Kiwi survival in New Zealand depends on intensive predator control programs that have their own welfare implications for the non-target animals affected by trapping and poisoning.
Kiwi conservation creates a genuine welfare trade-off: intensive predator control is essential for kiwi survival but imposes welfare costs on stoats, rats, and possums killed in control operations. Lethal control methods including 1080 poison and leg-hold traps cause suffering in the animals targeted. From a welfare perspective, the resolution involves prioritizing the most humane available control methods, investing in research on species-specific alternatives, and recognizing that the welfare cost of predator control must be weighed against the welfare benefit to recovering kiwi populations and the ecological complexity they represent.