E mihi ana ki ngā tohu o nehe o Whakatū
Tū mai rā Maungatapu
Rere atu te Mahitahi
Puta atu ki te Aorere
E mihi ana ki ngā Iwi Mana Whenua
Acknowledgements to the ancestral and spiritual landmarks of Nelson Maungatapu (mountain) stands forever Mahitahi (river) flows
Flowing into Tasman Bay
Acknowledgements to the tribes who connect to this land
The First 20 years of the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary
A history of a significant Nelson environmental project from the first suggestions of the idea through to proof of the concept with the first successful reintroductions of endangered native species 2001 – 2021
Michael Murphy 2024
Foreword
Kia Ora.
Twenty years ago a group of Nelson conservation leaders had a dream: to build a wildlife sanctuary in the hills surrounding Nelson City, to reintroduce new species that were there once and to eventually see those birds fly into the city as a symbol of what could be possible with dedicated conservation leadership and the power of volunteers, corporates, local government, the Department of Conservation, Iwi Whenua and hapu all working together.
When I first met Dave Butler, who was chair of the Sanctuary Trust, we were in a remote part of Fiordland on a photographic mission where he shared this inspiring vision. The idea was to capture the hearts and minds of a whole city to transform the way the locals felt about their patch of steep bush clad hills forming such a superb backdrop to one of New Zealand’s best located cities.
After 20 years of hard work, the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary has done this in droves. From the establishment of the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary Charitable Trust in 2004 to the huge job of building one of New Zealand’s most challenging predator free fences, to being declared pest free in 2019, the bulk of the work has been done above all by an incredible network of volunteers.
The leadership of the Trust must be acknowledged for the fundraising, the strategy and the relationship building that enabled such a venture - quite often in the face of opposition. The venture has survived record floods and threats of fire.
The incredible growth in supporters, the QualMark certification, the revamped visitor centre, the Biosecurity Plan all signal success. You have pulled it off and made so many New Zealanders and international visitors immensely proud of what you have done. Today it is the best place in New Zealand to see orange fronted parakeet/ kākāriki karaka. Soon it will be the best place to see kākā, little spotted kiwi/pukupuku and tuatara all due to the incredible dedication of so many volunteers. Thank you for all you have done for Brook Waimārama Sanctuary - it is so appreciated.
Nga Mihi
Lou Sanson Patron
Introduction
When I joined the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary community project in 2017 I was struck by several distinct characteristics from other conservation activities: the complexity of the Sanctuary project and the dedication displayed by a large pool of volunteers who supported the notion of restoring an ecosystem in the Nelson hills.
Since 2004 the Sanctuary project has benefitted from the dedication to the cause by many individuals and entities that have all helped shaped the Sanctuary and its supporting organisation today. The best way for me to explain this dedication is to reflect that in 2022 the Sanctuary trustees wanted to recognise the long-standing volunteers who have shown consistent commitment to the Sanctuary by creating an honours board and offer lifetime subscriptions as a token of giving something back. Nicknamed the Tuatara Club, one of the criteria to entry into the club was to have served as a volunteer for over 15 years. As of 2024, we have 60 club members, most who still pay their annual subscription regardless. It’s this sort of commitment that makes a strong backbone to an organisation’s framework that in turn helps trustees, staff and supporters achieve the vision of restoring an ecosystem.
The initiative of promulgating this book was based on capturing some of the stories and experiences through volunteers that have been associated with the project throughout its first 20 years and describing the Sanctuary’s evolution over this initial establishment period. This record should acknowledge the hundreds of thousands of hours volunteers have spent working on the project. Not surprisingly the text for the book contents took over a year to compile and edit from many interviews and records. Mike Murphy a long-standing volunteer stepped forward to take on the task and we thank Mike for that. Many volunteers who are quoted requested that they are not mentioned because they thought that would be unfair to so many who are not mentioned but who have given so much.
We do hope you enjoy the collection of stories and recollections that describes the formation of an important regional asset and draws the reader closer to the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary.
Richard (Ru) Collin
Trustee 2017-2019
Chief Executive 2019- present
Overview
This is the remarkable story of the creation of the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary that grew from an idea in a casual conservation to a thriving environmental project enclosed by a pestproof fence more than 14 kilometres long enclosing around 690 hectares of rugged countryside and which carried out its first reintroductions of endangered species 20 years later.
The site that the Sanctuary now occupies was, from 1863 until 1941, Nelson City’s main water supply catchment and it remained in service until 1987. Its Reserve status protected much of it from direct human modification, particularly its upper reaches that are covered with beech forest typical of that found in the neighbouring Richmond Ranges and in the Nelson region in general with small pockets of southern rata, matai, miro and rimu along with a few large totara.
Despite the lower, northern slopes of the valley being heavily infested with invasive introduced plant species and the understory being ravaged by goats, pigs and other ungulates, researchers who conducted a professional vegetation survey of the valley concluded that it could provide “excellent potential habitat for a wide variety of indigenous flora and fauna including species that were currently extinct or very uncommon at the site.” (Van Eyndhoven & Norton, 2004).
Van Eyndhoven & Norton, 2004
In 2023, members of the staff weeding team updated the list of plants found in the Sanctuary from the 250 species recorded in 2014/15 to a total over 330 that include:
• 237 species of native trees, shrubs, mistletoe, vines, ferns, orchids and grasses.
• 100 exotic species.
Sometime in 2001, a couple whose property is on the lower western slopes of the Brook Waimārama Valley in Nelson, had the idea that a fenced ‘mainland island’ wildlife sanctuary could possibly be created next door in the water catchment Reserve. They were conservationists at heart as was he by profession, and he began progressing the idea with his first newsletter circulated in January 2002. Conservationist friends and other interested people began to join them, an article about it appeared in The Nelson Mail and the first public meeting to attract supporters was held at Nelson’s historic Fairfield House.
With the word out, a second public meeting to attract volunteers to work in the project was held at the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT) where the large group who attended were asked to put their names down on lists for a range of activities that would be required. However, on-the-ground operations could not begin until permission was received from the Nelson City Council, which owns the land. Consequently, the enthusiasts who had put their names down on the various team lists heard little for another year or two while the founding group established an Incorporated Charitable Trust that could obtain a lease over the Reserve and gain permission to commence operations. The Trust was established in 2004 with invitations for representatives on the Board from the Department of Conservation (DoC), NMIT, Nelson City Council (NCC) and the several iwi present in Whakatū/Nelson.
The first trustees then set about the tasks of fund raising, publicising the project and working with the first volunteer teams, the managers of which were volunteers who had simply put their hands up to take those roles. The first teams included track cutters to begin on the operational tracks that are necessary for trapping, pest monitors who established separate tracks along which to monitor predator activity, and trappers to reduce predator numbers. Ad hoc working parties were convened to build traps and monitoring tunnels and the need for other teams became apparent for roles such as to publicise and recruit at public events, monitor the bird life in the Reserve, establish a seedling nursery and begin weeding out the invasive plant species that were abundant in the valley.
A Visitor Centre building was completed and opened in 2007, and the Board gradually shifted from management to governance with the appointment of the first paid staff. In 2012, a General Manager was appointed to lead operations and take an active role in fund raising for all activities, the most cost intensive being the proposed pest fence. The data gathered from the monitoring and trapping operations contributed to the process of obtaining Resource Consent for the fence and with the necessary and substantial funds raised, fence construction began in September 2014. It was completed almost exactly two years later.
The next essential stage was the removal of the mammalian predators within the fenced area, which included mice, rats, mustelids and ungulates including goats, pigs and deer. The first group had been being trapped since operations began and the second group had been hunted but substantial numbers of all species remained, and the data indicated that populations of at least the first group would remain unless eradicated with poison bait.
The process of obtaining Resource Consent for an aerial drop of poison bait was obtained but then legal opposition was mounted by a group that represented itself as being residents in the Brook Valley although only some were. That resulted in an unexpected and costly sequence of court cases that took a lot of time, dampened momentum and enthusiasm, and consumed substantial financial resources. The Sanctuary eventually won all the court cases, and the predator removal process was able to proceed, albeit after a violent and destructive protest that delayed the first aerial drop.
Following the pest removal, the process of reintroducing endangered species was begun although they were delayed because of incursions of rats and weasels that took considerable efforts to remove but which provided much learning regarding how to manage such unwanted arrivals because they inevitably occur from time to time in ‘mainland island’ projects. Finally, in 2021, the first reintroduction of tīeke, the South Island saddleback, occurred followed by the highly successful reintroduction of kākāriki karaka which have since flourished. An introduction of one of New Zealand’s rarest snails, Powelliphanta followed in 2022. The goals of the long and arduous project were finally being reached.
The Brook Waimārama Sanctuary project has depended throughout on the manifold and monumental efforts of the many trustees who have served on the board; the Sanctuary staff; the generosity of members of the public, family groups and charitable institutions; corporate sponsors; governmental contributors both local and national; and many hundreds of volunteers contributing many tens of thousands of hours of their time.
Volunteer hours totalled around 28,000 hours in 2023, and a volunteer survey conducted in 2020 found that about half had volunteered for at least four years, the average time spent volunteering averaged ten hours per month, ranging from less than five to more than 30 hours, and around 75 per cent indicated that they expected to stay in the same role for a similar numbers of hours per month.
By that time, the first few volunteer teams had been added to or had differentiated into two of three so that the total stood at 14 teams. In alphabetical order at the time of writing, they were Assets, Bird Monitoring, Events & Promotions, Fence Checking, Fence Maintenance, Guided Walks, Monitoring Support, Pest Monitoring (Perimeter, Response & Sanctuarywide), Planting, Track Maintenance, Visitor Centre and Weeding.
Several volunteers, including some ex-trustees, were among the more than 30 people interviewed and are therefore mentioned along with others, but hundreds who have given immense amounts of time and effort are not mentioned. Similarly, it is almost certain that some smaller projects conducted by some of those volunteers during the first two decades will have been overlooked or not brought to the writer’s attention.
While an appendix of all volunteer names was considered, attempting to compile it would have the attendant risk that some would be unintentionally omitted. Adding to that, some specifically requested that their names were not to be included. Of note, it was not uncommon during the interviews to have the interviewee comment, “I don’t know why you’re interviewing me. I haven’t done much.” Yet, by the end of the interview, they would have disclosed that they had helped on several teams and on many occasions and perhaps led a team or instigated some project of other.
There have been and are hundreds of humble heroes who helped to make a brilliant idea into a magnificent reality, and it can only be hoped that this anonymous reference to them conveys some of the appreciation for their efforts that is felt by so many.
The Concept is Born
David and Donna Butler owned and lived on a property that adjoins the Sanctuary’s lower western boundary. Previously, they had lived in Wellington for a while and had friends who were involved in New Zealand’s first ‘mainland island’ sanctuary, Zealandia in Karori, which was also developed within an old water catchment reserve and reservoir. Donna had grown up in Nelson and was familiar with the old Waterworks Reserve because her family, like many in Nelson, had made regular use of the swimming pool in what had once been the waterworks reservoir for birthday outings and other recreational visits to the bush and the track up to the early dams and weirs.
Dave had had a long involvement with environmental projects and met Derek Shaw when they were both working at St. Arnaud under a Lands & Survey scheme in which Dave was conducting bird surveys and Derek was writing route and track descriptions for brochures. They were both active committee members of the Nelson branch of Forest & Bird and Dave became the chair of the branch for a while. He then became involved in the Mainland Habitat Island Project at Lake Rotoiti/St. Arnaud and learned by disappointing experience how difficult it is to control predator numbers without a fence to keep them out. Although predator numbers could be suppressed at times through trapping, a mast (seed) year in a beech forest provides so much food for them that numbers increase dramatically and can take the project back to where it started.
Regarding the initial idea to develop the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary, Donna recounted, “We were just talking idly when we were visiting my younger brother, who was a birthday boy up The Brook, and I thought it would be a neat place have a sanctuary in Nelson. It would be very similar (to Karori). It's an unspoiled piece of New Zealand native bush. From then on, I did very little but my late husband, David, was very much a conservationist and he got fond of the idea. We had a walk up there, all three of us through the bush and took a dog or two because it was easily accessible. We walked up one of the spurs right through the middle of it early on and saw the huge potential. We also saw how much goat and pig damage, and presumably deer damage, that was done and how many pigs we encountered on that one little walk. From then on, Dave took the bit between his teeth and went for it. I just saw the similarities between the two sites, really. Both are city reserves, and this is a nice, enclosed area.
“I wasn't aware of a lot of the details that seemed to consume an incredible amount of time, but it was virgin ground, really. Nobody had done a similar thing here, so it was breaking new territory, new ground. The people doing it, Dave and the others involved, hadn't done anything like this before. I think one of the first other people on board was Derek Shaw, who we knew anyway. Very early on, they had a public meeting at Fairfield House and to Dave’s surprise it was incredibly well attended. I don't know all who were at that meeting but there were a lot of very enthusiastic people although nobody had any expertise in the field. Derek had been a Nelson City councillor, so he had a bit of an in with the Council, but I think they found working with the Council an extraordinarily difficult process.
“Curiously, the Council had this land sitting there riddled with pests and a private hunting place for a local neighbour and it was just going to rack and ruin. Here was a willing group of
volunteers to look after this land and remove pests, which was a national strategy at that time in New Zealand and an obligation for the Council to do anyway, so the early lack of support was a surprise. However, some councillors really, really wanted the Sanctuary and I am sure some staff did, too.
“That meeting got the ball rolling and then they started fundraising. They had quite a good supporter who really got on to Dave that you couldn't fund-raise for the project unless you had resource consent that the project was available. So, there was all this difficulty - which came first – fund-raising and getting people on board. These were essentially a bunch of amateurs doing this and getting the Resource Consents to use this piece of land was an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. I think they had to change a bit of legislation to use it. All the reserves in New Zealand have different status and what can be done with them and what can't be done with them, so the whole legal thing had to be done by Council. That was a time consuming and tricky process for everybody.”
Derek Shaw recounted his memory of the first meeting with NCC staff, “There was a group of us got together in 2001 in a meeting room at Council. About half the room was full of Council staff and I was a councillor at the time, and other people outside like Dave and several others who had got involved in the project such as Earl Norris who was also on the Forest & Bird committee. Earl had worked as a school science advisor and was leading the weed control efforts and involving various school groups in the Marsden Valley Scenic Reserve project. We thrashed around the idea and agreed that it was a very good idea and then, in good Kiwi fashion, all those that weren’t Council staff were deemed to be on an interim steering committee.
“We kicked off that way because it was a potential conflict for the Council staff. We set up a process of meetings and discussions on how we’d further the idea. It took until 2004 before the Trust was formally established but we started attracting a whole lot of volunteers who started working on various aspects of the project. There were teams that were starting to work on the ground. Peter Hay was probably one of those early ones who wanted to get in there and start doing some tracks, facilitate trapping and all that.
“We gave a lot of thought to what we could provide in the Brook Valley, particularly in terms of making the existing tracks in the valley floor more accessible and adding new tracks, as well as opportunities to see and appreciate the historic dams and other water supply infrastructure. There were close similarities with the Karori Sanctuary (now Zealandia) in a former water supply catchment in Wellington, so we invited Jim Lynch, the founder of the Karori Sanctuary over to Nelson to speak at a public meeting. He's written up his own version of Zealandia’s history. He visited the upper Brook Valley before speaking at a packed meeting in the Council chambers and declared that we were four or five hundred years ahead of Zealandia because we had intact original forests whereas theirs was pretty modified and was just regenerating.”
While Dave Butler and his growing team of supporters embarked on the legal and political processes involved, news of the proposed project began to reach the public domain. On 30 January 2002, Dave produced the first newsletter titled Brook Bulletin No. 1, and on 18 February, The Nelson Mail published an article about a proposal for a ‘mainland island’
sanctuary in the Brook Valley Water Catchment Reserve. That publicity drew around 70 people to a weed control working bee in October.
In January 2003, the second newsletter, titled Leaves from the Brook, appeared and contained evidence of the substantial work that was already being undertaken. Plans to form a charitable trust to govern the project were announced and it was reported that meetings had been held with the Brook Motor Camp management and with NMIT regarding possible collaboration with the Institute’s Trainee Ranger programme. The development of educational resources was mentioned and, looking well ahead but clearly with an informed understanding of what was going to become a major financial and engineering undertaking, discussions had been held with Xcluder regarding the eventual construction of a pest fence around the Reserve boundary. Those who had organised the October 2002 weeding bee that had attracted so many volunteers were mentioned and included a representative from NCC and a weed specialist from DoC.
As Derek Shaw recalled, “They (Nelson City Council) must have been favourable to us doing the work even before we were formally set up as a trust. There was support for the idea from key Council staff. I can't remember what stage it formally went to Council for approval but there was probably provisional approval for the concept initially which gave us encouragement to set up the Trust. We weren't a legally constituted organisation at that point, but they gave us enough positive feedback so that we could get going within the Sanctuary. I think that happened at various levels because there were staff who were responsible for the Council Reserves and there would have been people who would have done the interaction with Council staff regarding conditions for things like cutting tracks because, obviously, it does have its own impact.
“There was a series of papers that went to the Parks and Reserves Committee that I sometimes went along to. I was never on the committee, but I took an active interest and liaised with staff at times. Various staff members were positive and there were some on board who appreciated the biodiversity aspects of it, who were personally supportive of it and helped facilitate it. We had to go through a formal process at one point of getting a lease. One of the reasons for forming the Trust was so that we could take over the lease.”
David Butler became the first chairperson of the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary Trust and held that position until 2019. Derek Shaw took the role of acting Chair at times when David was away.
Issues 3 and 4 of Leaves from the Brook in March and June 2003 give an insight into the breadth of thought and effort that were already being given to the concept. An Orientation Day at NMIT on 2 April was reported and volunteer categories offered listed: weed control, plant propagation, monitoring of birds, invertebrates and reptiles, publicity, membership support (a database had already been created), financial management, construction of equipment and infrastructure, education, research history, pest control, track marking and construction, fund raising, plant survey, tourism liaison, social club, hosting visitors, research liaison and legal, health & safety, insurance and security. Also mentioned was progress with forming the Trust, fundraising and a report that the materials and construction of the pest
fence would total an estimated $2.2 million, an amount that was somewhat optimistic alongside the eventual cost many years later.
In August 2004, Issue 6 reported that the Trust had been incorporated and that those involved could now “get down to business”. A call was put out for volunteers to help with publicity, fundraising and education and it was announced that operational activities could begin including working with Nelson City Council on cutting the first trapping line tracks.
The operational ‘getting down to business’ evolved out of early meetings of several enthusiasts. As Dave Leadbetter recounted, “I got involved with Pete Hay and Tom Brett and Karen Driver. We used to have monthly meetings. They were great because they are all doers. Everyone was a doer. I was a representative of the Trust, and they were volunteers. We were all volunteers. And we used to meet at various pubs around town. That was great. Just ‘to do’ lists. Tom said, ‘I'll do this.’ And Pete the same. We decided we needed to look at trapping lines because we had no idea what was up there.” Dave himself took responsibility for the running the trapping programme and, as an example of the improvisation that was necessary, sometimes taught new volunteers how to operate DoC200 traps during the evenings in his medical consulting rooms.
As Tom Brett recalled, “At the end of the trap making programme, I remember Dave Butler approached us and said that we needed three groups. One was tracking cutting. One was monitoring the traps and doing the training. And the third one was pest monitoring. So, I took the trapping, Karen Driver took the pest monitoring and Pete Hay took the track cutting. There wasn't much democracy. We just agreed that we wanted to do it. We were interested and nobody else was putting their hand up, so we went for it.” As Karen put it, “Tom said to me, ‘Oh, would you like to set up the pest monitoring?’ and I said, ‘I don't know anything about pest monitoring, but I'm interested to talk about it.’ I ended up setting it up in late 2006.”
Peter remembered, “We initially made up it up as we went along. Trustee Dave Leadbetter used to attend to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. That was crudely how it started but it steadily became far more complicated as time went by. I remember going to a field operations meeting and by then it’d built up so something like 20 to 25 people used to come to the meetings. There were about four or five representatives from the trapping fraternity for example, all with slightly different ideas so it could get quite chaotic at times.”
Alastair Wiffen, who took over the role of organising key volunteers from Dave Leadbetter, also recalled those early pub meetings. “Key volunteers used to have meetings I think on a Wednesday night at the pub, usually at Milton Street. That included Tom Brett, Karen Driver, Peter Hay and Torsten (Kather), and a few others like Ro Pope would come and we would say, ‘This is what we're doing’. We were reporting back to the Board in an operational sense of what was going on so that was the first interaction with the Board that we were having or reporting to. Dave Leadbetter was looking after that. It was early days of trying to work out who could have what role. At that stage, Dave (Leadbetter) was being made a trustee.”
