By Danette Wereta - General Secretary, Animal Justice Party

The North Canterbury hunt is a competition that kills many animals. While public outrage rightly focuses on the inclusion of a cat-killing category in the North Canterbury Hunting Competition, we must not lose sight of the broader reality - this event inflicts immense suffering on many animals — and worse, it hides behind the false banner of "conservation."

Let’s be clear about the cat issue first.

The competition’s method of trapping cats and the incentivised killer making the judgment about whether they are "feral" or "companion" is deeply flawed. A trapped, terrified animal, whether companion or feral, behaves similarly when panicked. Without mandatory microchipping, accurate identification is impossible and therefore illegal when killing cats that aren’t feral. The "conservation" excuse used also lacks any real scientific credibility. Habitat loss, not cats, is the primary driver of native species decline. Studies show that culling can actually worsen ecological problems by triggering higher breeding and hunting rates among survivors.

Organisers provide no local evidence to back their claims about cats harming the native bird population and their own website reveals the real motives - cats are included not based on scientific need, but because the controversy helped drive sponsorships, media coverage and turnout. This is about publicity, not conservation. Worse still, involving children in this violent event is very disturbing. Teaching young people to kill is normalising cruelty and dulling empathy — something consistently linked in research to higher risks of future interpersonal violence.

A simple glance at Google Maps shows that Rotherham isn't surrounded by pristine wilderness, it’s dominated by farmland. And here lies the real question: who is the pest? Compared to the massive, ongoing environmental destruction caused by agriculture, especially intensive dairying, the impact of wild animals like deer, pigs, possums, geese, rabbits, or feral cats is almost negligible. Are these animals seen as "pests" simply because they are inconvenient for farmers?

And if so, why are we allowing that narrative to hijack the language of conservation? New Zealand has long been trapped in a warlike mentality toward so-called "pest" species. Predator Free 2050 is framed as a noble mission, but at its heart lies violence and mass killing, not care or restoration. We use military language “invaders,” “eradication,” “weapons,” — to justify the widespread slaughter of animals who were, ironically, only here because of human colonisation.

As Samah Seger and Philip McKibbin powerfully describe in War on Pests, “So-called ‘pests’ are animals, like dogs and humans: they are sentient, they have interests, and they maintain relationships. And they are among the most mistreated animals in the world — especially those who live here in Aotearoa.” We demonise and destroy these animals while ignoring far greater harm: The real environmental destruction is not caused by possums, rabbits, or feral cats. It is caused by us.

If we were truly serious about protecting Aotearoa’s natural world, we would be confronting industrial farming, land degradation, climate pollution — not scapegoating vulnerable animals because it's easier.

There are humane, sustainable alternatives to the violence we too often accept such as investing in widespread desexing initiatives, supporting Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) programs, rewilding degraded farmland, reducing our reliance on animal agriculture and restoring native plant species that nurture native wildlife, just to name a few.

Knowing this competition has started makes my heart hurt for the many animals that will suffer and die. We tell ourselves that the death of these animals is quick, that they don’t suffer. But the truth is much darker. I’ve seen the bodies of the animals killed in this event. I’ve witnessed the brutality of it. And I’ve experienced extreme harassment from the organisers and attendees, even though I remained peaceful in my stance. Their attitude spoke volumes, a culture of cruelty masked as "sport," where empathy is an afterthought and violence is rewarded.

Killing animals is never acceptable, under any circumstances. The cruelty is compounded when it is disguised - when lies and myths are used to justify it, and people are encouraged to believe it serves a noble cause. Killing animals for the sake of a competition devalues life, reduces sentient beings to mere prizes, and breeds a culture of cruelty where empathy is replaced by the thrill of violence.

This is cruelty… for the animals, for the children and even harms those participating. And it needs to end.

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