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Danielle Shanahan

Researcher

Oct 1, 2026

7:23
And then outside of the birds, who else do you home?
7:27
So one of the big invertebrates that we've brought in is a cook straight giant weta.
7:32
So it's an incredible weta, very, very large, you know, 45 grams or so, give or take again, but quite amazing to encounter.
7:43
And they're one of our more endangered species.
7:46
We also have more island frogs here, very cool frogs.
7:51
Only wild population of this frog are mainly in New Zealand again, so they're great, but actually one of the cool things that we do here is we certainly don't just look at the land, we look under the water.
8:03
So we've brought in, for example, kākehi or freshwater mussels, fabulous mussel species that filters about a litre of water an hour, you know, can really transform ecosystems.

9 MINS LATER

16:56
Did you want to spend a minute talking about threats or trouble that you're seeing on the horizon?
7:58
Why do you think that is?
8:02
Isn't it? So the brushtail possum is, I mean, I lived in Australia for a long time as well, and they are just the most engaging creatures.
8:11
Lovely animals, aren't they? Sometimes they get in the ceiling and cause a bit of a ruckus, but generally they're very lovable.
8:21
Here, our native plants are incredibly vulnerable.
8:26
They're very palatable.
8:27
A lot of them are very palatable to possums.
8:30
And they'll often take an approach where they might target one particular species and really focus on eating that in an area and then move on to another species.

16 MINS LATER

24:28
What are some of the biggest threats currently facing New Zealand, but specifically Wellington?

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