The August 2004 newsletter also reported on the launch event held earlier in the year with Mike Ward MP and the Wizard of New Zealand in attendance. Archdeacon Harvey Ruru was
also in attendance and reported that, “They wondered how the Reverend Harvey Ruru would cope with the Wizard being there at the same time channelling his wizardry and me channelling the spirituality. We both got into a banter, and it was a very, very happening, happy opening.”
Issue 6 also reported that there had been a fund-raising event at Fairfield House with an art exhibition of work by Daniel Allen, Marilyn Andrews and Dean Raybould from which the artists donated proceeds. There was a performance by the Mosaic Choir at the launch of the event and wine was donated by Woollaston Estates. Phillip Woollaston, a former Minister of Conservation and Mayor of Nelson City, agreed in 2007 to be the first Patron of the Sanctuary Trust. Also reported was that a local architect, John Palmer, had provided concept drawings for an Entrance Building/Visitor Centre that would also provide a base for Sanctuary staff and volunteer operations.
Following repeated feedback that the proposed sanctuary was one of Nelson’s best kept secrets, the Trust decided to produce a booklet to help outline the vision and provide information on the site’s natural and historical values, the challenges of building a pest-proof fence and the plans for subsequent restoration and reintroductions, plus how people could contribute and what could be seen when taking a walk. Local journalist, Jacquetta Bell, was commissioned to write the text and Derek Shaw agreed to publish it under his Nikau Press publishing business. The result was a 32-page A5 booklet titled Returning Nature to the Nelson Region.
Through the tireless efforts of the growing number of key people, the dream was beginning to be realised.
Historic Structures
The Nelson Waterworks
In 1856, the Nelson Provincial Government enacted the Nelson Improvement Act to establish a Board of Works with powers to construct and maintain, among other things, “wells, tanks, reservoirs, aqueducts and other waterworks as they shall think proper for supplying the inhabitants of the town with water”. An amendment to the Act in 1858 gave the Board powers to borrow money for projects including “supplying the inhabitants with pure water”.
In 1863, the General Assembly of New Zealand repealed The Nelson Waste Lands Regulations Amendment Act, 1861, and relevant sections of the Schedule to the Waste Lands Act, 1858, in order to enact The Nelson Waste Lands Act, 1863, which established a Waste Lands Board consisting of the Superintendent, the Commissioner and the Speaker of the Provincial Council, any two of whom could constitute a quorum. The Board had the power to create reserves for many purposes including “any purpose of public profit advantage utility convenience or enjoyment.” The Board also had powers to sell waste land and to purchase land not open for sale and pay compensation for any existing improvements on that land. It could lease unused land to licensees for prospecting, mining and grazing stock. That same year, the Nelson Provincial Council enacted the Nelson Waterworks Act to “make provision for the making and maintaining Waterworks for supplying the City of Nelson with Water … from the Brook Street Valley”.
On 9 May 1865, The Nelson Examiner published a report by the Provincial Engineer, Mr. John Blackett, in which he outlined his proposal for the Nelson Waterworks to be constructed in the upper Brook Valley. The report refers a reservoir that was to be supplied from a dam that was to be constructed in the Brook Stream. The reservoir, as well as storing a supply of water, had the additional purpose of letting silt settle before the water was piped down to the town. The proposed reservoir, would “contain a supply equivalent to forty days’ consumption at the rate of 40,000 gallons (182m³) per day.”
Blackett’s proposal also included a weir or dam about 42 feet (13m) higher in altitude than the reservoir, with a 12inch (30cm) cast iron pipe down to the reservoir, 7-inch (18cm) pipes from there to the town and a road to the reservoir. “This is not intended to dam back a supply, but to form a basin from which the pipes will lead, and which will keep them always full. The dam will have an overflow channel large enough to carry
the water in time of floods, and a discharge pipe by which the water may be let off for cleansing.”
On 16 September 1865, The New Zealand Government Gazette (Province of Nelson) gave notice that, under The Nelson Waste Land Act, 1863, “all the Crown Land included within the watershed of the gorges of the Brook-street stream and tributaries; bounded on the southward by the ridges of the hills forming the said watershed, and on all other sides by the sold lands” was reserved for the purposes of the Nelson Waterworks. The sold lands referred to a parcel on the western side that was purchased from Alfred George Jenkins and another on the eastern side above the Dun Mountain Railway line that had earlier also been owned by Jenkins but which he had sold to the Dun Mountain Copper Mining Company.
It appears that, at that time, the Reserve did not include the lower northern part of the catchment that includes where the first waterworks facilities were constructed and the present area of the Brook Motor Camp. Jenkins had earlier owned those parcels, but both were later owned by Alexander O’Brien. Deeds relating to the sale of those parcels to Nelson City were not lodged until 17 June 1895 and 6 May 1905. The lodgement dates of Deeds do not necessarily provide the actual date of the transaction but clearly the City had the power to plan and begin construction of the waterworks by 1865 when the Nelson Provincial Government enacted the Nelson Improvement Act to establish the Board of Works.
The entire project of constructing the reservoir, weir/dam, access roads and pipe reticulation to the city was designed and overseen by Blackett who reported on 13 April 1868 that the works had been completed, that the dam had been filled several times and full pressure had been laid on in the pipes. Although costing £300 less than the budget of £20,000, the project had taken around two years longer than expected.
The Waterworks were officially opened on 16 April 1868. The opening was declared a public holiday and was celebrated by a procession to the reservoir and back to the Government Buildings in Bridge Street where a speech was made by the Superintendent of Nelson, Mr Oswald Curtis. Bishop Suter composed a prayer and a hymn for the occasion. The Nelson Examiner of 18 April 1868 reported that, in relation to the dam, the reservoir stood “on a piece of table land about a quarter of a mile lower down the valley and thirty-four feet below it in level.” The eventual form of the reservoir was an oval, in-ground tank that was about half the size originally proposed but which could hold 775,000 gallons (3,523m³)around two weeks supply for the city at the time. For many years after it was decommissioned as part of the city’s water supply, it was used as a swimming pool by Nelson residents and visitors when on outings and picnics. The circular rim of its southern end is still visible in the upper part of the Motor Camp area.
There was a significant earthquake in Nelson on 19 October 1868 and there were reports of damage to the waterworks structures. A noticeboard that once stood by the footbridge below the 1904 Big Dam stated that the original reservoir located in the stream above the Big Dam was shattered by an earthquake shortly after its construction. However, the ‘reservoir’ that was consistently referred to as such by the Provincial Engineer was on the “table land lower down the valley”. To confuse matters more, a pamphlet once available from Nelson City Council stated that the Circular Basin in the Brook Camp was built in 1874 to replace the original, earthquake-shattered ‘reservoir’
However, in his annual report of 4 May 1869, the Provincial Engineer informed the Provincial Council that the earthquake had indeed damaged the reservoir but only enough to “increase the small amount of leakage which had previously occurred. To remedy this …(I) had the whole of the inner surface of the walls well pointed and faced with cement. This was attended to with good results, and the new works appear to stand well.” This is not a description of a structure that was “shattered” and needed replacement. Since the Sanctuary project was launched, the trustees, staff and volunteers assumed that the dilapidated stone weir with its pipes and rusted control valves in the stream some distance above the 1904 Big Dam was the 1868 “stone weir” that had supplied water to the reservoir. However, in 2014 a group of track cutters decided to clear vegetation from some mysterious pits in thick bush near the old track beside the stream and discovered a line of large, shaped rocks laid across the stream directly below. It quickly became obvious that those rocks were part of the foundations of the original, 1868 dam that had been
“shattered” by the earthquake whereas the more intact one further upstream was its later replacement. It is also likely that the Provincial Engineer was consistent in his use of “reservoir” to describe the large, oval settling tank whereas the term was possibly used less precisely on the noticeboard and in the pamphlet to refer to the structure further upstream that was shattered. Furthermore, the pamphlet stated that the replacement structure was completed in 1874 which is a date consistent with the time it would take to plan and construct a second dam/weir in the stream and therefore might well be the date of the weir remnants which still stand.
The remains of the second (c.1874) weir/dam (2012 Sanctuary photo competition)
On 6 December 1900, The Nelson Evening Mail printed a report by Mr R.L. Mestayer, a consultant engineer from Wellington, in which he examined several options for a new, larger dam to supply the City’s increasing demand for water. The option chosen is what became known generally as ‘the Big Dam’, the imposing remains of which still stand beside the Visitor Centre. It was estimated that a dam 50 feet high at that location could hold 40 million gallons (181,843m³). This would be enough to provide 650,000 gallons (2,955m³) per day for 120 days, even during a severe drought such as the city had experienced in 1895.
Ultimately, the new dam constructed in 1904 was three quarters the size of that recommended by Mr. Mestayer. On 13 February 1905, The Colonist reported that the new water supply had been connected into the newly completed eight-inch (20cm) main on 11 February 1905. The concrete dam was 12 metres high and 94 metres long and cost £11,571. It was one of the first of its kind in New Zealand and was the tallest until the 27m high Upper Karori dam was built in 1908.
The 1904 dam (Nelson Provincial Museum)
By 1908, the dam had developed serious leaks and on 12 February 1908, The Colonist reported that it had been emptied for repairs and the old, higher dam had been cleared of debris so that it could once again provide the town’s water supply. During the new dam’s construction, the concrete had been hand mixed using crushed rock from the stream and a nearby quarry, and contained many voids that led to the leakage. It remained empty until 1911, by which time the inner face had been re-mortared at a cost of £2,418. Unfortunately, it continued to leak, although not as badly as earlier.
By March 1909, a dam had been constructed 150 feet (46m) above the level of the 1904 Big Dam at a cost of around £2,000 and it supplied the city while the repairs to the Big Dam were completed. It is commonly referred to as the ‘Top Dam’ or the ‘1909 Dam’ and was described as 71 feet (22m) wide and 39 feet (12m) high. The water was 23 feet (7m) deep at the weir and 12 feet (3.7m) deep at the top end, which was five and a half chains (110m) upstream. It provided a reservoir of four million gallons (18,184m³). Water was delivered via an eight-inch (20cm) asbestos pipe and the added altitude enabled water to be delivered to higher levels in the town.
There are also the remains of a smaller weir, generally referred to as the ‘Top Weir’, further up the stream and connected with riveted spiral iron pipe that is covered by a concrete path in places. It is thought that it was constructed around the time that the 1909 Top Dam was the sole water supply. It is possible that it was used to divert water from the 1909 structure while it was being built and that diversion enabled later maintenance of the dam which
repeatedly filled with gravel. Both structures filled with gravel during the 1970s floods rendering them unusable for water storage.
The remains of the top weir with pipeline leading from left of picture
During the 1920s the water supply from the Brook Dam was proving inadequate and bores were sunk near Normanby Bridge (Aratuna) in Bridge Street near the Queen’s Gardens to
provide additional supply. In 1922, a £20,000 loan provided for new water mains from the Brook Dam, which increased the dam’s output fourfold but emptied it four times as rapidly.
On 27 July 1934, The Nelson Evening Mail reported the Brook scheme’s delivery capacity at 682,000 gallons (3,100m³) per day.
On 29 January 1937, The Nelson Evening Mail reported that the Brook Dam could supply 600,000 gallons per day and the weir could supply 500,000 gallons (2,273m³) per day. At the time, an additional 200,000 gallons (910m³) per day were obtained from a pumping station in Hanby Park, although there were concerns about the quality of the water taken from the Maitai River. Once again, residents were complaining of poor supply, and it was asserted that larger mains were required to deliver more water from the Brook Dam.
An article in The Nelson Evening Mail of 25 August 1938 mentions that Cummins Creek, which is the first tributary into the Brook Stream below the Brook Camp, was also brought into the system at some ‘later’ time and provided an additional 80,000 gallons per day. The remains of a dam or weir, along with valves to control the supply are still evident up in the creek. Iron pipes were run from there back up to the reservoir to supplement the supply to the city.
The Roding River water supply scheme was chosen as the next water source and was completed in 1941. On 2 April 1947, The Nelson Evening Mail reported that the Brook scheme was capable of 700,000 gallons (3,182m³) per day, of which 500,000 gallons (2,273m³) could be delivered in 12 hours. At that time, the combined output of the Roding and Brook schemes averaged 15 per cent overcapacity for the water requirements of Nelson, Stoke and Richmond.
As a further source of water for the rapidly growing city, the Maitai South Branch project was completed in 1963, by which time that supply and the Roding scheme provided three quarters of Nelson’s water. Because of safety concerns, the level of the Brook Dam was lowered by two metres in 1964. It was lowered a further three metres in 1980 and the completion of the Maitai Dam in 1987 rendered it obsolete. In 2000, it was totally decommissioned by a further lowering of its level.
The Dun Mountain Railway
The eastern boundary fence of the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary is positioned below and more or less parallel to the walking and cycling trail along the old Dun Mountain Railway from near Third House in the south-east to where the trail crosses an old firebreak known as The Classic that goes up the Fringe Hill. Appropriately, that intersection is known as Four Corners and from there, the Sanctuary fence follows the downhill section of The Classic to not far above the Brook Motor Camp and the Sanctuary Visitor Centre.
The history of the Dun Mountain Copper Mining Company and its railway are well documented, but a brief summary is given here because of its prominent history in the Brook Valley and its proximity to the Sanctuary fence.
In 1854, capital was raised in England to improve access via the Maitai Valley to the mineral belt that includes the Dun Mountain. In 1856, 16 tons of high-quality copper ores and 15 tons of chrome ore were brought out by pack horse. In 1857, the Dun Mountain Copper
Mining Company was registered in London, with capital of £75,000. In 1858, materials for the railway line from the Brook Valley began to arrive in Nelson, although construction was delayed due to the extent of the copper deposits being questioned.
The extraction of chromite, which was used for dyeing cotton yellow and mauve, continued by packhorse via the Maitai Valley but in 1860, the price of chromite rose significantly and the decision to build the railway was taken. Construction of the 13.5-mile (21.7km), threefoot-gauge (914mm) line began in March 1861. The point where it began to climb from the Brook Valley is well marked and from there it climbed the eastern side of the valley at a gradient that enabled empty wagons to be pulled uphill by horses. From the Tantragee Saddle, it continues above the valley until it crosses the Third House Saddle (also known as Wairoa Saddle) into the Roding Valley, around Wooded Peak and ultimately to Coppermine Saddle. It was New Zealand’s first railway. The full wagons travelled down in pairs under gravity with brakes to slow their descent. There were seven houses along the line, with stables at Third House.
The extent of the chromite deposits was considerably overestimated and barely 40 per cent of the railway’s carrying capacity was utilised during the first year. Output diminished significantly so that by 1865, the extraction of chromite had ceased. The company used the railway to deliver firewood, timber, slate and limestone to Nelson, and operated a passenger omnibus service from the Brook Valley, through the town to the port. However, its affairs were wound up in 1872, although the passenger service continued for many years, including excursions to the mines. The lines through the town were pulled up in 1907.
A conservation plan was prepared by Ian Bowman in 2011 and updated in 2022 for the purpose of recording and preserving the water structures. In 2023 a walking trail called the ‘Heritage Walk’ was initiated to highlight the infrastructures and their history.
Coal Mining
There was coal mining in the Brook Valley on two sites just below the Waterworks Reserve during the 1890s and some of the land on the eastern end of the 1904 Big Dam was earlier leased to one of the coal mining ventures.
In 1858, Alfred George Jenkins opened a coal prospect on his Enner Glynn property on the southern foot of Jenkins Hill and it was realised that the seam followed the Waimea Fault into the Brook Valley where coal had been found as early as 1853.
In 1894, several citizens who lived in the Brook Valley formed the Brook Street Coal Prospecting Association to prospect on a farm owned by James Wilson Newport on the eastern side of the Brook Stream north of the waterworks reservoir. Several drives were started into the hillside on Cummins Spur below older workings but only the first one was continued, a two-and-a-half foot (76cm) seam having been found. However, the coal proved to be of limited quantity and the company had difficulty raising further capital. It wound up on 29 April 1895.
Meanwhile, another prospecting venture, known as the Jenkins Hill Prospecting Association, was launched in October 1894 to prospect on the western side of the Brook Stream opposite the reservoir. The property had been formerly owned by Alfred Jenkins but was by then
owned by a relative, Alexander O’Brien. A steeply dipping seam five feet (1.5m) thick was discovered and by the end of January 1895, a timbered shaft went in 130 feet (40m) and 30 tons of coal had been stockpiled. By March, the drive extended 162 feet (49m), but the most profitable seam was located 70 feet (21m) in although it was almost vertical. The coal was of good quality, but a horse-drawn whim was required to lift it out.
By October 1895, mining consultants estimated that there were up to 4,320 tons of coal immediately available and the seam had been widened to 13 feet (4m). The Jenkins Hill Prospecting Association formed the Enner Glynn Coal Mining Company (the Brook Valley name was already taken) in order to raise capital. A new shaft was sunk 60 feet (18m) lower and nearer to the Brook Stream. It was taken down to 183 feet (56m) and a drive was started from the 160-foot (49m) level. Although some coal was extracted, the new shaft was not a success until early in 1897 when good quality coal was found in workable quantities. However, sales did not go well and the company remained short of capital for development and, to make matters worse, the seam pinched out a short time later.
A fire destroyed the coal shed and screen on 15 January 1898, and on 21 June a fire broke out in the mine so that it had to be flooded. When the mine was pumped out, it was discovered that the main drive had collapsed. On 29 August, an extraordinary meeting of shareholders voted to sell the mine which was eventually purchased by another coal mining interest which did so only to obtain the plant. The company was wound up in March 1899. The mine had produced 1,337 tons of coal.
The entrance to the lower mine is within the northernmost corner of the Sanctuary’s pest fence across the Brook Stream from the Brook Motor Camp on the flat area near the bottom of the old Western Firebreak.
The Big Vision
From the very beginning, the founders saw the Sanctuary they were planning as part of a much bigger picture that included the halo effect it could have on the surroundings including the Mt. Richmond Forest Park to the east and south, the Bryant Range/Dun Mountain area to the east and Nelson City to the north, south and west. They also discussed ideas regarding how the Brook Motor Camp could complement the Sanctuary project and how plans to work with NMIT and its Trainee Ranger programme could lead to a Conservation Education Centre nearby.
The ’Halo Effect’ and Beyond
Derek Shaw elaborated on the envisioned ‘halo effect’ and beyond. “Part of our vision was not only the wildlife corridor from the Sanctuary down the Brook Valley, but it was also about birds flying out of the Sanctuary and repopulating Mt Richmond Forest Park. We were promoting those points at the Nelson Biodiversity Forum, of which the Sanctuary Trust was a founding member, and Dave and I were regularly going along to the Tasman Biodiversity Forum as well. We were trying to spread that bigger picture vison across the Top of the South. Dave spent quite a bit of time thinking about that and talking to the Project Janszoon people. They were similarly wanting to undertake restoration in Abel Tasman but also to have that spill over in all directions.
“Our vision of a corridor down the Brook Valley was to link the Sanctuary to people's backyards so that you might experience some of the birdlife that they didn't see at that point. There was a conscious effort to try and encourage people to do trapping and restoration projects, on the Grampians, the Centre of New Zealand and some of the other Council land on the eastern hills. We always saw it as a community project. I think Dave articulated that really well when speaking to outside people, telling them that this was a community project because it was so close to the city and depended on hundreds of volunteers. That was the labour force.
“Some of the Council owned eastern hills adjacent to the Sanctuary and down the Brook Valley were in pine plantations, so we made representations to try and ensure after the pines were harvested that they were replaced with native vegetation.
“I kept having ideas about linking large areas of native forests with biodiversity corridors. When a member of the Nelson Conservation Board, I had prepared a Board submission to The Tasman District Council that focused on the St Arnaud area and how corridors could link Nelson Lakes National Park with the Big Bush Forest and the southern end of Mt Richmond Forest Park, including maintaining or re-establishing links through the areas of private land between these large areas of public conservation estate. The concept of corridors came out of the controversial proposed Beech Scheme on the West Coast during the 1970s, when they were referred to as ‘wildlife corridors. They were essentially the same thing as biodiversity corridors, an area where native wildlife could move back and forth between large areas of indigenous habitats.
“Dave and I would often have discussions about such linkages and after ear-bashing people over several years, I ended up putting a paper to the Tasman Biodiversity Forum. This
detailed how the large conservation areas across the Top of the South, including Mt Richmond Forest Park, Nelson Lakes National Park, Kahurangi National Park and Abel Tasman National Park could be linked through biodiversity corridors. Then along came even bigger picture thinking – Kotahitanga mot e Taiao Alliance which involves iwi, five councils, the Nature Conservancy and central government agencies, such as DoC, and various community agencies such as Forest & Bird and the Sanctuary Trust working collaboratively to restore and enhance nature across the top of the South Island, including Kaikoura and Buller.
