Irony Corner

From the January/February issue of Orion:


New Zealand scientists have designed a method of birth control to help protect the natural environment of the nation's islands—not from too many people, but from too many possums. The sly wonders of genetic engineering now make it possible to administer birth control to animals we don't like. And most New Zealanders detest possums, an introduced species. "I do my best to run over them on the road. Everyone does. They are a plague on New Zealand," says Tim Popham, a zoologist living on the South Island.

Brought to New Zealand from Australia in 1837 by European settlers who wanted to establish a fur trade, brush-tailed possums are overrunning the country. Without native competitors to keep the possum population in check, New Zealand's unique and diverse island ecosystem is being squeezed by an estimated seventy million of the pesky marsupials. Possums eat the eggs of the rare and native kokako bird; devour entire canopies of rare native trees, like the rata and kamahi; and threaten one of New Zealand's largest export industries by transmitting bovine tuberculosis to beef and dairy cattle. Other methods of possum control—shooting, trapping, and poisoning—have proved ineffective for the long term.

If successful, the proposed possum contraceptives could reduce the population's fertility by 70 percent. However, the contraceptives are produced using genetically modified plants, and 70 percent of New Zealanders oppose the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to their islands. Ignoring citizen protests, in October 2003 New Zealand's Labor government lifted regulations that prohibited research on GMOs outside of laboratories and controlled field trials. Now, the genetically engineered vegetables used to produce possum contraceptives—currently imported from Australia where, ironically, possums are endangered—may be grown in New Zealand. This is raising eyebrows, particularly since New Zealand's Ministry for Environment has concluded that "[potential] impacts [of introducing GMOs] on individual industries—especially the agriculture industry—remain significantly large."

Yet possums aren't a potential problem, they are a proven one. Janine Duckworth, a possum biocontrol scientist at the New Zealand firm Landcare Research, which is producing the contraceptives, believes the risk of doing nothing to control possums is far greater than the perceived risk genetic engineering poses. But organic farmer John Baker isn't so sure. Baker, who worries about the future awaiting his children, has a suggestion: "Tell them to go test it in America, then come back to us when they know it works." And that might not be a bad idea. Though possums are not pests in the United States (where they are more commonly called by their formal name, opossums), the U.S. has its own invasive species, which are already a $137-billion-a-year problem. Genetically modified organisms, feared by some but spreading through the country's food system all the same, might well be a man-made solution to the man-made problems of introduced, out-of-control species. Or they might not. After all, once upon a time an enterprising businessman thought that a new species—the possum—was just what New Zealand needed.

Someone somewhere once said something about mankind only posing for itself problems that it can solve. Permit me a wry smile.