California waters, where it's considered essentially extinct. All this is excellent news unless you happen to be a sea urgent by Jason Bittel. Next the Kazanlach Tomb frescoes of a fated kingdom. During World War II, Bulgarian soldiers stumbled upon a lavishly painted tomb, the first of many to be found in an ancient necropolis. Fighting during World War II led to surprising discoveries near the Bulgarian city of Kazanlach.

Bulgaria had sided with Nazi Germany, and toward the end of the war the country was bombed by the Allies from the west, while the threat of Soviet invasion loomed in the east. To protect their lands, the Bulgarian army built anti aircraft defenses near the central city of Cousin Loch. These works set off a remarkable series of archaeological discoveries that would hugely expand knowledge about the ancient peoples who lived in the region thousands of years before World War II.

Their kingdom was called Thrace. Ancient Thrace extended over what today is Bulgaria, Northwest Turkey, southern Romania, and southeast Serbia. Not unlike nineteen forties Bulgaria, Thrace sat at a geopolitical crossroads, surrounded by great rival powers Persia, Athens, and late later Macedomia, neighbours with whom Thracian kingdoms formed a series of shifting alliances.

Much of what is known about Thrace comes from Greek sources written by settlers living along the Black Sea coast that fringed Thrace, who admired and feared these wild seeming people of the rugged interior. They were portrayed by Homer as allies of the Trojans in the Iliad and the Odyssey, warrior aristocrats who flaunted their gold and fine horses. Thracian culture bears the marks of both Eastern and Western influences. Their elite drinking vessels made of precious metals were inspired

by both Persian and Greek styles and motifs. Greeks considered the Thracians barbarians, yet Greek contacts led them to associate their gods with Apollo and Hermes. Greek writings on the Thracians often noted their warlike nature and with relief their disunity. They would be the most powerful people in the world if they had one ruler, wrote Greek historian Herodotus. But such union is impossible for them, and there are no

means of ever bringing it about. Nevertheless, in four seventy nine BC, the Persian retreat after their defeat by the Greeks created a power vacuum in Thrace and a chance for unity the Thracian Terries. The first emerged as the founder king of what would become known as the Odrisian Kingdom, under which forty Thracian tribes united. Although Odricia was conquered by Alexander the Great's father Philip in three forty two to three four, y Odrisian co rulers retained a degree

of independence. There were ten tensions with Macedonia, but a flowering of Odrisian monument building did emerge under King Suthis the Third. His power base was centered where Cozenlock in Bulgaria now stands and we are. In nineteen forty four, Bulgarian soldiers found the first of many ancient Thracian tombs, the first of the big Thracian discoveries at Kazanloch came in April nineteen forty four. Digging trenches, soldiers stumbled on

a tomb containing richly colored frescoes. Archaeologists would later learn that this place, the Tomb of Cozenloch, was not a standalone monument. It belonged to a royal necropolis that stretched across the landscape for miles around a lost Thracian city from the fourth century BC. Archaeologists led by Dimitar p. Dimitrov, the director of the Archeological Museum in Sofia, were able to begin a scientific investigation of the site in nineteen

forty eight. The Thracian tomb of Cousinlock consists of an antechamber, a connecting passageway, and a round burial chamber, all richly decorated. Although looted in the past, the wall decorations are well preserved. The walls of the entrance passageway are completely covered with colorful frescoes. Both the plinth painted black and the white listl which marks the line from which the roof rises, give the illusion of stone slabs. Above these moldings is

a frieze with stylized plant motifs. There are two battle scenes on the frieze, in which infantry and cavalry face one another, dressed in Thracian and Macedonian styles. The burial chamber itself is a bee high shaped tholos. Inside it, archaeologists found fragments of a crown, an amphra, and more important, the bones of two people, a man and a woman, who were verified as having lived at the beginning of

the third century BC. Believe the male remains are those of Prince Rougos', son of Southes the third, and that the female bones belong to his wife. The burial chamber contains the tomb most celebrated image, a portrait of the couple seated at a banquet table they lovingly hold one another's wrists at the feast, surrounded by servants, musicians, and a chariot. The scope and magnificence of the necropolis has prompted some historians to call it the Valley of the

Thracian Kings. It is one of the largest Iron Age aristocratic necropolis ease in Europe and will over a thousand of its structures still wait to be excavated, revealing more of Bulgaria's rich ancient culture. This article by Julius Purcell and Angel Carlos Aguayo Perez. This concludes readings from National Geographic Magazine for today. Your reader has been Marsha. If you've enjoyed hearing this content, please give us a call at eight five nine four two two six three nine zero.

Thank you for listening, and have a great day.