“The Nelson Biodiversity Forum came about when I was chairing the Environment Committee at Council. It involved some 25 interested organisations including NCC, DoC and the Sanctuary Trust, who I represented, working together to come up with an agreed strategy for enhancing biodiversity within the NCC administered area and take responsibility for actions where they could. The strategy was reviewed every two to three years and eventually Council and DoC started working together and the Nelson Nature programme was established. One of the projects was termed the Halo Project around the Sanctuary and was designed to improve the habitat around the Sanctuary’s pest fence so that birdlife that flew over the fence had a better chance of surviving. Fortunately for the Trust and Council, the Dun Mountain mineral belt area to the east was ranked by DoC as a site of national significance and they put resources in to help get rid of the pest animals like deer, goats, pigs and some of the pest plants.”
Rachel Reese, who served as a Nelson City councillor for six years from 2007 and then became Mayor from 2013 through to 2022, also talked about a bigger vision within the region. “I started to have some conversations with Eugenie Sage (Minister of Conservation and Associate Minister for the Environment from 2017 to 2020) around whether there was interest in seeing whether we could have a Regional Park established across the full Sanctuary and the Maitai right up to the mineral belt. I still think that's got legs. I think that area has the potential, just as the Abel Tasman has with the Nelson Lakes and Kahurangi, and that would be a big process as part of Kotahitanga mō te Taiao. It fits well in there. So, we started the move from seeing the Sanctuary in isolation to seeing the Sanctuary as part of that bigger landscape transformation.”
Kate Fulton, who served as a Nelson City councillor for 12 years up until 2022, commented on how such expansive visions during recent years have been accompanied by a major shift in how many people see environmental protection compared to years ago. Her grandfather was instrumental in helping establish the Abel Tasman National Park and she said, “Conservation was around setting aside pieces of land to remain pure and untouched but then you could exploit other pieces of land and that was OK. This piece of land’s being put aside from my fishing or my hunting or my nature walks. That was the mindset of the 20thcentury environmentalist, and I think it's shifted because now we think about the environment in our backyard. How much concrete have we got? How many indigenous plants have we got in our garden? How many bee-friendly plants have we got? How many of those are pests? What are we doing with our road reserve? That's quite a big shift. It was that you protect stuff which is still worth protecting - just - and then the rest of it we don't really care about what happens and we don't realise how important it is for humans to be connecting into the natural world environment every day.”
Nick Smith, who served as Nelson’s Member of Parliament for many years and at times was Minister of Conservation and Minister for the Environment, also discussed how the wider understanding of conservation in New Zealand has shifted over the years. “I remember in the 60s, 70s and 80s, the biggest issue was habitat protection. For 100 years, the biggest threat was loss of habitat and then people were saying, ‘Well, it’s actually the stoats, the ferrets, the possums, the cats becoming the greatest threat.’
“We'd started from the 1970s with the idea of eradicating pests on small islands and New Zealand was at the forefront of the technology internationally and gradually growing that, and then this idea came about what are called ‘mainland islands’. Could we develop either what are called ‘soft barriers’ or ‘hard barriers’ to create mainland islands? One of the mainland islands was at Lake Rotoiti and when I talk about soft barriers, it was around having intensive trapping around the margins of an area to create an island free of pests. So, you can imagine, having been up to my eyeballs in all of that work nationally, when a group of enthusiasts approached me around 2000 to say, ‘How about the opportunity in Nelson up the Brook?’, I became a convert for the proposal right from the word go.
“The key elements that I have been involved in, and I never want to take away from David Butler and the founding team who did the hard mahi, but always saying, ‘You're on the right track. This is absolutely what Nelson needs. This is achievable.’ Then in terms of helping persuade the Council to do the agreement about the management of the reserve. Then helping satisfy both funders and the community that the technology could work to could create a predator-free fence. Then persuading Prime Minister John Key and the team for us to put in some serious money to assist with the fence.
“Probably the most controversial or difficult part was in advocacy and to change the law around the use of poisons for pest control. To change the law was not driven by the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary. It was driven by a policy position that said the number one threat to a native species is pests and you’ve got to give the guys the tools to be able to do it. The penny drop moment for me was being in Fiordland and looking at 2,000-meter-high cliffs, looking at a huge density of stoats and the DoC workers telling me, ‘When people in Wellington tell you that I can put traps up there, I wish they could tell me how I’m meant to do it.’ So, I became a strong convert for the responsible and effective use of pesticides for controlling these pests.”
The Brook Valley Motor Camp
Derek Shaw also talked about ideas that were discussed regarding how the Brook Valley Motor Camp could be included in the Sanctuary project and utilised. “The Motor Camp was discussed as part of the big picture vision for the Sanctuary and the adjacent Brook Reserve, which included the Motor Camp and Council land to the north of the Camp entrance. We saw tremendous opportunities for the Camp to be developed and integrated with the Sanctuary to provide additional quality experiences for visitors, both local and those from elsewhere in New Zealand and overseas. We had received a lot of feedback that it did not present a very attractive entrance to the Sanctuary with such features as the ‘sentry box-like’ building at the entrance and the assorted collection of motorhomes, tents, huts and other structures that were occupied by semi- and permanent residents. It had received very little
capital investment over many years and its use was largely during the summer. We felt that there were great opportunities to develop improved facilities for visitors that could provide benefits to the Camp operation and the Sanctuary. Where else in New Zealand’s two largest islands could you camp or stay in accommodation units adjacent to a pest-free sanctuary and wake up to a dawn chorus of bird song that would get better as the pests were eliminated and lost bird species were reintroduced? We also considered the possibility of one or two remote, off-grid eco-lodges located deep within the Sanctuary that could provide an enhanced experience for up to ten guests. A preliminary design and specifications were prepared and a couple of possible sites were identified.”
Alastair Wiffen recalled his early thoughts and discussions about utilising the campground area. “There was a meeting with an architect from Dunedin about where the bus turning circle was, where the cafe was going to go. We had some visions of grandeur. I remember working with Ian Jack and working out where the gates were. It just went on and on. Where the cafe was going to go, the new caretaker, the Education Centre. That was pretty visionary, and it needed to have that vision but unfortunately, money was always a hassle.”
Derek Shaw also mentioned Ian Jack’s involvement along with another architect, Tim Heath. “It was part of a project we did with Arrow Strategy. They ended up doing us a strategic plan and feasibility study and Ian and Tim put into that because he was very good at doing concept drawings of what the Camp could look like if we did up the units and lifted them out of the 1950s. These documents included a new entrance building that incorporated a visitor centre, shop and café, plus an interesting and informative walk along the upper terrace passed the old reservoir and wildlife attractions to the entrance building and gate through the pest fence. They also included relocating existing cabins to form an eco-village a new manager’s house, staff cabins, additional parking, children’s playground, performance stage, and a new multi-purpose conference centre that could be used by schools, community organisations and corporates. Very exciting ideas that could be developed over time as funds were obtained.”
We were constantly thinking about that. We were having discussions with Council staff, with Pat Dougherty in particular, because it was under his sphere. The whole future of the Camp was up in the air as it had been for quite a few years. That involved discussions with the Tahunanui Beach Holiday Park Board. The Brook and the Maitai camps weren't financially viable on their own whereas Tahunanui was quite financially viable so there were discussions with them about how we might work to try and improve what was on site for visitors coming here.
“There were lots of ideas, including maybe starting again with different units and inviting different builders of different sorts of buildings to come in and trial things. If you were doing straw bale houses, you’d come and build a little unit out of straw bales that locals could come and experience as well as visitors. You might have one that was totally passive solar, another one that was made of mud bricks or whatever different kind of building type.”
Dave Leadbetter also talked about the breadth of the Trust’s vision for the Camp, “It was almost as if you're thinking you're entering Disneyland with some of them. One that I would love to eventually see come to fruition would be to obtain some or all of that camping
ground and make it into a school camp. Have accommodation for the kids and involve them with a week-long or five days involvement with the Sanctuary. That was discussed a lot and we put it to the Council over and over but, of course, one of the big problems was the residents in the campground. If the Council gave the campground to us for a nominal amount so that we could develop it, it would probably involve outing them which was very politically delicate.”
Rachel Reese shared her thoughts on the vision the Trust members were entertaining for the Camp. “I was always really inspired by that vision of the Sanctuary having the opportunity to bring people really close to the Sanctuary and seeing that of part of the ecotourism opportunity for the city. Not just for people coming in from other places but as a mechanism for building connections for tamariki who don't have the opportunity to go into wonderful, wilderness places. Many of them have never been on a farm Connecting to ‘What is this place and why should we care about this place?’ When we're trying to message the value of our environment and why we need to look after it, there's no better experience than being in it.”
Following his appointment as Sanctuary co-ordinator in 2007, Rick Field’s work increasingly involved his role as an educator, leading parties of school children through a range of activities in the Sanctuary. That became the basis of an active education programme connected with local schools through which hundreds of school children visit the Sanctuary every year.
Sharon McGuire, who served for two periods as a trustee, also talked about the ideas of utilising the Camp. “I don't know how many times it's been to Council and I don't believe there's a Reserve Management Plan that's been signed off. It's been some years and you've got this fantastic motor camp at the entry to a sanctuary that you could activate for educational tours. You could make it something pretty special that would differentiate it from the other two Council-owned motor camps so rather than just being a motor camp, it could be an educational conservation centre of excellence. That was always our vision.”
Kate Fulton commented on how tensions between the Sanctuary and the permanent camp residents were exacerbated. “Council, almost overnight, made the decision to close down the campground because it wasn't returning a profit and one of the reasons it was losing money was that it had quite a large permanent community and slowly, they had been leaving. But in closing it down, Council created even more animosity from the permanent residents towards the Sanctuary because, in their minds, there must have been some link. There wasn't a link. It was completely, randomly separate. But I think a lot of the permanent residents felt like somehow the Sanctuary was engineering the closure of the campground to get rid of them.
“It's the gateway to the Sanctuary and if you've invested a whole lot of money in the Sanctuary, you need to make sure your gateway fits and connects. It shouldn't exclude certain groups of people. We have a housing crisis in New Zealand and we have a social justice issue. If you care about the environment then you should also care about people. You should be thinking of ways that your project can support better outcomes for vulnerable communities as well.
“It seemed to me to be this real opportunity that you create a small community village for those who are vulnerable and you have your glamping and your tourists camping and you allow those two groups of people to come together but visually it works much better. I think Tahunanui Campground has done that quite well. It has a thriving community of permanents (campground residents) and the permanents say they feel very safe. They have quite good rules in place to make sure that safety is paramount and that the behaviour there is at a high level. I think you can achieve that.”
Rachel Reese shared similar concerns about the threatened closure of the campground. “They're the vulnerable populations, people that live permanently in campgrounds with the constraints on finding any housing at the moment and the number of people that are living in really dire circumstances. Campgrounds are an integral part of how we live in New Zealand. It’s home for many people.”
Derek Shaw summed up how the Trust thought about a possible relationship between the Sanctuary and the Camp. “It was trying to see that as something that was compatible with the Sanctuary so it'd be of mutual benefit and working together. We did have thoughts about whether we try and establish a board of people who might be prepared to take over the Camp and run it and we could, hopefully, clip the ticket so we saw it as also a way of earning a bit of money for the Sanctuary because we were constantly looking for how we were going to fund this project.
“Ultimately, there were thoughts of even trying to have a place where corporates might come and do retreats and use the forest area as a kind of ‘nature bathing’ place that we could have made some income from. Small-size conferences and events that would have helped with the cash flow and would also get more support for the Sanctuary. We were looking at sites within the Camp for that kind of thing even before we got to the Conservation Education Centre. There was a lot of that big picture, dream stuff. Nice-tohaves that would have been compatible with what we were trying to achieve.”
The Conservation Education Centre
Through negotiations with Nelson City Council about the use of the land and with NMIT and DoC about sharing aspects of the Trainee Ranger programme, several prefabricated classrooms were moved onto the lower eastern hillside to the north of the Motor Camp and opposite the new housing subdivision on Upper Brook Street.
Derek elaborated, “There were a lot of discussions involved but we negotiated a lease with Council for the land and then we spoke to NMIT, which was contracting to DoC to deliver their Trainee Ranger course. NMIT was involved in the Trust as well so we had MoUs with everybody. There was a plan to have a track that would run back through the redwood forest and past the Camp to the Sanctuary so that could be a way of leading people in. And the DoC trainees were a potential volunteer force for working at the Sanctuary while doing the work that they needed to do.
“After the necessary consents were obtained, a sealed driveway, a parking area and a building platform were formed. Three classrooms and a workshop were relocated on to the site by NMIT. The net result was two classrooms for the Trainee Ranger course and the third one was able to be utilised for the Sanctuary’s education progamme which was mostly undertaken by Rick Field in conjunction with his Sanctuary Coordinator role. That classroom was also used for various community meetings and also for Trust meetings.”
Unfortunately, after about 18 months, the land above it on the hillside was discovered to be at risk of slowly slipping and although the risk was considered low, it was closed. Sharon McGuire outlined some of the complexities of that situation. “The frustration was that we were not masters of our own destiny in terms of land ownership and land use. It came down to, ‘If the slip all comes down, whose land and whose responsibility is it?’ I was in NMIT at the time, but it wasn't about NMIT. It was about ‘Can we get agreement with Council and NMIT?’ We'd not got the ability to do the earthworks, and neither should it be our responsibility as the Sanctuary. We were tenants on the land. There'd been a slump or slip and did you want to be the one that's responsible for that coming down on the building? Neither NMIT or the Sanctuary were going to take that risk and Council were not entertaining the idea of any remedial works or any participation in it.”
Rick Field outlined how the Trust investigated the possibility of moving the buildings into the Camp Ground land. “We couldn't afford to move the buildings, even. That was when Bo Stent was employed. That was part of his remit, to sort that out and get the buildings in different places. We got almost to the point where everything was priced out for a building to be shifted to right by the caretaker’s office. We were going to have buildings there and then the whole facility was going to be replicated there. That was pulled at the last minute.”
Derek Shaw outlined the Trust’s thoughts about losing the Conservation Education Centre. “It was really unfortunate that it wasn't put in a place where it could have stayed because it would have been really useful. At the time, we were working with Project Janszoon. We signed an MoU with them and DoC and NMIT. The Museum had, and still has, an education component funded from central government which is for learning experiences outside the classroom (LEOTC) so we worked in with them. Some of the programmes they offered were in the Brook Sanctuary or Rick would go and talk to them at the Museum if a group wasn't able to travel to the Visitor Centre. We did quite a lot of that with lots of kids. That was all to get community support. Start with the kids because a lot of parents come along with their kids to those things and the kids go home full of enthusiasm. It was a great way to build the groundswell of community support for the project.”
The Centre and its buildings were abandoned in 2013 and, following a second geological report on the land, the Trust exited the land lease in 2019 and worked with NMIT to remove the transportable buildings. Since 2021 the land has been planted out as part of a recreational reserve.
The Reserve Management Plan
Kate Fulton talked about issues with the Reserve status of the different parcels of land in and around the Sanctuary. “It turned out that our Reserve status for the campground didn't necessarily allow us to do all the things we were going to do. We had the NMIT classrooms up there, we had the Sanctuary up there and we had the permanents so we needed to change the status. Some of it was Recreation Reserve and some of it was Road Reserve so there was this hodgepodge of different bits that had different status and we needed to redesignate it all as Reserve status.
“I sat on both of those panels and at the last minute it was all going to become Recreation Reserve. The community submitted and said, ‘You've got the cart before the horse. Why are you doing this first? You have to come up with the vision plan first.’ And it turned out they were right. Council had gone about it the wrong way and at the last minute, DoC or someone put in a submission saying, ‘You can't designate it as Recreation Reserve. You've got to designated as Local Purposes (for Recreation).’ So, that's what we designated it as and then it turned out that you couldn't designate it as that.”
Hudson Dodd, general manager of the Sanctuary during that period elaborated. “I think someone had realised at some point but it had been forgotten and it certainly wasn't on my radar, that there's a paper road up the Brook Valley. Well past the dam. About one and a half kilometres past the dam. You can't block public access to a road. Our argument was that the City Council built a dam there but the legal argument was that ‘People can walk around the dam but you're talking about a locking gate.’ So then, the argument was that we were talking about having open days so for at least a day or two a year, people can go in. Anyway, we had to convince the Nelson City Council legal team to tackle going through a road closure process in court and they were a reluctant partner all the way. But we got them to do it and they did it.”
Rachel Reese added further insight into that issue. “When you're a trust trying to engage with a local authority through those complex legal processes, it’s expensive so it's important
that you do have it right. Sitting down and openly working your way through to ‘What is the endgame? How are we going to get there? What are the steps that we need to take?’ I think we lost quite a few years in that process.
“It created uncertainty. With any project where you're trying to work within the whole consultation processes of the Local Government Act, you need to make decisions about funding and it was a significant sum of money that the Council had in its Long Term Plans to put towards the Sanctuary. It wasn't the bulk of the funding, but it was still a significant contribution and when uncertainty arises during those processes the public can get a bit rattled and decide that it’s not the project to support.
“We suddenly had to face a section of the community who were absolutely opposed, vehemently opposed, to the Sanctuary.”
The Nelson Cycle Lift Society Derek discussed another of the Trust’s ideas about including other recreational activities that could be linked to the Sanctuary. “When we went through the Reserve Management Planning process, that was a pretty intricate process with Council. We had a good consultant involved and the Reserve Management Plan had an option for another tourism activity. We were also talking to the Nelson Cycle Lift Society because there was a base there for the gondola when that idea first came along. They put in the Christchurch Bike Park gondola and had done others in Canada. Our entry point could be a joint one so you could go into the Visitor Centre and buy a ticket to go up on the gondola or buy a ticket to go into the Sanctuary.
“It could have gone up to Third House was one option and there was a move to base it around on the other side of the Tantragee Saddle. They weren't going to go right up to the top of that ridge. Two thirds of the way up, I think, and maybe establish a big base. They came up with drawings and there were some places where they thought they could establish a café and they might have luges and other fun activities as well as tracks. There was an opportunity to put a track around the contour which would take it pretty close to Third House. We can obviously put a gate in the fence and open it up on occasions to people who wanted to use the lift to go up and then walk down through the Sanctuary. That's the kind of idea that was bandied around. But then Covid came and the whole thing was put off”
Offices in Nelson City
During the fence fundraising campaign in 2014, through ongoing support from the Bowater Motor Group that included the use of vehicles for operational activities, the Trust set up a central city office in the Bowater Honda showroom on the corner of Hardy and Rutherford streets. The high-profile site assisted significantly with engaging community support and helped to achieve a very good result with the Sponsor a Fence Post campaign. Following a reorganisation of the Bowater Group, the central city office moved to a vacant office space in the Morrison Square complex. Through the ongoing generosity of the Morrison Square management, the office has relocated several times within the complex.
The Trust Board, Management and Governance
Dave Leadbetter recalled his first attempt to get involved in the project. “I saw an article in the paper that Dave and Donna and a few others had decided to try and form the Sanctuary, so I phoned Ann Sheridan (the first coordinator and secretary of the project) and said, ‘I'm a doctor in town and I'm a real keen conservationist and I'd love to be involved in this. I run my own private practice.’ I also worked in the hospital at that stage and I was developing a vineyard as well. I said, ‘I've got some business experience but not exactly directly relevant. Do you think they'd be interested or is it a waste of their time?’ I remember her saying, ‘No. That sounds perfect. We really want to get people from the community involved so I'll talk to Dave.’ Then I talked to Dave asked if I could be part of it. He said, ‘Sure. We're trying to make it formal so could you please send me your CV and application?’ Which I did.
“The AGM was coming up, the first one to be held in the City Council buildings. Not many people came to the first few and I got voted on. I remember I had to rush out halfway through the vote to deliver a woman up at the hospital. I got an emergency call and thought that’s the end of me but they welcomed me. In those days, they needed someone to start the volunteers and try to form some sort of volunteer register and I said I'd do that. That took quite a bit of my time and in the background, the Trust meetings where every month and we had a volunteer meeting going every month, which more or less morphed into every two weeks because things needed sorting out. My wife did say to me at one point, ‘You realise you've been out to three Sanctuary meetings this week. Remember, we have got a family and kids’. I was on call at the hospital as well and that went on for a long time, a number of years, where there were lots of meetings.”
