Lincoln University is located in the suburb of New Zealand, which is Lincoln District. There are too many places called Lincoln in America. It is said that there are 19 counties called Lincoln, and some states have several Lincoln counties. Lincoln University in New Zealand is small, with more than 4,000 students. There are not many colleges, only five. I think this is quite similar to California Institute of Technology and Princeton University in the United States. Although the scale is not large, it is absolutely top-notch in its own research field. The same is true of agriculture-related majors at Lincoln University.

The only insect museum in New Zealand University

When it comes to agriculture-related majors, there are many. Like entomology. After listening to a brief school introduction given by the Vice-Chancellor of Lincoln University (New Zealand universities are the same as British universities, and the top leader of the school is the Vice-Chancellor and the Principal is an honorary position), we went to the Insect Museum of the school. This is the only insect museum in New Zealand universities, and there are countless fine collections.

Opossum flooding, wild ducks flooding, effective control.

Then we went to the office of Kay, a professor from Japan at Lincoln University, and listened to him introduce us to his research on opossum population control. At present, the biggest pest in New Zealand is opossum, with an astonishing number of 60 million, which is similar to that of sheep. This furry animal originated in Australia, but after arriving in New Zealand, it was overrun because it had no natural enemies.

In souvenir shops in New Zealand, opossum skins are often sold, and the price of a piece is around S $50. Since it has such great economic benefits, why not control the number by catching opossums in large quantities and selling their fur? Isn't this economic incentive enough?

We put this question to Professor Kay. His answer is that capturing nature artificially is a method, but it is far from eradicating the opossum disaster. First of all, New Zealand has a population of just over 4 million, and everyone still has to work. If everyone hits the agile opossum with a shotgun, it will definitely take a lot of time, and the cost is too worthless. If you use trapping methods, that is, setting traps and dropping mousetraps, it is easy to hurt animals such as kiwis, which New Zealanders are extremely unwilling to see.

The problem of alien species invasion seems to be very serious all over the world. Professor Kay's current job is to estimate the number of opossums accurately to the maximum extent and find out the best number. Because opossum is an exotic species, but it has been integrated into the local ecosystem for so long, killing it completely becomes the other extreme.

In the botanical garden in Christchurch, the flying wild ducks in New Zealand have made me very intoxicated. Our day? Parents? One of them, Rahael from ENZ, told me that the male ducks in New Zealand are green and brightly colored, while the female ducks are brown and slightly darker. This is probably the same as a peacock. Later, Laurette told me that her brother has just entered the wild duck hunting season and likes shooting wild ducks very much, but the daily limit is 12.