He slings his gun over his shoulder and scans the track with thermal vision goggles. "The hardier ones will brave the rain," he says quietly.
The goggles render the landscape ghostly skeletal trees and blotted shadows. Barely a minute passes before a splash of bright light moves into frame 30 metres away. It grazes for a moment, then with the unmistakable bounce of a wallaby, hops toward a new patch of grass. Peeti drops flat against the wet earth and readies his shot. His gun cracks. "Got it," he says, disappearing to retrieve the animal.
Peeti can kill 100 dama wallabies in this patch of bush in a night - a tiny dent in the population of thousands that have become pests in this one 55,000-hectare forest block above Rotoiti Lake.
"The wallaby has reached plague proportions," Peeti says. "They are eating all the shrubs, baby seedlings, stopping the natives from growing." Peeti - who is also a culinary and hunting TV star - has been culling wallabies and other pests including deer, pigs, possums and rabbits for more than 20 years. Recently, he was contracted by the Bay of Plenty regional council as a wallaby pest controller.
Denne historien er fra September 09, 2022-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Denne historien er fra September 09, 2022-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Starlink's conquest of the Amazon leaves Brazil in a dilemma
The helicopter swooped into one of the most inaccessible corners of the Amazon rainforest. Brazilian special forces commandos leaped from it into the caiman-inhabited waters below.
Dalai Lama's mountain town feels the strain of tourist boom
SUVs and saloon cars pass slowly along McLeod Ganj's narrow one-way Jogiwara Road, blaring horns at pedestrians and scooter riders and playing loud music.
'I am all the world' The brutal rule of a West Bank settler
Palestinians tell ofblacklisted Yakov's reign across the Jabal Salman valley and heisjust one of many violent bosses
Stormy waters New flashpoint emerges in South China Sea dispute
Hopes that tensions in the South China Sea might ease have been short lived.
'Justice delayed' Why trust in public inquiries to bring closure is fading
After the final report of the Grenfell fire inquiry was published, Hisam Choucair, who lost six family members in the blaze, said: \"We did not ask for this inquiry... It's delayed the justice my family deserves.\"
Celeriac soup with almond pangrattato
I'm not ashamed to say that as soon as September hits, my stick blender comes out. Just as I embrace salads when the clocks go forward in the UK, I wholeheartedly throw myself into soup season once the summer holidays end. Autumn is approaching in the northern hemisphere and I'm ready with my ladle. Celeriac is one of my favourite soup heroes, because it gives the creamiest, silkiest finish with little effort. You don't have to make the almond pangrattato, but it is a wonderful addition.
Are smoke signals telling me to make an oil change in the kitchen?
Should you that is, not can you) cook with extra-virgin olive oil? Antonio, Atlanta, Georgia, US
Going underground
A darkly humorous encounter between an American spy-cop and the members ofan eco-commune she is hired to infiltrate
All work and no play
Hard Graft, a powerfulnew London exhibition, focuses onworkers’ exploitation, from the ruined hands ofa washerwoman to mothers forced to sell their bodies
What the princess and the shaman tell us about hereditary privilege
It should have been an Instagram-perfect wedding image, but it turned out to be something more embarrassing.