Dave spoke about how difficult fundraising was at the time. “It was hard, because during that time, I think the Girls College were raising money, the Suter was trying to raise money and the Museum was trying to raise money, so we were all competing for the same dollar.” However, commenting on how fundraising more recently had become easier, he said, “We knew the minute we achieved our initial goal that the maintenance money would be easier to get because we'd shown it to be successful. The guiding principle was ‘We will not borrow. Ever.’ That became fundamental to the fund-raising which was done through charities and trusts and the public, but we would not borrow money because we saw the troubles at Zealandia. They borrowed and borrowed and suddenly they had to put the prices through the roof because they had to pay back the debt. So, in that in respect, although it took us longer to get the money to do what we wanted, it has left the whole organisation in a much, much stronger position to be able to self-fund. The other key principle we wanted was that we didn't have to charge a lot of money to the people of Nelson to get in.”
Donna Butler also reflected on the difficult timing of the initial, major fund-raising towards building the fence and other increasing costs. “That was the time of the first (global) financial crisis, so the easy fundraising options were gone. All the charities were struggling for funds and the good old days of the corporations coming on board had long gone. And, of course, with Nelson being a small population base and not a particularly wealthy base, it was hard to fund-raise. Not many big corporates are based in Nelson, so nobody was handing money over in a hurry.”
Sharon McGuire became involved with the Sanctuary Trust when she was working in Business Development at NMIT. “We already had an NMIT representative on there, Jeff Wilson, who was the NMIT Programme Area Leader and part of his area was conservation. We had the DoC trainee rangers involved with the Brook Sanctuary and we also had aquaculture with the freshwater fish. Through that, I got to know Dave Butler and he said he would like me to come on to the Trust.
“At that stage, we were very much around building tracks, doing the trapping, weed spraying and pest control. That was the focus. Also, in parallel, I got involved because I was in the Rotary Club of Nelson and Alastair Wiffen was heavily involved in the Brook and he was a trustee at the time. It was like a double whammy of Dave Butler with Alastair Wiffen saying, ‘Come on Sharon, you can do this. We’ve got to have you at the table.’
“My motivation was: you could see this fantastic sanctuary, I had a background in tourism, it's something the region could showcase beautifully, we've got three national parks, why wouldn’t the Sanctuary not be feeding out into those national parks around, saving particular species or reintroducing species? So, the motivation was around community care.
“Then we went through the whole thing of ‘How do we grow this to become an attraction?’ There was that fine balance between ensuring that you had the ethos and legacy of sanctuary versus the need to have a sustainable financial platform. Paying or not paying? Locals free or not free? We were given the mandate to run the land but no funding, necessarily, but Nelson City Council was very good at listening and helping and assisting with monetary input at different times. Building toward a formal sanctuary meant a perimeter fence. The pest fence was a really challenging time. What type of fence? Is there somewhere else in New Zealand, in the world? What works and what doesn't work? Which got down to if a pencil goes through the mesh of the fence, then it's too big because the mice can get through. A whole lot of important factors needed to be considered.”
Derek Shaw spoke of how the Trust Board began as hands-on managers of the project in addition to the usual governance tasks. “To assist with planning our fund raising, we contracted Judene Edgar, a professional fundraiser with considerable local experience and we were able to raise enough money to begin employing some people part time to coordinate things and guide the growing army of volunteers. That was increasingly useful because even though we were a Trust, we weren't anywhere near pure governance for a long, long time. We were hands on management. Managing staff, writing many job descriptions, advertising for people when we could afford it, interviewing them and all those more bureaucratic things, which was quite time consuming. We were liaising with people who assisted us with some of that. Companies around town were very happy to assist, providing spaces for interviews and helping word up job descriptions that we plagiarised from other organisations because they’ve done the same thing for the private sector. We had a job description format that we used which I think we pretty much borrowed from a DoC one. We did that sort of thing for all of it. It was HR type stuff because we were increasingly going into that as we employed people.
“We met monthly and there were always questions about what the Board was doing because the groups of people who were on the ground felt like they were in a bit of a
vacuum. They didn't know what the Board was doing. After Hudson Dodd, the full-time General Manager arrived, we used to have evening meetings maybe every three months at NMIT. The working groups would each report but we also tried to give updates, Dave or myself, on where the Board had got to with various things because we're always getting asked lots of questions about that. It was quite legitimate because it was a challenge trying to communicate what we were doing at the Board level and how that tied in with what people were doing on the ground.
“An extra layer on top of that was the fact that Dave had so much experience and knowledge of a lot of biodiversity issues from his previous work and personal interest. People were asking basic things such as what distance should there be between all the track and tunnel lines. I remember Pete Hay saying, ‘We need some guidance. We're just charging off without too much guidance. Do we do them on 50-metre contours or 100-metre contours?’ Some quite basic stuff. I'd get calls from a volunteer asking, ‘Can you tell us a little bit more about this?’ and ‘Why this? Why that?’ Sometimes they just wanted to get something off their shoulder but other times it was really genuine questions with what we were doing fitting into a bigger picture.
“I've seen it in other organisations where there's a key person with a lot of that knowledge and a key role but often it's a bit of a dampener on the enthusiasm because they're waiting for answers. David was being stretched all over the place because he was also doing his own personal work as a way to try to keep earning an income. He was doing all sorts of consulting that sometimes took him out of the country as well. So, I could appreciate that was quite frustrating from a lot of the volunteers’ points of view. Some of them did get pretty frustrated with the bosses and you can imagine that when we didn't have many paid staff, that gap was even bigger. With a growing army of volunteers, it's difficult. We tried newsletters but they were quite difficult to run and time consuming to compile. They were just another call on Board members and staff.
Derek spoke of how the only employee during that period, Rick Field, often became caught between what the trustees saw as his job description and the many demands on his time that resulted from assisting volunteers with what they required. He was the volunteers’ only point of contact with management most of the time.
Rick Field talked about how his time with the project began in 2007. “I think it was the middle of winter so June or July - I can't quite recall. But the building had been finished.” Rick visited the Visitor Centre and talked to the volunteers on duty, “Then Dave Butler came in and I had a yarn to him about the project. I thought that would be quite a good job to have so I applied. I got the job and started off in here (the Visitor Centre) with all the volunteers and that was really so hard to get any work done.
“We're reliant on volunteers who have their idea of what needs to be done and it can be contrary to what the Trust wants. It can be contrary to what the management wants. It can be contrary to what other volunteers want so you've got a little bit of rubbing up against each other. There were a couple of trustees that came and went but they were hard work because they saw that their roles were as being the manager. Then there were three or four of them. And because roles were split, often there'd be no one around to sign a cheque or to
pay for a few months. Dave would be away quite a lot overseas and unreachable and it was dual signing so it was a little bit awkward to start with.”
“Then we had the office at NMIT in that old building that's been knocked down now and I ended up in there most of the time and coming up here to keep the volunteers going. There was pretty much doing everything that was required at that time including the fund-raising a little bit and talking to different groups.
“Initially, we had a donated device for following all of the memberships and it was a horrendous beast of a machine that wasn't built for that. Then we tried to take that data and move it to various iterations of database. It seems to be one of those things for all organisations, finding something that fits for all of your customers and so on. It is often hard to find something that fits exactly. You’ve got the volunteer side of things, as well as the membership so you're asking for money with one hand, and then with the other hand, you're asking for time.”
Derek continued, “There was a lot like that happened through that phase of trying to plot your way through and solicit support, both political support and financial support, and keep progressing the vision and work through all the issues that happened because a lot of quite unexpected things happened along the way. As I said at Dave’s funeral service, ‘How hard could it be to raise a bit of money, build a predator-free fence, clean out all the pests from inside of it? How hard could that be?’”
(Sadly, David Butler died in December 2020 before his dream of reintroducing endangered species into the Sanctuary began to happen with the first being the release of tīeke (South Island saddlebacks) in April 2021.)
Dave Leadbetter mentioned the welcome arrival of Hudson Dodd as general manager. Hudson was appointed in February 2012 and immediately launched into working with Sanctuary staff, volunteers, trustees and partners to develop capacity and build momentum towards fund raising goals centred around the construction of a pest fence. Prior to joining the Sanctuary, Hudson had spent nearly a decade in management with Conservation Northwest, a non-profit conservation organisation working to protect and connect wildlife habitats in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia where he gained extensive experience in community organising, project management and fund raising. Prior to that involvement, he had served as a trustee or steering committee member for several community-based initiatives and conservation organisations.
Hudson reflected on that transition period. “The experience was unique to this Trust but generally, that's a common evolution in the community, nonprofit sector. You start with a vision and ambitious ideas that are being carried out by passionate volunteers, form a board and start getting on with things. At some point, you get enough traction and the thing has momentum and has evolved to a point where you are able to garner the resources to begin to employ people. I was not the first employee. They had employed a couple of educator individuals first and then an overall project coordinator in the person of Rick (Field), and then administrative support person, Marina Willis and then when she left, Raeonie Ellery.
The general manager role took it to the next level of managing the staff and managing projects that are of a scale beyond what a group of volunteers are able to do.”
Hudson also spoke of the fundraising challenges that face not-for-profit enterprises worldwide and praised the achievements of the Trust Board prior to his appointment. “The volunteer Trust Board led by David Butler had succeeded in raising enough ‘unrestricted funds’, as it's called, to be at a point where they felt they could begin hiring staff is a real credit to them. That doesn't just happen and that took strategy and perseverance and significant relationship building at which Dave Butler really excelled. Dave built an amazing network. They all did. All the other early trustees contributed significantly along those lines but Dave was remarkable in garnering a breadth of support across very disparate parts of the local community and the regional community and the national community in conservation. That was a foundation that in my role, I was able to step into. There was established momentum and relationships to begin working with.
“In the early days, I really impressed upon the trustees and everyone in the organisation and the volunteers that fund-raising is not rocket science. It's about relationships and it's about communicating a passion and a vision and getting people on board. People love to be part of an exciting, winning thing so if you sell the idea, people will come onboard. It tends to go in concentric circles and that is indeed how it went with the fence campaign.
“You start with the closest circle of people who are aware of the project or involved in it. They care about it and they may not have a lot of means in terms of financial gifts but they have the passion about what it is and so they make the initial contributions. Lots of small gifts. Then you're able to demonstrate the support of the community for the vision and you're able to take that out to the next concentric circles of businesses and other organisations that can support it in various ways, both in cash and in kind. Then, once you expand those circles far enough and garner enough support through those channels, you're able to make bigger pitches to big funders and say, ‘We've got everybody on board. Look at all the support. All these volunteers, all these businesses contributing in kind, all these people who've dug deep to sponsor $100 or a $500 fence post. This is a going concern.’ That's how you successfully land big grants.
“That’s the basic fund-raising approach I brought but we had some real skills within the team before I got there. The connections and the commitment of some of the former trustees, particularly David Butler, the gumption to go ask local wealthy people, the established, long-standing families of Nelson. David Kerr was a real important player in all of that because he had been brought on board, before I was, not as a staff person but as a contractor for business development which is one side of a fundraising coin that's engaging businesses, in particular, but it's also an overall financial strategy. It was David who led the drafting of the big grant applications to the likes of the Lotteries Grant Board, the Rata Foundation and that sort of thing. He did a heck of a lot of work that ultimately led to some of the big gifts that made it possible.”
Peter Jamieson, who joined the Trust Board around the time that Hudson was appointed, said, “Hudson was really well suited to the role. I think he did a good job of focusing around
raising the money for the fence, the number one task. I joined the Trust Board and then we entered into this whole process of finishing the fund-raising, finishing and building the fence, which was a huge job. I was chair of the Fund-raising Committee trying to raise money. So, I worked hard at that with Hudson doing applications to every organisation. We had quite a database of things that we were looking at.
“I worked away at that for quite a while and then we had the drop and we were in a parlous financial state. We had no money at all. I have a financial background, so I got a friend of mine in to do a strategic plan for us. He’s based in Auckland, and he flew down and did it free of charge. Tony Chamberlain is his name. He really rattled the cage of the Trust Board. I was getting nowhere dealing with Nelsonians. Even though there's wealthy Nelsonians and they've got deep pockets and they get hit up by everybody, they didn't want to give us large amounts of money. So, I set up a subcommittee of the Fund-raising Committee of people who had nothing to do with the Brook Sanctuary. A friend of mine who owned a winery down in Central Otago and had just sold and moved back to Nelson. I got him involved. I got another friend of mine, Jeremy Thompson, who was a fund manager and ran a financial consulting business in Timaru and Christchurch.
“I got people who had fingers in pies outside of Nelson because I think that the Sanctuary is a national asset. We needed to think a bit more widely and tap into people who had connections outside of Nelson.”
One example of this approach was contacting the chief executive of a fund management company that owns wineries in the Nelson region. He is very supportive of conservation projects and agreed to fund the reintroduction of tuatara to the Sanctuary.
“And then Jeremy, because of the fund management side of this business, introduced us to an organisation in Australia that manages funds for New Zealanders and Australians. He'd dealt with them a lot. He said to them, ‘You know, you've got half your client base here in New Zealand. You should be doing something in conservation in New Zealand’ because they were into conservation.”
Dave Leadbetter explained some of the developments that were occurring at that time in terms of the relationships Trust Board members had with the volunteer groups. “By that stage we had moved quite a bit of the volunteer stuff on to people specifically involved because I was being spread all over. Hudson asked if I could come on to the Fundraising Committee because we desperately needed to get some funds going so my last few years were with them. I moved away from the volunteers and that is when we got Wiff (Alistair Wiffen) involved. He put his CV forward and got voted on. He moved into taking over the volunteers, running the meetings with Pete and Karen, and I moved on to the fundraising with Hudson.”
Sharon outlined other issues that periodically faced the Trust, such as having to relocate the Sanctuary office from time to time. “We started off in this office in NMIT and then we had to change and every time we changed offices, there’s a cost involved. Phone connections, computer connections, all those things. We're very grateful to Morrison Square where we've been in three different locations.
“And there’s also the challenge around continually trying to apply for funding each year from many different funding agencies and, of course, they will fund the things but not the people to make sure that things happen. That's always been a challenge of how we find sustainable income every year for the overheads to run the Sanctuary. Not to necessarily build the Sanctuary or to continue to maintain it or for new capital items. That was a challenge.” Peter Jamieson concurred. “The biggest challenge we have at the Sanctuary is raising money for operational expenditure. For sure, people will pay for things, but they won't pay for wages. That's really what we need.”
Hudson also spoke about the difficulty in raising operational funding versus capital funding. “We recognised that going into the capital fundraising campaign for the fence and so we built an operational component into that. When we set the target, it included half a million dollars for operations to simply pay the staff and keep the thing going. That was a quarter of a million dollars per year for two years, which was the time we expected it would take to build the fence, but knowing that operational fundraising would be a forever mission.
“Nelson City Council had made it clear that they were not going to give us the green light in the form of the lease for the land and all the permissions that go with that for us to proceed with building the pest fence. It was a condition of the Resource Consent that all the funds required to build the fence must be in place before construction started. There was that tension which pointed toward a lower target for the fundraising campaign so that we can get started building a fence versus setting a higher target that included more operational funding to carry the things further down the line. There was a lot of concern amongst the trustees about setting the bar too high and scaring Nelson City Council out.”
“I have to say on the question of budget overruns, John Hambleton needs significant credit for being an amazing bulldog about every single line item in the budget. ‘How can we get this cost down?’ and ‘How can we control this expenditure?’ I've learned a heck of a lot from him along those lines and between us we kept the fence project, which did take exactly two years of construction, to within two per cent of budget which, if you look at any capital project anywhere by anyone, let alone by a small community trust, is a remarkable achievement.”
Hudson provided some detail regarding the competition occurring in Nelson at the time for funding for significant projects. “We were in lockstep with the Suter. We launched the campaigns at the exact same time, we finished the campaigns at the exact same time, we started capital construction at the same time and we finished capital construction at the same time. It was weird.
Sharon McGuire and Peter Jamieson were both instrumental in establishing the Brook Business Club. As Sharon said, “Part of the challenge around the Sponsorship and Funding Committee was ‘How do we get involved with long term legacy perhaps in terms of people putting it in their wills or donations?’ Then we started up the Brook Business Club. That was my instigation through a contact from Maurice Woodhouse, who mentioned it at a Board meeting, ‘Why can't we do something like the Mako 500?’ So, we went out and signed up people for $500 a year but made sure that they understood it was a two-to-three-year
commitment because we didn't want to be renewing every year. We needed to get a certain level of funding. You might say, ‘Well, we've only got 60-odd signed the first year’ but, you know, 60 times $500, that pays for part of a wage. Those things have got to be done and some people found it a bit challenging around asking people for money, but we had to do it because at that stage we certainly weren’t charging an entry fee.
“That's where those sponsorship walls have come up as you go into the Sanctuary, you've got the plaques, people's acknowledgement. We did that with the fence posts and there's still fence posts available. People like to give, but the bottom line is that a lot of people want to know what's in it for them, so we had to come up with a way that people feel connected with the Sanctuary as well as giving sustainability in the form of a donation or sponsorship.”
Dave Leadbetter discussed how the financial business of the Board grew substantially during his time of serving on it. “I got to a point where I sat in a meeting one day and we'd more or less raised all the money. Various new trustees had come on and they were talking about the balance of the books and money here and there and I realised that I was losing track of what they were talking about. It wasn't my thing. I came on as a conservationist and now they needed businesspeople. So, I went and saw Dave (Butler) and I said, ‘Look, David, I can see the writing on the wall here that if I go off the Trust you can get someone business minded in, so I think I'll tender my resignation.’ He did the old, ‘I'm very sorry. No, why don't you think about it’, but I could see that that was obviously not what was needed. That's why I left the Trust. I realised just being a conservationist wasn't enough. It's a business and it needs businesspeople running it. It had become a multi-million-dollar company.
“I have unending admiration for Dave and Donna and their steadfastness, that no matter what obstacle we found, we can get around it. Peoples’ shoulders started to slump when, for example, we found all these paper roads up there and we had to get involved in trying to legally get those sorted out. We were on a high then. We were raising money, we were going forward and then suddenly, a huge legal obstacle came in and everyone's shoulders sank. Dave just sat here and said, ‘Well, there'll be a way around this. We've just got to be patient and it might set us back a little bit.’ And that happened often. I think a lot of people before him would have given up.”
Unsurprisingly, Donna also spoke of the huge effort that Dave (Butler) put in. “A heck a lot of work went on from us all. My late husband, Dave, was working his socks off. I know he was totally absorbed by it for hours and hours, endlessly on endless bits of paper and endless interactions with Council and other people. And meetings, meetings, meetings, meetings. That might be the way he worked but it was too much sometimes. Into detail too much and too much oversight instead of broad picture stuff, but everybody works to their own skill set. I think the priority should have been firmly and only focused on fund-raising for the fence.”
Bryan Hardie-Boys, a retired general medical practitioner, replaced one of the first group of trustees. “Earl Norris was on the Trust and his job was to represent the volunteers and he retired and asked me to take it on. I did that for four years but when the sum of a million dollars came up, I thought, ‘This isn't you, Bryan. You don’t deal in millions of dollars.’ I said to Dave Butler, ‘I'm not sure that I'm doing very much here and I don't know about the money so I'm prepared to stand down anytime you like.’ The next day, the job was being
advertised. He probably heaved a sigh of relief because representing the volunteers sometimes was not what the Trust wanted to hear. It was about how hard it was on the ground and what the minor moans were, and they would say that they were dealing with much more important stuff.”
Sharon McGuire also spoke of how the Trust Board began to consider how to ensure continuity as trustees stepped down and no one replaced them. “We went to get our governance area really strong and we needed to identify, around the table, our skill sets. We also had to make sure there was good succession for both chair and trustees because a number had been there for a long time. What happens if somebody pulls their hands out of the water and all that IP goes with them? There was also a change of GM and so there was all that knowledge to be transferred and keep the at-large volunteers and the staff comfortable with the changes. That's always challenging like any change management in any business.
“Part of the role on the Board is to continually be objective, to look at the strategy and ask, ‘Are we true to it? Are we being wise in our decisions? And are we taking the time to reflect that that's the right long-term focus?’ That's the role of the Board and it's a continual challenge when you're still working out ‘How are we doing the payroll next week?’ ‘How do you grow it?’ ‘How do you keep connected with 500 volunteers of which 250-odd are really active?’” When she was satisfied that those concerns had been addressed, she stepped down from the Board, having served on it twice during the pivotal years of the Sanctuary’s development.
