I'm Ayesha Roscoe and you're listening to The Sunday Story, where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story.

A huge experiment is underway in New Zealand.

The country is trying to save its endangered wildlife.

Animals found nowhere else on the planet.

But to do that, they're killing animals that aren't native and have

been taking over. It's a nationwide extermination campaign, one of the most ambitious in the world.

And it's raising questions about just how far humans should go to save the natural world.

Lauren Summer from NPR's Climate Desk went to New Zealand and joins us now.

Hi, Lauren. Hey there. Okay, so yes, I went to New Zealand and I want to introduce you to some of the

people doing this work. If you come down here, we can actually show the small strain that runs through here.

So that's Mila McKenzie and I met her in a

neighborhood park in Dunedin, New Zealand. And that's where her student group volunteers. And

they've done a lot. You know, they clean up litter. They put in new plants. I think this year we've

put about one to 200 trees. That's Finn Hibbert. He's another student in the group, and it's called Town Belt Kiteaki.

It's lucky almost all of the kids love weeding.

I find that hard to believe because I can't stand weeding, but that's great that they're doing

this, and they're like taking care of the environment.

That's nice.

Yeah, exactly.

But they're also doing something

that most kids don't do. These are traps, basically. Yes, we call these trapping stations.

So they're trapping and killing animals that aren't supposed to be in New Zealand. So we have

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