Welcome to Coromandel Our Backyard. This is a place where landowners and homesteaders with similar interests can network, share information and support each other in the journey towards a poison-free Coromandel Peninsula in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Ecosystems are dynamic and everchanging. COBY”S philosophy aims for ecosystem balance, rather than artificial recreation of some past “pure” native ecosystem.
Since European settlement thousands of exotic species, both plant and animal, have been introduced. Habitats for native birds have been lost by the huge impacts of pastoral farming and forestry.
Eradication approaches to conservation have unintended consequences. For example, stoats, which predate primarily on rats, are forced to prey-switch to birds following a 1080 rat “knockdown.” Months later, rats rebound to greater levels than before. An endless cycle of “more 1080 more often” ensues. This becomes a pesticide treadmill, like a drug addiction, with ongoing profits for the manufacturers and distributors of the poison.
COBY people think we need less cruel and less harmful ways of doing conservation. We need true Kaitiakitanga, guardianship, caring for ecosystems in a healthy way, acknowledging that all things are connected – air, water, plants, animals, fungi, bacteria…
“Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. Man does not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself” Chief Seattle, 1854.
COBY promotes caring for our lands without the use of poisons: Te tiakitanga nga whenua hei paitini kore.