Karen Driver had been leading and organising the pest monitoring programme since around 2006 and in 2014 she was invited to become a trustee. “I was on it until 2019. It covered the whole period where we were getting the Resource Consent and building it (the fence), and the eradication. I was on the Board during that interesting period. I tried to be a voice for the field volunteers and I was also on the Ecosystem Restoration Committee working with Dave (Butler) and ecology experts before we had Robert (Schadewinkel) on staff. I didn't have a background in ecology, but I've got a background in project management so that helped. I supported the recruitment of staff, particularly the field staff like Nick (Robson), Robert (Schadewinkel) and Murray (Neil)
“The committee ensured the plans for the biosecurity protocols were developed. Most of the work was done by Robert once he arrived on staff. We also developed the plans of what species we were going to reintroduce and engaged with various experts around the region, like Pete Gaze, for their knowledge and experience. We were putting applications into DoC for translocations, and I was involved in the tīeke translocation. I went to Motuara Island with Robert, Katherine (Chamberlain) and the team to help catch the tīeke and bring them into the Sanctuary. That was around the time that I left the Board, but I was on the committee for a bit longer. I got off the Board because I wanted to spend more time in the Sanctuary doing field work.”
Chris Hawkes became chair of the Trust Board in June 2019, taking over from David Butler. Reviewing the position the Board was in at that time, Chris commented, “The Sanctuary had reached a level where the integral development of the Sanctuary had been reached and
what an achievement that was. I doubt I could have been involved at the initial stage. It would have been too big a commitment for me, what those founding members’ vision was and what lay ahead and was eventually achieved. The enthusiasm along with the tenacity to keep going through many difficulties, the foresight and the fortitude they must have had to get to that position is simply staggering. Reaching that point, the forward momentum, I think, may have levelled off a little. Who could blame them? The focus and the hard work were done, the fence was up and things were ticking over although there was still an immense amount of work within the Sanctuary to start or complete, ranging from bridges to be built, safety rails, tracks cut, weed and pest control and always the constant fence integrity to maintain. It needed to move up to another level.”
At the same time, the Trust was still reeling from the court cases that delayed progress for a year, sapped the enthusiasm of the volunteers, the trustees and the staff, left the Trust’s finances in a parlous state and led to major supporters and sponsors holding back through concern about being associated with the misinformed claims made by those opposing the pest removal. In Chris’ view, “Morale was low. Lines of communication were somewhat blurred with comments being made by many people whether they were authorised comments or not, or of policy not approved or set by the board.” Chris also believed that the Board included too many trustees, meetings tended to take too long, and were not focussed on key aspects such as financial sustainability and communication. Sponsors and supporters were not always provided with sufficient information or accountability of project spend and end results. Staff direction, along with accountability, support and strategic objectives had not been reviewed for some time.
“We've got on top of things with the Board dropping right down to eight (though currently nine at the time of writing in 2023), which is quite manageable. There is a good, positive feeling within the Board with only the odd disagreement, nothing too serious. I emphasise that a person coming on a Board such as this, who are there as volunteers, versus a fully commercial board who are not there as volunteers, any new member has to fit in with the Board’s current personality make up. Trustees need to have contributing skills that benefit the Board and the Sanctuary alike but also be able to fit in with established personalities. With the two iwi representatives, we've got key people covering legal, financial, engineering, marketing and health and safety. So, we have on the board people who have specific roles but equally get on and relate to each other well. The friendly banter that occurs tells me everybody’s comfortable, focusing on what we need to focus on.
“It's been a challenging road at times and the biggest thing now is to keep the funding coming through, particularly with the economy tightening up as it has. We got onto the areas we needed to address with major sponsors. Having Ru (Collin) as our new CEO, the focal ‘go to’ person and the main communication/contact point just as in a standard normal commercial organisation, has addressed our communication issues and removed the ambiguity arising from multi-person communications. We have frequent newsletters coming out and direct notes to our various key sponsors informing exactly where their money's gone and the results of it. We’re being accountable.”
In 2019, with a view to increasing the financial viability of the Trust, one of the first proposals was to begin charging visitors for entry to the Sanctuary. Prior to that, visitors had been asked to make a koha which, when investigated, appeared to average three dollars per person. “I don't think people valued it as much as they should have. That was one of the interesting debates at the Board table.” Some trustees were concerned that an entry charge would be a barrier to people visiting the Sanctuary. However, it was decided to introduce an entry charge and, as Chris reported, “There was some fairly stiff opposition to that around the Board table, but a strange thing happened. It suddenly became of value to the people. It's very noticeable that people coming through didn't object to it and virtually 100 per cent of visitors praise the experience and offer comments on the value of the visit They’d paid to see something of value. It also increased the membership as well with visitors appreciating the whole experience and the work effort put in by our legend of volunteers.
“As our finance trustee comments, ‘If we can get roughly one third of our income requirement generated by ourselves, one third through government and local bodies, and one third through sponsorship by the bigger corporates and sponsors, we will be OK’. I'm keen to push for generating a higher contribution of funds ourselves. This is where the (Sanctuary) Foundation comes in.” A foundation has been established to accumulate donations and legacies left in supporters’ estates to support that objective. “If we get that up so we get some interest plus the gate takings plus targeted marketing, hopefully we can lift that third up a bit higher reducing the need to be putting our hand out all the time.” Chris added that a central marketing goal is to reach all visitors to Nelson so that it becomes a ‘must see’ on their Nelson agenda.
Te Tau ihu Iwi Representation
The history of Māori occupation in Whakatū/Nelson and its surroundings is long and complex and the evidence of habitation suggests that at least some of it was seasonal. Pikimai (Church Hill) was a sentinel pā and was used for processing pakohe (argillite) that was gathered from quarries on the slopes of Maungatapu. It was a defensible position overlooking the flat area down to the Haven but it was not occupied when the Nelson settlers first arrived and they assumed that it had been abandoned. There was a large pā named Matangi Ᾱwhio sited at what is now known as Auckland Point on what was once the shore of the Haven. It is not known for how long it was continuously occupied but, according to Micthell & Mitchell (2004), it was there from around 1450. “Over succeeding centuries many iwi have in their day also occupied the locality, at least as a seasonal fishing camp.”
According to Peart (1937), there was also a seasonal kāinga near the entrance to the Haven at what is now the bottom of Richardson Street. Further afield, there were settlements at Glenduan, Wakapuaka, Croiselles, Rangitoto (D’Urville Island) and Admiralty Bay, a substantial pā near the mouth of the Waimea River with large gardens and several settlements in Motueka and Riwaka and along the western shore of Tasman Bay.
The trail up the Mahitahi (Maitai) river, over the Maungatapu Saddle and down into the Pelorus River was a regular route for Ngāti Kuia who populated both areas before at least partially retreating to the Pelorus when invading iwi arrived in the late 1820s and early 1830s. The Mahitahi and Waimārama would have provided tuna, kōura and other native fish along with birds such as kererū, which would have been populous during the berry seasons that attracted them. There is no known history of permanent Māori habitation in the Waimārama valley but it would have surely been well known to the various iwi who lived in and visited the Nelson area given the detailed knowledge that Māori gathered and passed on regarding Te Tauihi o Te Waka-a-Māui (the Top of the South Island) and all of Aotearoa.
When the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary Trust was being established and its constitution being developed, the founders sought representation from local iwi. Archdeacon Harvey Ruru (Te Ᾱtiawa, Ngāti Tama, Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Maru) remembered that around the time of the 21 March 2004 project launch event that he attended, Dave Butler asked him to consider going on to the Trust Board as a representative of local iwi. Harvey recommended several people who he thought would be suitable to ask.
Russell (Barney) Thomas, who was chair of Ngāti Rārua, a trustee on the Ngāti Tama/Te Ᾱtiawa Trust and a director of the Wakatū Incorporation, discussed cultural advice he and others provided in 2018 and 2019. “We looked at their constitution and we said, ‘You need to provide for three spaces’, and they asked, ‘Why three?’ I said, ‘Well, it could be eight, it could be six, but I'm suggesting three. One from each waka so you've got Kurahaupō, Tainui and Tokomaru.’ They did that. They provided for that.”
There are eight iwi which are tāngata whenua in Te Tauihu. They are listed below in alphabetical order within their early waka origins in Aotearoa:
• Kurahaupō: Ngāti Apa ki te Rā Tō, Ngāti Kuia, Rangitāne o Wairau, Te Ᾱtiawa o Te Waka-a-Māui (with the latter also from the Aotea waka)
• Tainui: Ngāti Koata, Ngāti Rārua, Ngāti Toa Rangitira.
• Tokomaru: Ngāti Tama ki Te Tau Ihu.
Barney was chair of Ngāti Rārua before being employed by DoC to provide cultural advice, including to the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary. When interviewed in 2023, he was spending half his time based in the offices of Ngāti Rārua in Nelson. In discussing cultural advice he has provided to the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary Trust, Barney recalled, “Over the years, we've had different VIPs, prime ministers and those sort of people and I've said to the Waimārama Brook Sanctuary that if we have these VIPs coming, they need to be welcomed. Formally. And that's what iwi should do. And then, with the various translocations coming in, they're coming in from all over New Zealand and I've said, ‘You need to make a list of the proposed translocations that you're going to do annually because you can't be expecting that iwi will come running every time there’s a translocation.’ If you’ve got a plan, then they can say, ‘Yes’, but there's more to it than that because what normally happens is that the home iwi will do what they call a tono. The home iwi, the iwi from here, will go off to the likes of Ngāi Tahu and they will ask if those manu, those birds, can be brought here.
“And then there are certain responsibilities that go with that like that we will formally welcome them. We will engage with them before the welcome happens because what they're interested in knowing is, from an iwi perspective, who's responsible here for those manu If anything happens, then that iwi are going to come to this iwi. They aren’t going to come to the Brook, they’re going to come to this iwi so it's really paramount that the Brook Waimārama has a relationship with the iwi. So, I did contact the iwi and asked them to come and they do have a couple of iwi reps on the Board. Chrissy Hemi is one and Deryk Mason, and Tainui has to find someone, as well.”
Harvey Ruru took a different view regarding representation from Tainui. “Well, there is really because Barney Thomas is Tainui. He's one of our chiefs and so he acts in an advisory capacity and does the phone tree and email string when we need to generate support for the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary.”
Barney elaborated on the importance of iwi representation on the Trust Board. “The relationships are really important to have because it's not just about the western science people saying, ‘Let’s bring these birds in’, there's a whole tikanga protocol that needs to be adhered to by the iwi. We've hosted Ngāi Tahu a number of times. They've come up and they know the Sanctuary now. So, when we're talking to them, they know who the iwi are and if the gun gets pointed, it's going to be pointed at me. Therein lies those responsibilities and that's why the Waimārama Sanctuary needs to have that relationship with the iwi.
“For us, everything's interconnected. You can't separate the river from the land. What happens on the land is going to affect the water. And the issue is around ensuring that the environment is healthy because if it's not, then those animals are not going to thrive. That's the first principle. Look after the land. Those are the important processes. I think that's slowly coming, appreciation of the fact that everything’s interconnected. Until you start thinking holistically like that, then these manu may go elsewhere to find food.
“When you're dealing with things Māori, it looks simple but it's not. There's lots more behind it. More than meets the eye. It's making sure that we tick everything off. Even the Department, when they get an application for translocation, I'm saying, ‘Woah, you shouldn't be approving those until iwi approve it.’ So, they've now held off on some of those until the iwi have done that because it's not all about just western science. Mātauranga is the knowledge that has been handed down. Some people get frustrated with it and we're saying, ‘Well, unless you’re going to get it right, who’s going to be held responsible?’ It's interesting that the Waimārama Brook Sanctuary has a little input from a mātauranga perspective but it's starting to gather momentum.
“So, when they were talking about translocations, I pulled the iwi in. We sat at the meeting table and they wanted me to make decisions on behalf of the iwi. I said, ‘No. That’s not how it works. I ain’t making those decisions. We'll bring them in.’ It has to be done in a culturally appropriate manner. For me, it's ensuring that our wāhine are involved and it’s kaikaranga and waiata and kaikōrero and that we uphold the mana of the region when we have visitors.”
Waihaere Mason, who was the chair of Ngāti Kuia Trust for many years, gave his views on the Sanctuary. “I've been involved in environmental work throughout the top of the South Island for some time and the Waimārama one is an important one to me because it represents a microcosm of what our land should be like. It's an example of what our land should look like, what our waterways should look like, all those good things that make the natural environment thrive. Waimārama is really good in nature. It is well placed, it's a good site, it’s got good water, it looks to the sun, and it's got a variety of vegetation and so forth. It's pretty much ideal.
“A lot of work has gone into protecting the whole site. Others have done lots and lots of work at the chalk face and my role has been part of an iwi support for it much like other iwi in Te Tauihu. My iwi has always been part of the whole being of Waimārama and so it's just something that you do. It comes from the heart and it's part of our rohe here. Our ancestors hunted through that whole area. They lived off all the good things that it had to offer in those past times.
“Ngāti Kuia were the first of the current Māori people here in Whakatū. They evolved over time from interaction with the first people of Te Waipounamu. Ngāti Kuia are the ‘namer of the names’ of many important places here such as Matangi Ᾱwhio (whispering winds/Auckland Point) and, of course, Waimārama (clear waters). Whakatū held a large population which increased with the arrival of iwi from Te Ika a Māui from the 1830s. The area was hunting grounds for all manner of kai and the sourcing of pakohe for tools and weapons. The pakohe comes from the mineral belt running from Whakatū through to Rangitoto and is considered the ‘survival taonga’ for the Māori people.
“We're about a holistic overview of whatever's happening around Te Tauihu in environmental matters. We've got people who are specifically employed to pursue resource consents. And that's full time. We've made comment on mining, gold mining, salmon farms, etc. You name any request, we have people who represent an iwi perspective on the matters that affect the environment. It's a serious, serious business.
“First of all, you've got to protect what's there. You've got to implant species that will survive there. The first thing I ask is, ‘Is there anything for these new creatures to eat?’ They're talking about bringing kiwi here. It's a pretty rocky, stony sort of place. And steep. Is there food? All those sorts of things. It's an example of people working through all of that, where other people then can pick it up and carry on and do a similar activity somewhere else. There are a number of what we call ‘exemplar activities’ going on now and this one is an example of what can happen with a philosophy based around community participation first, not from on high down but from the ground roots up so that people take ownership of it.
“That is the whole attitude of iwi towards Papatūānuku. We represented a whole range of activities across the country. The goal of all these activities is to preserve a self-sustaining environment through intergenerational participation because these activities are long term, they're not just a day or so. You've got to grow the knowledge down to the next generation to continue on. I presume that would be the ultimate aim of everyone in being selfsustaining rather than having to be supported all the time.
“That's why you've got to temper the wellbeing of the environment with the wellbeing of the community as well. There are all these environments around and that's a challenge that people still have to continue making a living. If any of these things impinge on that then there's got to be some working through. That's what we're trying with the Te Hoiere Project. It's massive. It's combining community needs with the environmental needs.”
The first iwi representative on the Trust in 2004 was Ani Parata but after about 18 months she resigned to take up a post elsewhere. In 2006, Christine Hemi (Ngāti Kuia) and Moetu Stephens (Ngāti Tama) joined and Kura Stafford (Ngāti Rārua) later replaced Moetu. Christine Hemi was one of the names that Harvey Ruru suggested to Dave Butler. Harvey commented, “She's also Te Ᾱtiawa but she's very much involved with Ngāti Kuia so she's been the good mother of the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary over these many, many years and often rings me up when there’s a need to have kaupapa Māori. And that's how Waihaere Mason has been involved and some of the earlier chairpersons. Ngāti Kuia got involved especially through David Johnson, whose name has come up quite a lot when I was trying to track down who's been involved in the past.”
Christine discussed becoming iwi representative on the Trust around 2006. “I already knew Dave Butler’s wife, Donna, and she got me involved. They needed iwi reps on the Trust so I went on for Ngāti Kuia. We've had several others since. There are three positions on the Trust for iwi but only two of them are taken up. That's myself and Ngāti Tama. I've been there ever since. Ngāti Tama came on only recently. I can't remember just when Deryk came on.
“It’s fun. It's not just being on the Trust. It's being involved in the actual Sanctuary, bird releases, everything. Watching what the volunteers do. That's massive. I’ve been on several trips around with different people. The poison drop - I was involved in that. I spent hours standing up on the side. But I've really enjoyed it. It's been through a couple of CEOs. I used to volunteer in the Visitor Centre, but I haven't had time to do that now but there was an amazing variety of visitors that used to go through. I assume it's the same now, just more. I’ve been involved in the Open Days, but not as a trustee. We usually do the sausage sizzle.
“We've just taken a group up. Three of them turned up to start naming the trees, the older trees like the totara and others to give them names but they walked for two hours and all I got out of it was soaking wet. We're going to organise a better time and have a day. Go more prepared and start at the top and walk down through the Sanctuary and spot all these trees that need to be named, especially the two totara, The Twins, and a rātā somewhere. There might be a matai. There are several that need names so when we can organise it with Huataki, our chairperson, we're going to have a day. I just walked through with Brian, one of the volunteers, and we can organise it with him. He knows where they all are and he'll take us on the tiki tour. I don't know whether I'll go. I've been from the top to the bottom. It took me four hours. I enjoyed it though.
“I go up every time there's a release. I get a ride up with Deryk, usually, and we're there when the helicopter comes in. Just to greet them. What happened with the first kākāriki release that came up from Ngāi Tahu and couple of the DoC people who came from Christchurch, from Isaacs, and they asked if they could walk out. I said, ‘Oh, I’ll come, too’. I regretted that. But not really. I really enjoyed it. Now I've been from the top to the bottom. I've done it. Seeing the big table and all the works and the tracks are amazing. I've seen all the work they've done.
“We had a trustee on the Ngāti Kuia Trust called Sharon and I said to her that they wanted to build an education platform. She asked, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘They want to build this platform up in the beech glade and eventually they can have seating around it and they can have electronics so you can plug in and do wi-fi and all that.’ She asked, ‘How much is that going to cost? Go and get a quote from Hudson.’ He said it would be just over 20 grand. I gave that to Sharon and she said she would ask the Trust. They gave him the money. The whole 20 grand to build it and the rest of it was volunteer time to build it. I nearly fell over.
“We’ve had input to all sorts of things up there. Just little bits here and there. There is that pakohe rock within the platform. When the actual platform was finished, just with the seats, a big group of us went up there, and blessed it. I'm trying to get them involved now in the kiwi to see if they can cough up something for the kiwi. That might be a bit hard, but I'll try. They’re concentrating more on tuatara at the moment, putting the mouse-proof fence up.
Regarding negotiations with the iwi that are sending the translocations such as the proposal for kiwi to come from Ngāti Toa at Kāpiti, it also involved working with Ngāi Tahu, from whom the kiwi were relocated to Kāpiti. “They're easy to deal with, Ngāti Toa. It’s DoC that's the hold up on most things, DoC red tape. Especially with things like that. Everybody's rearing to go and they say, ‘You haven't done this. And you haven't filled out that.’ And Ngāi Tahu, from what I can gather, have been a breeze to deal with.”
Deryk Mason first joined up as a volunteer in the Sanctuary when he retired and returned to Nelson around 2012/13 and became a member in 2014. He started out on the trapping team but moved to the track cutting team before long. Since then, he has undertaken several other roles including creating a GPS-based map of all the tracks, establishing a system of markers along them and on the fence posts, organising workshops to build new monitoring tunnels and assisting with the fence development which led to him being one of the team that maintains and repairs the fence as required. Because his ancestry includes Te Ᾱtiawa
from a grandmother and Ngāti Tama from a great grandfather, Harvey Ruru asked him if he would become an iwi representative on the Trust, a position he took in 2019.
“The problem with iwi representation in the Top of the South, particularly for a community entity, is that you need to deal with all the iwi so one of the things that I've been trying to do is to get other iwi involved but it’s very difficult. I don't speak te reo, I grew up Pākehā and I had no involvement with iwi until I came back so basically, my involvement with iwi has been in line with involvement with the Sanctuary. It's just that I have the credentials, the lineage to be representative. And to be honest, there have not been any issues. I think that the Brook Sanctuary has involved the iwi right from the early days.
In October 2022, the Sanctuary became a formal partner in the Kotahitanga mō te Taiao Alliance. The Alliance is a collaboration between Te Tauihu iwi, DoC and six local government agencies from Westport to Kaikōura which holds six-weekly Project Leader meetings to share knowledge and information, and build capacity. Its first goals were to develop plans to deliver conservation work at scale while taking existing projects such as the Sanctuary into account.
Deryk outlined the advantages for the Sanctuary of being a partner in the Alliance, particularly with respect to consulting with local iwi “If we wish to do things where we need to consult, then it can be done through that Alliance and you get to everybody at the one time, where previously it was like herding cats. As reps, we don't have any authority to make decisions. None of us did. We all had to go back to the trust boards and tell them what we wanted and get their response.
