Interview: Carolyn King talks about Stoatally Fascinated

Professor Emerita Carolyn King gained a BSc at Liverpool University, followed by a doctorate at Oxford on the field ecology of native weasels. A life-changing offer in 1971 took her to New Zealand for a professional appointment as a mustelid specialist with the DSIR Ecology Division. More than five decades later, Carolyn can look back on an entire professional life devoted to understanding the extraordinary lives of weasels and stoats. In the process, she has published a number of books, won two prestigious awards and become a Fellow of the Royal Society New Zealand. Carolyn talks to NZ Booklovers.

Tell us a little about Stoatally Fascinated.

It is effectively an extended journal summarising my career as a zoologist specialising in the community ecology of small mustelids. I started as a doctoral student struggling to understand native weasels in England (1967-71). Ever since then, I have been working on the impact of introduced stoats and rats on native birds in New Zealand.  The book is effectively an informal companion to my last major analysis, Stoat in the Dock (Springer Nature, 2025).

What research was involved?

When I first arrived in New Zealand,  I organised a large collection of stoat carcases from all the national parks. The official policy was to remove alien species as far as possible. The rangers were setting traps anyway, so all I had to do was persuade them to refrain from biffing the carcases back into the bush, and instead to send them to me for analysis. The total number collected over several years (1972-82)  was just short of 1600. Then I also invented a simple monitoring method using tracking tunnels, which, when updated and improved by others, and used systematically over decades, provided the basic data for some exciting new insights into small mammal biology as the necessary statistical techniques developed.

What was your routine or process when writing this book?

The papers based on this work were published in the 1980s and led to many spinoff projects conducted by others. But in the end, it became clear that rats are more important enemies of nesting birds than are stoats, because rats get to much greater numbers in more places, especially on stoat-free offshore islands that offer refuges to endangered bird species that can no longer survive on the mainland.  Norway rats were first to wipe out many vulnerable seabird colonies in Fiordland; stoats never reached Rakiura or any of its offshore islands where ship rats carried on early fishing boats caused unprecedented damage. The critical difference on the mainland is that juvenile kiwi are much more vulnerable to stoats than to rats until the young kiwi grow large enough to fight back

If a soundtrack were made to accompany this book, name a song or two you would include.

Natural birdsong is irresistible and very relevant

What did you enjoy the most about writing Stoatally Fascinated?

I hoped it would become useful to conservationists in general, trying to understand natural ecosystems and the relative importance of the various invasive predators.

What is the favourite book you have read so far this year and why?

I loved David Towns’ account of Conservation work in NZ, Ahuahu (Canterbury University Press).

What’s next on the agenda for you?

Taking each day as it comes.

Quentin Wilson Publishing