Special report
Kathy White, former Waikato Regional Councillor for nine years and Chair of the council’s environmental performance committee for six years, is calling for an urgent inquiry into the ethics of school fundraising hunting competitions, citing escalating animal‑welfare concerns, international legal warnings, ecologically flawed assumptions, and new evidence of flawed statistics within government pest control programmes *
“New Zealanders deserve conservation policies grounded in good quality science and compassion,” White said.
SCIENTIFIC STUDIES SHOW THAT WILD CATS PREFER EATING RATS (81% of their diet) - a critical ecological function that prevents rat populations from exploding. Historically, cats have been used worldwide to control rodents on farms, ships, in warehouses, and even in public health settings to prevent plagues.
White says New Zealand is repeating past mistakes. “When over‑zealous cat‑trappers in Omori killed all the cats, it caused a rabbit plague on neighbouring farmland and under holiday homes on the foreshore of Lake Taupō. Locals ended up requesting the release of calicivirus because the cat‑killing created a bigger environmental problem than the one they started with.” I was the councillor in this area at the time.
Research from Stewart Island 22 years ago also noted that cats do not prey-switch to birds when rat numbers decline, contradicting long‑standing claims used to justify eradication campaigns.
ANIMAL WELFARE BREACHES AND PUBLIC SAFETY CONCERNS
Recent hunting competitions have raised serious animal‑welfare and safety concerns. Footage shows hunters putting guns against cats’ heads while drinking alcohol, and dogs being set on cats - behaviour that raises major questions about compliance with firearms regulations and the Animal Welfare Act. In one video, the North Canterbury hunting competition organiser, Mat Bailey drops a cage that has a cat in it, into a cattle trough of water.
The same video (and others) show hunters talking about how much they hate cats, while they shoot them from long distances, which is clear evidence that hunters do not check whether the cats are pets before killing them. It also encourages other hunters to treat animals disrespectfully.
These practices put missing pets, working barn cats, and strays at risk, and normalise violence toward animals in front of children and communities.
White says local councils are complicit in this cruelty, because they are aware of these breaches and are still allowing the hunting competitions to be held on council‑owned land.
INTERNATIONAL LEGAL CONCERNS AND CHILD PROTECTION OBLIGATIONS
Lawyers representing Network for Animals and more than 20 national and international organisations (including New Zealand’s own ACT directorate for Education) have formally written to the New Zealand Government warning that these hunts breach multiple laws, including UNCROC, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (to which New Zealand is a signatory).
Their letter states that exposing children to animal killing and cruelty can desensitise them to violence and impair empathy development later in life. They argue that allowing children to participate in or witness these events places New Zealand at risk of failing its international child‑protection obligations.
MISIDENTIFICATION RISKS
RNZ and The Guardian have raised major concerns about misidentification in hunting competitions, noting that hunters rely on visual cues that cannot reliably distinguish feral cats from domestic, stray, working, or barn cats before they are destroyed. The last four categories of cats have protections under the Animal Welfare Act and they are being ignored.
The most recent North Canterbury competition
recorded 450 cats killed - a number animal‑welfare experts say is way too high to plausibly represent only feral cats.
HUMANE, PUBLICLY ACCEPTABLE ALTERNATIVES
White says New Zealand urgently needs predator‑management policies that are scientifically credible and socially acceptable to the general public.
She recommends:
Partnering with groups like Feral No More, who catch, rehabilitate, and rehome feral cats.
Trap–Neuter–Release (TNR) programmes for cats living in colonies - a globally recognised method that prevents cat populations from exploding while maintaining ecological balance between apex predators and meso-predators.
* from the forensic audit of DOC’s current pest control programme, which was lodged at the NZ Audit Office at the end of May.
ENDS
Last year ‘Animal Save Movement’ Animal Save Movement called on the “New Zealand Government to ban the involvement of children in animal hunting competitions and activities throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. The torture and abuse of animals has no place in fundraisers or competitions, especially with children involved; yet the Toko Pig Hunt, the North Canterbury Hunting Competition, Pureora Hunting Competition and others, continue to run hunting events. Young children are encouraged to kill animals including pigs, deer, cats, possums, wallabies, ducks, geese, rabbits, goats, and more. These violent events include very disturbing and disrespectful acts of objectification, like dragging dead animals while running obstacle courses.”
Violence towards animals is cruel and unnecessary, and not conservation, despite some hunters wanting people to believe it is. Well those violence advocates are not represented by all hunters. Some of us abhor violence especially when it’s taught to young impressionable minds. Research has shown it desensitives young minds to violence which manifests itself in adult life with increased violent tendencies to others..
It’s good to bear hunters saying they don’t agree with what’s happening in these competitions. It’s particularly sad to see schools fundraising using competitions that involve cruelty to animals.
When children are taught to view animals as objects for destruction, dismiss their suffering, and witness violence towards them, it goes against the United Nations’ Committee on the Rights of the Child. The UN has declared that children have a right to be protected from exposure to violence against animals.
Don’t people understand predator/prey relationships?
Cats were completely eradicated from Australia’s sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island by 2001 to protect threatened seabirds. However, removing the apex predator caused a massive surge in the island’s rabbit population, which decimated native vegetation. This cascading “ecosystem meltdown” necessitated a subsequent, massive $24 million recovery project.
Perhaps the organisers of the North Canterbury hunt competition need to take a 5th form biology lesson?
I am a deerstalker by the way.
Please let them know on their facebook page.