“But now that we've got this platform there is really no excuse. We can set anything up. If it's likely to involve the environment and iwi and even if it doesn't, it's just a courtesy to let them know that this is what we might do. With any relocation now, the way iwi wish to see it and the way you're going to get it done is if you get iwi talking to iwi first. Up until maybe five years ago, it was that you talked to DoC and DoC would try and negotiate with the iwi. And you’d end up asking, ‘Who's running the show?’ Now we can go to the Alliance and say we want to introduce tuatara etc. and the discussion can be had with the right people first. The iwi relationship has taken a big leap forward and if you spoke to Chris (Hemi) she would agree.”
Public Events, Celebrations, Publicity and Fundraising
(With content from a draft compiled by Jane Stevens)
As operations on the ground got underway, a publicity committee of volunteers was created and coordinated by Ann Sheridan and the team began to staff stalls at public events to raise awareness of the project, attract volunteers and raise funds. In August 2003, the group had a stand at Ecofest, organised by Pip McFadden and which featured posters created by students at Nayland College and Nelson Intermediate. Stands at Ecofest became a regular annual event until 2013 and won an award in 2012. In 2007, the stall highlighted the Fence Project and a newsletter report in 2008 noted that it was 'A successful event for BWS ... with good sales of merchandise and new members signing up.’
As has been mentioned in ‘The Concept is Born’, the Sanctuary project was officially launched in March 2004 and a fundraising and publicity event was held at Fairfield House in September. The following February, Ann Sheridan was appointed as part-time coordinator, working from an office provided by The Nelson Environment Centre. Later in 2005, Marian Hobbs, Minister for the Environment, paid a visit on 6 July; the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary Trust held its first AGM on 24 August, and on 17 November the first Supporter Evening was held at the NMIT Student Centre. There was an update on Sanctuary activities and a guest speaker, and the evening finished with wine and finger food.
A ’Raising the Roof’ celebration was held on 21 May 2006 to mark the completion of the roof on the new Entrance Building. Archdeacon Harvey Ruru began the ceremony with a karakia and the Mosaic World Choir sang a waiata. Damien O'Connor, Minister of Tourism, was a special guest.
The day continued with family and volunteer activities, and information and displays on Sanctuary development. The 'Cash for Nature' fund-raising project was launched when Dean Raybould drew an outline of a tuatara on the ground and visitors filled it with coinage that was about to go out of circulation (5c, and old-style 10c, 20c, 50c). The ‘Cash for Nature’ campaign also featured at the Nelson Market on 26 August, again with artwork by Dean Raybould, and ran through until October.
Katherine Chamberlain recalled taking responsibility for a section of the ‘Cash for Nature’ efforts. “I somehow wound up with the job of organising the volunteers and collection in Richmond. They gave me a list of names of people to call on and gave me jars to put in all the businesses to collect the 5c coins that were being phased out.”
In October 2006, the team ran a fund-raising food stall at the annual Masked Parade. Volunteers cooked and served venison products, helped by Spike the Tuatara and Keith the Kiwi. There was a repeat invitation in 2007 when the stall served organic venison sausages donated by the Wakefield Butcher and Fresh Choice.
On 1 April 2007, the newly completed Entrance Building was opened with a Dawn Blessing led by Archdeacon Harvey Ruru, and Richard Nunns played taonga pūoro. At the official opening ceremony later in the day, Steve Chadwick MP planted a tītoki and cut a 'ribbon' of old man's beard, followed by music from Richard Nunns, Hinemoana Baker and Christine White. From 27 to 30 November, the Reel Earth Environment Film Festival was run as a fundraising event in collaboration with the Nelson Environment Centre and State Cinema.
Steve Chadwick cutting the ribbon of old man’s beard to open the Visitor Centre
The highlight in 2008 was 'Meet the Chicks'. Over the weekend of 14/15 June, six handreared kākāpō chicks were on display in the Visitor Centre and were seen by over 5,000 people. This was made possible through cooperation with DoC's Kākāpō Team and was a
major logistical exercise for the Sanctuary. At the time, the chicks made up 6.5 per cent of the world's population as there were only 91 kākāpo in existence. At that event, Ka Mate traps designed by Bruce Thomas and the booklet 'Returning Nature to the Nelson Region' by Jacquetta Bell were launched.
A concert entitled 'Evening with the Songbirds' was held at the Nelson School of Music on 29 August and an Open Day was held on 3 October at which visitors paid $5 to write a message on a trapping tunnel. In November, the Sanctuary’s stand at the Richmond A&P Show was awarded a Blue Ribbon in the Community section. It won the Best Small Outdoor Trade Exhibit the following year.
Another regular publicity event staffed by the team was the Nelson Home & Garden Show. Being a three-day event at which the Sanctuary stall was always sited outdoors, a lot of equipment was required, typically including two gazebos for shelter, and setting up and dismantling was a challenging exercise. During the first years of attending the event, the team took along the large, three-dimensional model of the Sanctuary and its mountainous surroundings which is usually situated in the Visitor Centre. Although it dismantles into two pieces, they are large and cumbersome, and its inclusion was discontinued.
Bryan Hardie-Boys remembered those years. “I spend a lot of time with Rick Field. He and I used to go to things like the A&P Show and Home & Garden with a section advertising the Sanctuary. I had a van at the time and he could rent an old NMIT ute. We'd pack all this stuff up and go and set up for the day. I did that a lot with Rick and it was really good to get to know him. We did it often enough that we knew exactly what to take.”
The 3D model on display at a public event
Rick Field also recalled the many events that he, Bryan and others attended and the effort required to load up the heavy model of the Sanctuary, a section of pest-proof fence and a lot of other equipment. “DoC had these massive, big canvas tents that were all mouldy, and we put that up and covered it and plants. It was a big operation. We’d take everything. The TV. We’d take it down as well and take it there. There was nothing much left here (in the Visitor Centre). I remember one time the section of fence fell on Brian's head and I thought, ‘This is it!’ He got this big wallop on his head. I don’t think we filled in a report on that one. It was before that sort of thing happened. We did a lot of events over the years. A huge number. That was all to just try to keep it in people's minds that we're still going even though we're doing it with little money.”
Another two early volunteers who requested that they remain anonymous, also recalled those efforts. “We helped out on all the events. We would be loading up with Rick on to the vehicle and unloading at the other end and doing it on the way back until we got to the stage where it just became too much for us. But that was for years.”
The Conservation Education Centre was blessed on 26 January 2010 and officially opened on 28 January by Nick Smith, MP for Nelson and Minister for the Environment, accompanied by Kerry Marshall, the Mayor of Nelson, and Richard Kempthorne, the Mayor of Tasman, with visitors invited to bring a picnic at which activities were organised for children and adults were invited to become volunteers.
In December 2010, Ruud Kleinpaste, a well-known expert on insects and something of an entertainer visited, as did students from Mapua School as part of the Air NZ Environmental Trust 'Kids Restore NZ' Project. Other visitors that year included Dr Jan Wright, Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment; Meteria Turei MP and Green Party co-leader; six Labour
MPs; and Di Paton from Air New Zealand. The cover of the Sanctuary newsletter that month featured a photo of Dave Butler holding his recently awarded ‘Environmental Leadership Award’ in the Nelson Tasman Environment Awards.
On 3 April 2011, the Sanctuary hosted The Brook Waterworks Tour as part of Nelson Heritage week and in December, an art exhibition entitled 'Sanctuary' opened at the Reflections Gallery at the WOW Museum in which 19 artists donated part of the sale price of their work to the Sanctuary and raised $1,237. The exhibition ran until 17 March 2012 and was seen by an estimated 15,000 people. Also in December, the Volunteers' Annual BBQ featured Margaret Stevenson's goat curry and venison steaks, all from animals culled from the Sanctuary, courtesy of hunters, Keith Marshall and Rex McDowall. Sausages were also supplied courtesy of Pestell’s Butchery.
Annual Open Days continued through the following years although Cyclone Lusi prompted last-minute cancellation of the March 2014 one. A number of people, having not heard of the cancellation, turned up and were entertained in the Visitor Centre by Ruud Kleinpaste who had returned to entertain and inform once again.
In January 2013, the Public Engagement Task Force was established with three staff members (Raeonie Ellery, Rick Field and Naina Mahto) and 12 volunteers with Sharon McGuire as chair. April was a busy month for the team with stalls at the Saturday Market and Farmers’ Market every week, and four quiz nights at the Sprig & Fern. Those events collectively raised $6,259 in donations and fence post sponsorships and recruited six new volunteers and two new members. In May, the ‘Get Behind the Fence’ campaign was launched with a BBQ, family activities and a crowd photo taken with all present standing and sitting in front of the Visitor Centre.
The Nelson Jazz Club supported the Sanctuary by providing bands for open days held up at the Visitor Centre including showcasing the club’s Youth Jazz Band on one occasion. During the winter of 2013, the club organised a fundraising concert at Old St. John’s with sponsorship from Bowater Honda who parked a newly released Honda Jazz out the front. The concert programme included the club’s Youth Jazz Band, a five-piece band called ‘Freewheelin’’ and the Nelson Jazz Club Big Band.
On 2 August 2014, the Sanctuary held a celebration event at the Founders Park Granary for volunteers and members that coincided with a visit by Richard Louv, a US educator who wrote a book called Vitamin N which is about the benefits of people enjoying the natural world. A Nelson Jazz Club band, ‘Cocktail Hour’ provided music and featured staff member, Raeonie Ellery, singing the well-known Cole Porter song, ‘Don’t Fence Me In’, with the lyrics rewritten by her for the occasion as ‘Please Fence Me In’.
Please Fence Me In
Oh, give me trees, lots of trees under sunny skies above
Please fence me in
Let me be seen in the green, lush country that I love
Please fence me in
Let me be by the water in the mornin' breeze
And listen to the chorus of the birds in the trees Free of pests forever, bless the sanctuaries!
Please fence me in
Just turn me loose, let me dabble in the babble And the gurgle of the stream
In thriving bush, let me wander over yonder Through a million shades of green
I want to hike to the ridge where the west commences
And gaze at the view till I lose my senses
Nature is protected by Xcluder fences
Please fence me in
A highlight of 2014 was a Dawn Blessing and a ground-breaking celebration, held on 27 September. The first, marked the opening of the outdoor education platform that had been built a few hundred metres upstream from the Old Dam with funding from Ngāti Kuia and labour by the volunteers of the Assets Team with assistance from the core group of stalwarts who often joined in. At the dawn ceremony, Barney Thomas blessed a large pakohe (argillite) stone that had been selected by local iwi as the Mauri Stone of the platform and its subsequent uses. After the blessing, the stone was passed around the assembled visitors and then, along with two other stones selected from the Sanctuary, was placed in the ground by women, according to tradition: two from the local marae and one representing the Sanctuary. All those present were then invited to assist in burying the stones accompanied by taonga pūoro played by Richard Nunns. That was followed by a breakfast reception in the Visitor Centre.
The construction of the fence was officially launched in September 2014 with the mayors of Nelson and Tasman, Rachel Reese and Richard Kempthorne, and the MP for Nelson and Minister for the Environment, Nick Smith, breaking the ground for the ceremonial first post
near the Visitor Centre. The first post was then put in place by Dave Butler and some school children followed by a blessing by Archdeacons Harvey Ruru and Andy Joseph, laying the Mauri for the fence. Richard Nunns again provided music and the ceremony was followed by a reception in the Visitor Centre.
Later in 2014, the Sanctuary had a stand at the Home & Garden Show in October, a stall at the Great Christmas Market in November, and decorated a tree for the Cathedral's Festival of Christmas Trees in December. The Sanctuary has continued to take part in the Cathedral's Christmas Tree Festival through until the time of writing (2023) but no longer holds a stand at the Home & Garden Show.
March 2015 was a busy month for Public Engagement volunteers, who worked approximately 180 hours on a variety of events, the largest of which was an Open Day on 22 March with star attractions Ruud Kleinpaste and rowi (Ōkārito kiwi) chicks. Visitors could catch a free bus service from the city and activities and displays included viewing the rowi chicks, children's walks with Ruud, themed guided walks led by experts, face painting, Ro Pope’s ‘Whack-a-Rat’ amusement device, food carts, electric fishing, live music, a cake stall, raffles, volunteer information and recruitment. The ever-popular Ride-On Moa also put in an appearance, along with his handler, Pam Pope.
That year, the Sanctuary volunteers were collectively named as ‘Nelsonians of the Year’ by The Nelson Mail. In December, the team had a stall at the Morrison Square Christmas market selling items made and donated by volunteers.
Volunteers celebrating the ‘Nelsonians of the Year’ award (Source: Nelson Mail/Stuff Limited)
An unusual event early in 2016 was the Bioblitz in February. Twenty groups of observers made 262 observations of different species. Catherine McKnight (age 10) won the prize for the most interesting find – a burrowing mayfly. The 'Light Nelson Festival' ran from 8 – 12 July and included a very popular installation entitled 'Nocturne', a collaboration between artists Lori Davis and Larisse Hall, Rick Field, coordinator of the Sanctuary, and many school children. Models of New Zealand wildlife, both native and introduced, were coloured with special chalks and paints which glowed under blacklight. It was a spectacular display and one of the most popular in the festival. Sanctuary volunteers provided much-needed crowd control and a lot of volunteers were involved in helping during several very cold evenings. Support for the display was provided by Light Nelson, Resene Paints and Office Max. A ‘night-owl’ Sanctuary team took part in the Warehouse Stocktake in mid-2016 and raised $1,142.
However, the highlight of 2016 was the Fence Completion Party on 29 September which marked the completion of a huge construction project and signified an enormous achievement by so many people. Prime Minister, John Key, performed the official duties of unveiling a plaque then ceremonially closing the gate to formally enclose the Sanctuary. Also present in an official capacity, were iwi representatives; Conservation Minister, Maggie Barry; Sanctuary Patron, Phillip Woollaston; and local mayors.
After the official part of the day, visitors enjoyed walks, children's activities and a choice of food carts. The event was favoured with fine weather and was meticulously planned by event coordinator, Jennie Harrison, and efficiently run by Sanctuary staff and volunteers. However, there was no rest for Public Engagement volunteers and staff who, immediately after the gates closed, dismantled the equipment needed for the stand at the Home &
Garden Show being held over the weekend. They moved it to Saxton Stadium and set it up again, ready to open the following morning.
The Annual Report of the Public Engagement Team in 2016 reported that 60 active members had organised and delivered 25 activities accounting for 550 hours of their time. They had raised around $6,000.
From 2017, Public Engagement activities were scaled back in the run-up to, during and immediately after the pest removal stage of the Sanctuary development. Over the years up until then, the team took part in many other events not mentioned above including The Motor Home Show, Growables, Outdoor Recreation Expo, Hardy Street night markets, Morrison Square Christmas market, Founders Park Christmas Market, Mitre 10 Garden evenings and stalls at Maitai planting days.
The team and other volunteers also organised musical evenings, film festivals, public talks, ran raffles and competitions, and put up window and cabinet displays around the central city.
Following the decision at DoC to declare that the Sanctuary was pest free in 2019, Open Days were back on the agenda. A successful one was held on 24 October 2020 with 711 visitors and another visit by ‘The Bug Man’, Ruud Kleinpaste. Visitors were invited to assemble bird boxes and around 400 were completed.
Earlier in the month, volunteers raised $912 by helping with stocktaking at The Warehouse. A promotion stall was present and the Saturday Market for four weeks from 28 November and Sanctuary volunteers once again decorated a Christmas tree for the Annual Nelson Cathedral Festival of Christmas Trees.
In March 2021, volunteers raised funds by assisting with a stocktake at Fresh Choice Nelson supermarket and on 3 April, volunteers held a sausage sizzle at Bunnings in Stoke. On 11 April, another successful Open Day was held with an estimated 1,500 people visiting the Sanctuary. The increase in attendance was partly due to the inclusion of two Fun Runs organised by Nelson Athletics and Waimea Harriers which finished in the Sanctuary.
In July 2021, ‘Glowworm and Forest After Dark’ tours were launched following two wellreceived trial events with visitors from Nelson City Council and Ngāti Kuia. During the first month, more than 180 people had booked tours, many of them first-time visitors to the Sanctuary, and more than $3,500 had been raised. In the July 2021 newsletter, the longstanding efforts of Jane Stevens and her band of helpers who have made jars of jam which have been on display in the Visitor Centre for many years as a fund-raiser, were recognised with an announcement that their efforts had raised more than $2,100 during the year ending 30 June.
On 12 September 2021, the film ‘Bandits of the Beech Forest’ was screened in the City Office to raise awareness about the impact of wasps on the natural environment. During October, volunteers held a car wash and a sausage sizzle raising $158 and $446 respectively after costs and a Christmas hamper giveaway and fund-raiser was held in collaboration with a number of artisan food businesses, authors and artists to create two prize hampers to be
raffled. However, Covid-19 restrictions led to the decision to postpone the planned Open Day until sometime in 2022.
During 2022, the Sanctuary set about strengthening its links with the arts and culture sector including working with the Nelson Arts Festival to host festival events and connecting with the Adam Chamber Festival, the Nelson Provincial Museum, the TUKU Heritage Festival and other local artists and community events. For example, to celebrate the Sanctuary’s ecosystem restoration milestones, Artist Studio Soph created an illustration of the kākāriki karaka (orange-fronted parakeet) that was used on tote-bags, T-shirts and beer labels, and Thiys Van Der Beek created Powelliphanta inspired artwork that was featured on some limited-edition tote-bags.
In February 2022, ‘The Beech Glade Sessions’ of musical performances were launched, the first featuring Bob Bickerton playing taonga pūoro. Because of Covid-19 restrictions, attendance was limited to 40 people. Bob also provided taonga pūoro music from a hidden spot in the forest at 40 patrons walked to the Beech Glade Classroom to attend an Early Bird Breakfast on 15 March that was held to strengthen the support of the Brook Business Club. The breakfast raised more than $3,000, largely through having Rezource as event sponsor.
Continuing uncertainty around public events led to a decision to reduce the scale of the Open Day held on 10 April. It attracted 763 visitors recorded and raised about $4,000 including donations and supporter sign-ups.
In April, in collaboration with Nelson Provincial Museum staff, a semi-permanent exhibit was set up at the Museum to share the story of the Sanctuary. It featured a taonga pūoro soundtrack by Bob Bickerton that was recorded in the Sanctuary.
On 19 May, in collaboration with TUKU Heritage Month, a short film about the City Waterworks in the Sanctuary was screened at the City Office. Don Fraser, a long-serving volunteer in the Sanctuary, facilitated two guided tours of the historic waterworks sites during the Heritage month.
In June 2022, the Sanctuary set up its dome gazebo and artworks by Dean Raybould in Trafalgar Park as part of the inaugural Matariki Festival. As well as presenting merchandise and information about the Sanctuary, an activity zone was set up for children.
Also in June, a fundraising collaboration was announced with The Freehouse, one of the Brook Business Club supporters, with the release of Kākāriki Kawakawa Pale Ale. The beer was infused with kawakawa leaves and totara berries. Freehouse planned to donate ten per cent of sales to the Sanctuary and followed up in August with Powelliphanta Porter brewed with wood-ear mushroom and miso. Both brews sold out quickly. Green Gecko Pale Ale was launched in July 2023 and featured a blend of four hop varieties with freeze-dried passionfruit power and spirulina to give it a green glow.
The Open Day of 23 October 2022 was blessed with fine weather and attracted 1,202 visitors through the air lock gate into the Sanctuary. During the week prior, the Sanctuary had hosted the ‘Sculp Nature’ symposium, an initiative that saw six sculptors (Donald Buglass, Sharyn Crost, Gabi de Melo, Paul Olson, Joelle Xavier and Deborah Walsh) create pieces that reflected their relationship with nature while using only natural materials. More than 150
people visited the Sanctuary during the week and the completed works were auctioned at the Open Day with 30 per cent of the proceeds to the Sanctuary. First prize of $5,000 was awarded to Donald Buglass for his piece, ‘Pouakai’, which will remain on site. The second prize of $1,000 was awarded to Paul Olson for ‘Sanctuary’ and the Peoples’ Choice Award of $500 went to Gabi de Melo for her ‘A Silent Prayer to Papatūānuku’ which will remain in the Picnic Area thanks to the generosity of Deborah and Donald McConochie.
As part of the Nelson Arts Festival in October, the Sanctuary hosted an event that explored the stories and themes of Annette Lee’s book, ‘After Dark: Walking into the nights of Aotearoa’. At dusk, the audience met on the Sanctuary front lawn under the Sanctuary Dome for a reading from Annette’s book. This was followed by a nighttime tour of the forest with Annette. Along the way, she shared knowledge about the forest and its creatures, the night sky and other ecological tales. Attendees were encouraged to explore their relationship with the night in the past and present.
On 30 October, the Sanctuary set up a stall outside the Rock Box in the lane leading into Morrison Square as part of the Nelson Street Hop.
In December 2022, The Sanctuary relaunched the Beech Glade Sessions with a series of four outdoor concerts and performances. The first featured Bob Bickerton playing taonga pūoro, the January session featured the Nelson Bays Harmony Chorus and the February session was co-hosted by the Adam Chamber Music Festival and featured the Adam Chamber Troubadours. Unfortunately, this session had to be moved to the Visitor Centre due to poor weather. The final session in March featured world musicians Klezoum.
The Open Day of 16 April 2023 was attended by the Minister for Conservation, Willow-Jean Prime,Nelson MP, Rachel Boyack, and VIPs from Ngāi Tahu. Nearly 2,100 visitors entered the Sanctuary through the fence gate. Activities included two trap building workshops, a trapping information stall run by Nelson City/Nelson Nature and a presentation on kākāriki karaka by Sanctuary and DoC staff. An activity zone for children featured colouring in, mask making and ‘Splat the Rat’. Including merchandise sales, donations, supporter subscriptions and sales of donated goods raised about $2,500.
Glowworm tours were launched again in May with plans to hold them from June through to September. During that period, 30 tours were conducted, attracting more than 400 people and generating around $7,000.
In collaboration with the Nelson Arts Festival in October, the Sanctuary hosted artist, Arihia Latham who read poetry from her debut collection, ‘Birdspeak’ alongside her cousin, Ruby Solly, who performed verse from her second book, ‘The Artist’, and also played taonga pūoro. The event concluded with a guided walk out of the Sanctuary via the glowworms.
The 29 October 2023 Open Day was attended by about 1,440 people. The event had a freshwater conservation theme with education zones facilitated by Tasman Bay Guardians, Nelson City Council and Tasman Environment Trust which hosted activities including macroinvertebrate testing and urban weed identification. Ian Millar, resident expert on the species, presented talks in the Beech Glade on Powelliphanta and the translocations of them into the
Sanctuary and artist and educator, Vicki Smith, directed visitors in the creation of a tuna sculpture made entirely from foraged native plant materials. The event was sponsored by Craigs Investment Partners.
Over the years, the Sanctuary has received lots of support from the artistic community with many artists donating their work for exhibitions, raffles, sales tables, window displays, cards and calendars, and others have donated money from sales of their work.
Track Cutting
Although around 400 people had attended the first Orientation Day at NMIT on 2 April 2003 and many had added their names to volunteer lists under 14 different categories, cutting trapping line tracks could not begin until the Trust was formed and had obtained consent from Nelson City Council to begin operations in the Reserve. Issue 6 of the Leaves From the Brook newsletter of August 2004 announced that work could begin and the call for volunteers went out again.
Dave Butler himself organised the very first working bee to mark out the first trapping line track and invited Peter Hay, Lincoln MacKenzie and Dave Leadbetter to join him. All three had approached Dave when they learned about the proposed Sanctuary and all three had expressed an interest in physical, outdoor activity.
Equipped with a 100-metre-long length of rope, an inclinometer and a bundle of brightly coloured ribbons, they set off from the top of the western end of the Big (1904) Dam by scrambling straight up through the bush until the rope was fully paid out. From that point, they used the inclinometer to sight a point ahead to the south and proceeded to tie a marker around a branch or tree trunk at that point. From there, the inclinometer was used again and the process repeated until they reached the spur above the Top (1909) Dam. The very first track line, West A, had been marked out. The bush was relatively open at that time, having been ravaged for years by pigs, goats, deer and possums. In fact, a chorus of goats could be heard in the background as they worked.
Lincoln recalled, “It seemed like such a forlorn little start with a bit of string and a grubber, really, but now the network is established it is much easier. I mostly recall just hacking away at the ground. It was pretty hard labour. There always was quite a small group of people in track cutting. I would say that if there was half a dozen people at once, that was a good number and there were others rotating through. And quite a lot came through and thought better of it. However, I was surprised at how quickly the fence happened. I thought we would be working on the tracks for many, many years.”
Peter Hay also talked about the small core group of track cutters and efforts to recruit more. “We’ve always gained most new members by word of mouth. I don't know where people come from for the monitoring teams and so on but the track cutters have always largely acquired new entrants from word of mouth. Just personal contacts. No amount of formal recruiting on radio, online or newspaper seems to bring anybody in that sticks with us. Back then it was just fit old guys retiring and talking to each other and in they’d come.”
Out of concern to limit damage to the typically unstable Nelson hillsides, the initial City Council permission for the tracks required that they be no more than flat footprints through lightly cleared bush. Benching a track was forbidden. The initial members of the track cutting team were concerned that this was going to make the ongoing access to extend the tracks difficult and pose a significant obstacle to the trapping volunteers who would be servicing the hundreds of traps that were to be placed along the lines. Furthermore, it was assumed that track cutting and trapping volunteers would be largely drawn from an older group of people for whom such limited access could be difficult and dangerous.
Consequently, the group decided to make narrow, minimally-benched tracks of around 150mm to 200mm wide to enable relatively safe and unencumbered access, but somebody sent from Council to inspect what they were doing insisted that they create only separate footprint steps as per the permission given. The response of the volunteers was a unanimous threat to walk off the job. They continued to create narrow, benched tracks which, as usage increased, developed into wider, safer versions that enabled the track cutters to safely carry tools in and out, and the trappers to go about their work. Alongside the main, designated tracks, the team kept a lookout for destinations that might offer ‘beauty spot’ potential and cut minimal, unofficial tracks into them that were known as ‘DTD’ tracks - ‘Don’t tell Dave’.
Although several technologies including laser and GPS were tried as a means of keeping the tracks on or near a horizontal contour, the inclinometer was mostly used throughout along with the pink markers tied on trees. The people doing the marking out were followed by others with chainsaws to clear through thick scrub and dispose of windthrow logs that could become dangerous. They, in turn, were followed by the bench constructers armed with grubbers and loppers, the last of whom was, appropriately, charged with being a perfectionist.
Bryan Hardie-Boys, who had at that time recently retired, recalled, “I started off cutting tracks with Peter Hay and that would be quite early on. So, I followed Peter Hay’s backside for some time. The method then was for Peter to crawl through the bush with a bit of rope in one hand and an altimeter in the other so that we would have parallel lines. I came behind him snipping stuff. Someone was behind me lopping stuff and someone was behind them sawing stuff, and all time we were measuring out 50 metres because we were putting traps every 50 metres. So, when Peter got to the end of the rope, he tied it to a tree and went off again. I did that for not all that long. When we started on the trapping programme, I was involved early on in the development of the traps and getting them out. When we allocated the lines, for some reason I hung back so I got the high ones. That was really good for my exercise, going up the Diagonal and straight up the Western Firebreak to get to G line.”
At times, visiting groups came to assist. These included school groups, Army cadets and the Crusaders Rugby Team when they were training in Nelson for their next game.
As the tracks on the eastern side of the catchment progressed, they extended further and further into the upper reaches, eventually as far as near Third House on the Dun Mountain Walkway. To enable easier access to the contour tracks, an inclined one up through them from near the Visitor Centre to near the Dun Mountain Track was created in 2008 and became known as Koru Track. It was much wider than the contour trapping tracks and provided easy access to the eastern tracks in the lower valley then continued on over to the stream again at Flagstone Crossing, named to reflect the large, flat stones in and around the stream at that point, and from there on to Ferny Flat. The team used many of those stones to construct some very professional-looking staircases on each side of the stream crossing. The skills of dry-stone wall building had been steadily acquired through the years and the many kilometres of track building in order to stabilise, and in some cases enable the very construction of, sections of the tracks that traversed steep and/or crumbly sections of the hillsides.
Installing a safety rope on a steep section down to Flagstone Crossing (2010)
In some cases, those skills enabled the tracks to be constructed around significant obstacles such as large trees and rocky outcrops. However, deviations from the horizontal were always minimised and one long-term stalwart of the team, Ro Pope, always advocated vociferously against the construction of steps unless they were absolutely necessary. Ro was a member of the team from soon after its inception through until his final years. Several people interviewed for the history book project mentioned Ro with memories of him in his eighties, still working away on the team. Or of him being the guy who always seemed to be the one who dug up the wasps’ nest. He was remembered with admiration and affection by many at a memorial gathering for him at the Visitor Centre in April 2023.
Ro Pope hard at work with Torsten Kather building a rock wall behind him
Bryan Hardie-Boys gave his impressions of Ro. “One of my lasting impressions of the Brook was watching Ro Pope with a half round over his shoulder plodding up the track, as he did. He was an amazing man in terms of his workload. And all those guys. It seemed to be that the older you were, the more likely you were to be put on the track cutting team. They learned how to build stone walls and did it very well. Way up there. It would take them as much time to get to their track as it would to do the work. Ro was an institution. He pretended to be a grumpy old man and he had the softest heart, I believe. Oh, and of course, when we had open days, he had his possum hitting machine that he had built. A possum that dropped down a tube and you had to hit it when it came out.”
Other challenges to creating tracks included, at times, very dense vegetation such as gorse, Himalayan honeysuckle, old man’s beard and blackberry. Western D-line, for example, began off the Western Firebreak through dense, mature, dried-out gorse. Cutting a track through it was essentially tunnelling through gorse several metres high with dry gorse prickles raining down on you. The approved equipment for that job included a slick waterproof parka with its hood up to minimise the quantity of dry gorse going down one’s neck.
Storm damage also presented serious challenges to the team, as Peter Hay remembered. “We had two very challenging occasions to deal with after major storm events where hectares of shallow-rooted but massive beech trees were strewn like huge, highly stressed and potentially lethal pick-up sticks. There was an extremely sharp learning curve in the safe use of chainsaws and wedges and there were many instances where discretion needed to be the better part of valour … where the track ended up passing around or beneath or stepped over a potentially unstable monster.”
Clearing the track to go under a large fallen tree (2013)
As the tracks being added to the network were progressively higher and higher up in the forest, the time taken to walk in to the work area and later, out again, became longer and longer, steadily reducing the time for working on the tracks. The team eventually considered ways they could be transported to nearer the work. Deryk Mason recalled, “A lot of the lower down tracks were done. H line was done. I and J was done, so we were doing all the others right up the top along from Jenkins Hill and across the top. This was before the road went in for the fence and we were walking in and out. We finally came to the conclusion that walking up wasn't the smartest thing to do because it was about a two hour walk to get to where we wanted to go and then work for two hours and then walk out for two hours. Several times we took a vehicle up the Dun Mountain trail to Third House and down Toutouwai Ridge to work along the lines but then we found out that it was easier to go up Marsden Valley and come up through the forestry to the top of Jenkins Hill because that's where the road was.”
The track network needed to be completed and usable before the poison bait drop to remove the predators inside the fence occurred. Peter Hay added some context to that task. “There was always the pressure to get the lines cut and we got inland to the point where we needed to access up via Marsden Valley on the west and the Dun Mountain Track on the eastern side, originally driving our own 4WDs. Once up on the back ridge we’d then have to walk, fully equipped with - usually our own - chainsaws, gas, rock breakers and other heavy equipment for up to an hour or more to get to the workplace. We considered creating little flat areas where we could pitch a tent so we could work a couple of days in a row. We never got around to that but those interior tracks - E, F, G, and H - they were hell to get at and
therefore were the last ones we cut. They were inevitably more rudimentary and in the years after the eradication we’ve put thousands more hours into upgrading the benching so that it provides a safe platform for the use of a scrub bar to control ingrowth, particularly that drooping down from the upside of the track. Ingrowth is very uncomfortable to push through, especially when wet, and it drives users to the outer, less stable part of the bench.”
Later, once the fence line track had been cleared and the fence was being installed, access around the perimeter was enabled and several step-through hatches in the fence provided entry to the interior although the trek into the work site was still sometimes significant. Ultimately, something around 130km of internal tracks plus around 15km of perimeter track have been cut and steadily improved but they will always require regular maintenance. As one volunteer said, “The total is around the distance from Nelson to Murchison but through steep, forested hillside.”
Once the main network was completed, Z line was created as a front-line predator incursion defence track approximately 25m inside the entire 14.5km of fence. The team then moved onto developing the Upper Valley Visitor Walking Track which proved to be another major engineering job. The valley profile gets steeper and steeper as it goes down towards the river and the track runs down the very banks of the river along its upper reaches. It is very steep and involved some massive and extensive rock breaking to create a safe bench for visitor walkers with a range of abilities so that they can be guided from the Toutouwai Gate all the way down to the Visitor Centre. The team regards it as a special gift to Nelson City and have remarked that it is a long way from those first footprints that they were allowed to create back in the early days.
Being a team made up of active people with similar goals of helping to create something worthwhile while keeping active and fit in beautiful native bush, it has developed a style of leadership involving about four ongoing ‘organisers’ within a group that works by what Peter described as ‘democratic anarchy’ in which all get to have their say on the many issues that the day presents, perhaps disagree vigorously with each others’ proposals but always arrive at the best outcomes for the tracks. As Peter added, “They all agree that the work confers great benefits. It entails demanding outdoor exercise in beautiful native bush, collegial decision making, camaraderie and the satisfaction of being part of making a better future for kids and critters in tomorrow’s world.
“I wouldn’t mind a dollar for the number of times I've trudged down Koru Track at day’s end and resolved, ‘This is the last time I'm doing this.’ But I’m always back to the gulag again the next week, buoyed by the pleasure of working alongside a superb group of fit, vital, talented, well-intentioned teammates.”
And he always remembers with pride the words of visiting predator detection dog handlers who said, “This is the best system of monitoring tracks in the country.”
Predator Trapping, Monitoring and Hunting
Predator trapping and monitoring have both been conducted during the two main phases of the Sanctuary’s development: before and after the pest fence. Both activities were launched during 2007 and both discontinued during 2012 when it was considered that they had provided sufficient evidence to mount a case to obtain Resource Consent for the fence. Trapping and monitoring after the pest fence was completed are discussed in ‘Predator Removal and Incursions’
Trapping Before the Fence
At the first two public meetings held by the founding group, there was a list of volunteer activities presented to recruit people to get the on-the-ground aspects of the project started. Tom Brett was a member of Forest & Bird and he was attracted to the proposed Sanctuary. “It wasn't until early 2004 that things started to have action on the ground and we went to an organised trap making event at the Polytech. Dave Butler kicked it off but at the time, he was obviously getting involved in planning and doing a whole lot of other work behind the scenes so I offered to take over the running of the trap making.
“We aimed for about 300 and I think we ended up with 280 of the stoat boxes. Afterwards came the rat trap tunnels, the core-flute ones. Being in construction, I had access to a whole lot of materials and Roger Gibbons was quite generous in that he supplied four-by-one for the trap bases and the ends with a little hole in them. The stoat traps were different in that they were plywood with which we had issues.” It was the wrong type of plywood and it
began to delaminate when exposed to the weather so that they all had to be pulled out in stages to be repaired and painted at several working bees. “A bit of drama for a while but they’re still doing the job most the time.
“Then possum traps came along and they bought a variety of those to try and determine which were the most effective. I think they aimed for about 40 of four or five different types. I did a bit of a survey of volunteers after they'd been working with them for a while to get a bit of feedback on which was doing the most effective job and which were easiest to handle. We narrowed it down to just a couple of traps, the Possum Master and the Warrior. The Timms was a nice looking one but probably more for domestic use than anything else because it was easy to set but it didn't have the effectiveness of the Warrior and the Possum Master. The Warrior was always a bit tricky and it was quite dangerous if you didn’t do it right. You had to use a bar to set it. I remember one volunteer, Charlie Parfitt, he was one of the local detectives, he got his hand caught in a Warrior one day. He said it made his eyes water a bit.”
“Bruce Thomas came up with the Ka Mate trap and that was a hugely generous donation. He came up with 100 of those and I think he was selling them for about $30 each for the trap plus the cover at the time. Unfortunately, we were not having much success with them. You'd find the bait partially eaten but the trap still set. There was pressure from the trap to hold the bait and the idea was that the animal would just pull the bait and it would capture it but what the mice and rats were doing was eating around the edge of the bait. You'd have this cone of bait underneath the mechanism but it hadn't gone off. They had obviously had a feed and it was the last guy that copped it.”
Tom issued clear verbal and written instructions about how to reset traps and how to record catch data, and he kept records in which each trainee had signed off having had instruction on each type of trap as per the
record shown below. The trainee in that example, Rod Witte, contributed to the trapping and the weed control programme, and also served on the Trust Board as an official DoC representative during which time he was very involved in the lease and Resource Consent processes.
“We were focusing on the trapping in an area I estimated at about 200 hectares that had ten lines on both sides of the valley. It was 150 to 230 hectares, which is about same area as Zealandia. At that time, we were catching in the order of about 1,400 rats per year, 700 possums and 30 stoats and weasels. Keith Marshall was shooting the pigs and deer at the same time. I think he was up to 150 animals that he had taken out before he left.
Diann Brett, Tom’s wife, added, “While we were building all the traps, the guys were making the tracks and as they were built, we had to carry all of them up to the to the different lines50 meters between traps. They would put three traps all piled up on your back and then ended up making proper frames for them because they were trying to carry them in backpacks and under armpits.”
Tom also talked about organising the trapping volunteers into teams and about recording the catch data. “The big thing at that point was getting together teams and groups and having team leaders. At the start, we aimed for ten team leaders because we had ten lines, five on each side of the valley although one or two people were doing more than one line.
They would go along one line and walk back along another. We aimed to check the traps once a week and record all the captures.
“Then I sat down with a couple of interested people who were willing to put together a database to try and collate all this information. They were just coming online seriously at that point so we were getting team leaders and individuals for each trapping line to fire their results straight into this big capture base. That's how we were able to get the numbers. Eventually, we went on to Google docs on which you could do exactly the same thing and just fire in all your information and it was collated for you. Very handy.”
The data collected is extensive. One example of a spreadsheet compiled to record trapped animals from March 2007 through to June 2008 has column headings of the month, the trapping line, the trap number, the trap type, the type of habitat, the geographical area, the type of animal caught and the number of them. The total number of predators caught during that period was 1,149 with a graph of animals by trapping line shown below.
Note: The trapping lines included in the data cover about 70 hectares of the lower valley (around ten per cent of the entire Sanctuary) that was once farmed and/or logged and which was in a regeneration stage with substantial infestations of invasive weeds. To collect the catches and reset the traps, the trappers travelled out one track and back on another so that the trapping line consisted of two track lines such as East B & C or West A & B. ‘Valley’ is a line in the lower valley from the Visitor Centre to where it intersects with East A near the 1909 dam and it was combined with East A to form a trapping line out and back. It is highlighted in the map below that shows much of the lower 70 hectares of the valley.
Diann described how weka began to disrupt some of the traps. “We tried the Ka Mate traps and we realised that weka were getting into the traps. Tom came up with a solution using a piece of rubber that was easy for people to take off but stopped the weka. One time, we got about halfway along D line and this weka was following us the whole way. He checked out each one as we did it and then came along.” Tom continued the story, “We used a piece of string (to secure them) similar to what we have now and he was pecking away at the knot. They were getting at those little yellow triggers of the Victor traps which seemed a little bit dangerous to us, but they were doing it and it was working. I remember Rick Field went back to the manufacturers and asked if we could buy a whole swag of those little yellow bits where you put the bait and they said, “No, we only sell traps. We don’t sell bits for them”,
which was a bit of a nuisance because we had all these traps without any yellow bait treadles.”
A team setting out to place new traps
Bryan Hardie-Boys talked about trapping up on the higher lines of which G was then the highest. “F was a half line that had all sorts of fancy mirrors and cameras just to see what was out there but it was only half a line so you couldn't go on a circuit. You had to go along and back. Anyway, it was quite fun and in the height of the mast season, I think we got something like 36 rats out of 50 traps. Almost every trap seemed to have a rat in it.
“One photo keeps turning up because it’s in an article from The Nelson Mail in which somebody wanted to ask about what was it like doing the trapping. I said, ‘Well, come out with me on Saturday morning.’ They declined and asked if they could interview me at the Visitor Centre. So, Jock Braithwaite and I found a dead stoat in the fridge and we were photographed with a ‘recently caught’ stoat while trying to make it look not rigid. So, they got their interview without getting their feet wet.”
Peter Hay told of how, in the early days, some of the volunteers thought that trapping would have a much more significant effect than it did. “At the very outset, we had a naive idea that by running a lot of traps up the centre of the valley, we could happily control all predator pests and within a few years DoC would entrust to our care any number of endangered species. Then the moment came when we realised what Dave probably knew all along, that it was going to have to be a fully fenced sanctuary. We’d been killing many rats and possums
in that valley creating a sort of central pest vacuum and more came tumbling in from the outside again. It was a constant wave of new rats on the job.”
Most of the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary forest is native beech (Nothofagus) which produces copious seeds, known as a ‘mast’, in response to climatic conditions. A warm summer one year stimulates flower and leaf formation the following spring, not only in the beech trees but also on other fruiting forest plants. The average time between masts is around 2.5 years with a usual range from two consecutive years to four years apart. Furthermore, the amount of seed produced each mast year can vary substantially from around 100 sound seeds per square metre of ground to more than 15,000 per square metre with wide variations at times between different trees.
Beech trees begin flowering in late October and the resultant seed begins to fall in February with peak production in May and seeds falling through to July. The plentiful food supply supports increased breeding of mice and rats with increases of as much as 50-fold and 10-fold respectively. With such an abundant population of rodents to eat, mustelid numbers also explode and can increase up to five-fold. Then, as the seed source germinates in late October and November, ‘plagues’ of rodents occur as they disperse to find other food. Their numbers will then remain high until autumn when food becomes scarce and breeding ceases. As the rodent population disperses in late spring, the mustelids also begin to search for other sources of food and between them, the ‘plagues’ of hungry predators pose an even greater threat to the forest’s birds than normal.
Tom described the effect that the beech masts had on catch numbers. “Karen was doing a great job on monitoring outside the trapped area versus inside the trapped area and coming up with comparative rates and then, I think it was 2009 or 2008, suddenly, the whole lot just exploded inside and outside the area. That's when we realised that trapping was just a feelgood exercise. Sure, it engages people and gets people interested in conservation and trying to do something that makes you feel good, but its effectiveness was pretty well zilch.
“We were told early on in the trapping programme that if you could get the difference between the untrapped area versus the trapped area down to less than ten per cent, ideally about six per cent or seven per cent, then you'd be making some progress. We were getting close to it on a few occasions but as soon as that beech mast came, the whole lot went up in smoke. But we still tried. I didn't discourage people from trapping. It was still important to do it. It gives people a reason to get out there and do something. It continued through to about 2012 or 2013 and then it was discontinued when they started the fence.”
The graph below records the numbers of animals caught each month from March 2007 until February 2010 and illustrates the dramatic increase in rats and mice during the beech mast of 2009 when food was abundant on the ground from autumn and through winter.
Pests trapped per month
Tom’s record of catch numbers from March 2007 through to 26 April 2010 are:
Predator Monitoring Before the Fence
Karen Driver took on the job of coordinating the first phase of predator monitoring from late 2006. “The trapping was along contours, like the lines now, but the pest monitoring went up
the slopes. There were no tracks. We got together a group of coordinators to manage the ten lines and I was one of them. They mostly found their own volunteers for their lines and organised their team. Dave Butler had the plan of where he wanted the lines to go so me and my husband, Barry, and a couple of others that are still involved, Jane Solly and Lionel Solly, went up there to set up our line. We carried the ten tunnels between us, a 50-metre length of rope to measure the distance between each tunnel and blue triangle markers, track tape, nails, etc.
“Dave’s map showed where we had to start (above the Classic 4WD track) and the angle to go up the slope heading up and away from the Sanctuary area, through the pine forest block. But after trying to clamber up the steep slope, we decided to go further up the Classic to Four Corners and back along the Dun Mountain Track to roughly where the line should end. It was tough going as the slope was really steep and thick bush. We had to avoid bluffs and the rope kept getting caught up in the trees. It took hours and the resulting line was not the nice straight line that Dave had wanted. We ended up having to go back and straighten it out. The other line coordinators had equally hard times setting up their lines.
“We started the actual monitoring in February 2007, just before they started trapping, and finished in September 2012. We added more monitoring lines as the trapped area was expanded so that we could include more trapped areas. We monitored for rats, mice, and mustelids using the tunnels. The monitoring protocol that Dave documented based on the DoC protocol involved all teams going up once a month on the same weekend. The first night was for rodent monitoring and then the cards were collected and rebaited with rabbit meat for the mustelid monitoring. I think mustelid monitoring was every second month. I'd make the call about the weather on about Wednesday or Thursday.
“In those days, we had the plastic trays with three compartments. In the middle compartment there was a sponge, then you put two papers each side of the sponge along the length and then you put food colouring onto the sponge for the ink. You could always tell who'd been monitoring because of the people wandering around the market with red fingers. They would leave the cards somewhere for me in the shed and I would pick them up, analyse the results to identify what was on there and I kept a spreadsheet of all the results and graphs for five years. We also did a separate possum monitoring run about once a year using wax tags.
“We stopped that monitoring as we had enough data, in my opinion. In the end I said to Dave, ‘We have five years of data.’ People kept saying to me, ‘Oh, it's good way of keeping volunteers engaged’ and I said, ‘Well, Footprints on a monitoring card
yeah, but I don't want people to be engaged for the sake of being engaged. If we need the data, then that's fine. But if we've got enough data, let’s find something else for them to do.’ I didn't want to go up there just for the sake of going up there.
“We basically proved that we needed the fence. We were monitoring inside and outside the trapped area so we could tell what difference the trapping was making. It was making a difference in the non-mast years. It never went down to zero but it got pretty low at times. But then, as soon as you got a mast, the pest numbers would go right up again. We had hard data from inside and outside to prove that. That was really useful for us to prove it to those who signed off the Resource Consent.”
The two graphs below illustrate the differences between the monitoring results within and outside the trapped area. In the first one, 2007–2009, the red line represents the record of rats detected inside the trapped area while the blue line represents the rats detected outside the trapped area in similar forest. The green line is outside the trapped area in beech forest. While the red line shows that numbers detected in the trapped area tended to be lower than outside it, the difference is not substantial and both increased in proportion to the food available.
In the 2009–2012 graph below, the red line is also the record of rats monitored inside the trapped area while the blue line represents the numbers detected outside. Again, the numbers within the trapped area are lower than those outside but there were almost always a significant number detected. Again, the effect of the 2009 beech mast is clearly evident with high numbers both inside and outside the trapped area during mid-2009 when the
beech seeds are plentiful on the ground. Numbers in both areas then declined as the beech seed numbers declined
The possum monitoring data shown in the next graph (note that there is no record shown for 2008) suggests that possum numbers were reduced once trapping started with the numbers detected within the trapped area declining slightly but then remaining relatively constant while those outside it remained relatively constant from 2009 through to 2011, but increased slightly in 2012.
Hunting
To reduce the number of ungulates that cause considerable damage in the understory, a hunting programme was launched in April 2008 with Rex McDowall as team leader and a group of about eight hunters. Rex shot the first deer near Third House. The number of available hunters reduced until Keith Marshall essentially became the only active one. When Rex encountered health issues, he asked Keith to take over as team leader and Rex later directed his efforts to a search for lizards in the Sanctuary.
Keith was hunting in the Sanctuary approximately once per month and reported that at that time, he was spending around five hours per goat killed. However, by August 2010, he had killed 100 goats and the time taken per goat had increased to between seven and eight hours indicating that he was reducing the numbers in the Sanctuary area. Encouragingly, he and other volunteers began to notice improvements to saplings and other understory growth.
In December 2010, pigs had been causing damage on the trapping lines although some of them had been killed by hunters on the eastern boundary of the Sanctuary, another had been caught in a trap constructed for the purpose and a piglet had suffered a ‘misadventure’ in a stoat trap, as Keith put it.
In June 2012, Keith reported lots of pig rooting damage on East line B which the weeding team had also noted. Keith’s tally at that point was 155 goats, 17 pigs and 14 deer. By the summer of 2013, that had increased to 163 goats and 15 deer while the pig tally remained at 17. However, by early 2014, Keith reported, “I haven’t seen any goats since shooting an old billy last June. I have noted some fresh goat sign on the Western Firebreak but without seeing them.” One deer had been shot in September and another in January.
Keith reported that a pig corral trap was being trialled but so far it had been set off by a hawk and, on another occasion, by a cat. Eventually, one pig was caught in the trap but while a camera at the site recorded a few pigs, there were more photos of the nearby neighbour who had used the Reserve for many years as a private hunting area.
By the end of 2014, Keith reported culling no goats during October although the track cutters had reported a herd running along East G line. Hunting ceased on 10 November 2016 prior to the poison bait drop with the total at 167 goats, 41 pigs and 28 deer culled.
Following the poison drop and subsequent ‘mop up’, cameras on the pest fence recorded a stag inside. As Keith reports, “When there no longer appeared to be any ungulates left in the Sanctuary, a crippled old stag was filmed in a basin in the upper eastern corner. This last stag, ‘Limpy’ as he became known, was at large for several more months before finally being betrayed by a pīwakakwaka that flew several times between him and the hunter, who eventually got the message.
“The very next day after Limpy’s demise, a stag was seen in the upper western corner of the fence. This sighting was initially attributed to Limpy but it soon became apparent that there was another old stag on the block. He was described as ‘a big solid animal’ and henceforth became known as ‘Big Sol’. This new ‘last stag’ proved to be a very cautious and wily animal who ran circles around the hunters (and Devi, Keith’s dog) for about three years before his reign came to an end early one morning on the 12 April 2021.” It appears that ‘Big Sol’ really was the last stag in the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary. He was a nine-point stag.
Wildlife Surveys
Five-Minute Bird Counts
(Including text and graphs from a report by Katherine Chamberlain in 2023)
Katherine Chamberlain, who has a background in zoology, was recruited to conduct bird surveys in the Sanctuary. “I saw an ad in the paper, it was in 2008, looking for someone to coordinate the bird monitoring. My first job was to meet with Dave Butler and figure out the protocol. It was going to be the standard five-minute bird count technique and he decided that the count sites should largely be on E line because at that time, E line was the only track that went all around the Sanctuary. Also, it was high enough up that you could get away from the noise of the water in the creek and clearly hear the birds, but not so high up that it would be arduous and time-consuming for people to walk up
“My next job was to get a GPS and measure out the sites and that took a little bit of time. We didn't start counting till the beginning of 2009. The first counts were done by me, Rick Field and Dave Butler so for that first year, very small sample sizes. I slowly was able to form a team. It has changed a little over the years, but in the last few years it's been really stable. I've had a very good, loyal team. That's really what you want, consistency because every monitor will have their own little quirks or biases or possibly visual and hearing limitations ”
Five-minute bird counts (5MBCs) measure bird activity, which provides a relative measure of abundance. Since 2009, 5MBCs have been and continue to be conducted quarterly (from the ends of February, May, August and November) by a team of volunteers at 20 count sites within the Sanctuary.
The bird count stations are shown in red squares on the map of the Sanctuary below:
The following species exhibited increased activity post pest-removal (green bars): Bellbirds/Korimako
Bellbirds are widespread across the sanctuary and being highly vocal, they are easy to count. Their activity, and presumably their numbers, have roughly doubled since the pest removal There was little increase from 2021 to 2022, which may suggest they are approaching their current carrying capacity.
Like bellbirds, tūī are also highly vocal and easy to count (assuming one can distinguish them from bellbirds). Activity in 2022 was roughly triple that of years prior to the pest removal
Tomtits/Ngirungiru
Tomtit activity increased substantially following the pest removal. Counts in 2022 were more than five times that of the years prior to the pest removal and almost double that of 2021.
Robins/Toutouwai
Robin counts were relatively high in 2009 and 2010 (around five birds detected per 100 5MBCs or 1 in 20), then declined significantly and remained low from 2011 to 2020, hovering above and below one bird detected per 100 5MBCs. Patrick Crowe’s 2010 study of robins in the sanctuary found the majority lived above 400m in altitude, which meant our 5MBCs were at or below the margins of their population range. Robin activity rebounded in 2021, possibly indicative of an expansion of the population to lower altitudes. In 2022, counts exceeded those of all previous years with around six robins detected per 100 5MBCs, still well behind tomtits but a move in the right direction.
The activity of the following species declined, remained the same or was indeterminate: Fantails/Pīwakawaka
Prior to the pest removal, fantail activity was variable from year to year, possibly because they are vulnerable to cold, short-lived and numbers tend to rebound quickly. Activity became more consistent following the removal of introduced mammals, suggesting that the sanctuary’s fantail population had become more stable.
Katherine presented her thoughts about that. “The wild fluctuations may have been influenced by mast years or spikes in rat numbers. If you take out one element that was affecting them, which would have been predation, they seem to be quite stable. Maybe they’re at carrying capacity. We tend to think of only removing predation pressure but you're also removing a massive biomass that's competing for food - eating plants, eating insectsso you've been increasing the carrying capacity.”
Katherine elaborated, “We were in within a day or two of the drop doing the bird counts and there was no change. I certainly wasn't going to expect any increase but I was curious to see if there would be a drop and there wasn't. Then our November counts were as you'd expect in November but then we got to February and numbers just skyrocketed. It was a sudden boom. Of course, that was at the end of or towards the end of the first breeding season after the brodifacoum drops It was a sudden, huge jump in numbers and I got really excited. I thought it would take a few years before you saw significant change and to see it in that first late February count was really exciting. So, I was really looking forward to May’s thinking it would also be high, but May’s went back to normal. Since then, I’ve discovered if you're going to see any sort of variation, you tend to see it in February, possibly because it’s towards the end of most birds’ breeding season.”
Grey warblers/Riroriro
Grey warbler activity has been relatively consistent. The dip seen in 2022 may be an artefact of low sample sizes in February 2022 (three for each of count sites 1-10 and two for each of
11-20), followed by seven surveys of all count sites during May 2022 when grey warbler activity is low relative to other quarters. Interspecies competition is another possible explanation for the dip in 2022.
When calculating averages and standard deviations, count sites within each quarter are weighted equally. Quarters are also given equal weight. This helps to dampen the effect of variable sample sizes on averages but does not eliminate it. The counts of rare species with high seasonal variability in either presence or detectability may be prone to bias from variable sample sizes. On the other hand, species that are widespread, abundant and exhibit little seasonal variability (eg. bellbirds) are likely minimally affected by variable sample sizes.
The peak in 2019 may have been due to it being a mast year. The low numbers in 2022 may be a result of low sample sizes in February and high sample sizes in May combined with seasonal variability.
Except when in flight, kererū are largely quiet and thus easily missed during 5MBCs. Despite 5MBCs not being an ideal methodology for counting kererū (counts along transects would be better), from our data, distribution patterns or ‘hot spots’ are evident
Silvereyes/Tauhou
Silvereye activity steadily declined during the three years 2020 to 2022. This decline is consistent with results from Zealandia where endemic species, which are those unique to New Zealand, were found to have benefited most from the removal of introduced mammals. According to Miskelly (2018), “Introduced birds (along with silvereyes, grey warblers and fantails) are more resilient to mammalian predators than are most endemic forest bird species, however, most of New Zealand’s endemic forest birds are evidently competitively superior in the absence of predators.”
Shining cuckoos/ Pīpīwharauroa
As 96.5 per cent of the counts of shining cuckoos took place during the fourth quarterly counts (Q4) from the end of November, the analysis is limited to that quarter. Also, in Q4 2015, we were unable to access count sites 11-20 due to construction of the fence bench so counts were limited to sites 1-10. This likely explains the higher average in 2015 as shining cuckoos are more abundant among sites 1-10 than 11-20. Given that the activity of grey warblers, the preferred host for this brood parasite, changed little, it is unsurprising that there was also little change in shining cuckoo activity.
Blackbirds, chaffinches and song thrushes
Katherine discussed her findings with introduced bird species which had all declined following the pest removal. “The three main introduced species you tend to find in in native forests are song thrush, blackbird and chaffinch We also get dunnocks occasionally Typically, we detected these species in only low numbers but we are starting to see more chaffinches with the feeders that have gone in for the kākāriki. Flocks of them. And greenfinches, too.”
Katherine presented her understanding of why the introduced bird numbers declined. “They were benefiting because they're not that vulnerable to predation, not as vulnerable, and there was less interspecies competition with other bird species. You remove the mammalian pests and those endemics really thrive at the expense of introduced species.”
The relative ratios of commonly counted birds
The relative ratios of the ten most commonly counted bird species during the pre-pest removal period of 2009-2017 and 2022.
Other species detected during 5MBCs in 2022 were:
Species Total number seen or heard during 2022’s 5MBC
Paradise shelduck 40
Kākāriki karaka 17
NZ falcon 12
Kingfisher 6
Dunnock 6
Gull (unidentified) 5
California quail 3
Goldfinch 2
Greenfinch 2
Redpoll 1
Tīeke 1
Backyard Bird Counts
Katherine also coordinates regular ‘backyard bird counts’ that are conducted by a wideranging group of volunteers who record the maximum number of every species seen during a half-hour period in their own garden. “After we had managed to get the five-minute bird counts started, Dave wanted me to take over the backyard bird monitoring coordination from Kiri Wallace who had left New Zealand to do her M.Sc. in the United States.”
The purpose of the backyard bird monitoring is to measure the halo effect outside the Sanctuary, more specifically, to test the following hypotheses:
• Following the removal of introduced mammals within the Sanctuary, birds that are vulnerable to introduced mammals, either through predation of competition, and capable of living in an urban environment will become more abundant and widely distributed in the urban areas of Nelson and Richmond.
• Conversely, there will be little to no change in either the abundance or distribution of birds less affected by introduced mammals or requiring a forest habitat.
• The increase in numbers or spread of vulnerable species will show a geographic pattern of spread – from the Sanctuary, and to a lesser extent other trapping sites, towards the coast.
“I've tried to analyse the data and the reason you haven't seen a similar report on the backyard surveys as I did for the five-minutes stuff is really that the data is very noisy. You've got people coming and going. There's been a core group who've been doing it for years and they're fantastic. And then you get some people who volunteer, they'll do it two or three times, or even once sometimes, and decide they don't want to do it
“I have been playing around with the data. I do put out some little stuff every now and then in the newsletters but I've got spreadsheets full of various analyses and graphs. It’s just that the data is very noisy and there doesn't seem to be too many obvious signs of a halo effect. Maybe it's too soon. I wouldn't expect to get a halo of all species because peoples’ gardens are not a beech forest. You're not likely to get robins in your garden.
“I like looking at bellbirds. They're neither common nor rare. Some people do get them in their gardens. When looking at a really common bird, you're likely not to see a great increase
because it’s already common. And if it’s something super rare, one in a single year and two the next year is a 100 per cent increase, but it's meaningless. It's interesting to see that the change is only really evident if you look at gardens where they're not feeding. If someone has a bellbird feeder and they've been feeding bellbirds they're always going to get bellbirds and predator absence in the Brook may not change this. What might change is amplitude, the numbers. However, feeders themselves have a limited capacity. They can only take so many, so ‘the most seen at any one time’ may never change. Whereas if you're not feeding them, you could see a change if their numbers change in the wider area.”
Lizards
From very early on, one of the volunteers, Rex McDowall, actively tried to find geckos and skinks in the Reserve. Rex was an expert on those lizards and had a permit to keep them. In a newsletter report in late 2013, there was a request for interested volunteers to help find them. At that time, only four geckos had been found. Rex counselled other volunteers to keep information about any geckos found very confidential because the global black market in them might attract unwelcome visitors.
New Zealand lizard species include skinks and geckos. Skinks represent the largest family of lizards in the world while there are fewer described species of geckos and New Zealand geckos all belong to one family that is confined to Australasia. Skinks and geckos occupy important ecological niches in New Zealand that include seed dispersal and pollination of some native plants. However, having evolved in a mammal-free environment, like all New Zealand fauna, they are vulnerable to mammalian predation.
There are eight known lizard species in the Nelson region, four geckos and four skinks:
• Forest gecko
• Nelson green gecko or starred gecko
• Common gecko or Raukawa gecko
• Marlborough mini gecko or Minimac gecko
• Speckled skink
• Spotted skink
• Common skink
• Brown skink
As of a 2013 survey, four of those - forest gecko, common gecko, Nelson green gecko and common skink - were confirmed as present within the Sanctuary while a further threeMarlborough mini gecko, speckled skink and spotted skink - were considered as ‘likely to be present’. The remaining species, brown skink was considered as ‘plausibly present’. The researcher, Jeff Bryant (Bryant, 2013), reported that the common gecko was found in all four major forest types in the Sanctuary and he was of the opinion that it would likely remain the dominant species in the catchment.
Conducting surveys of lizards that provide robust data regarding their prevalence requires highly trained participants and is fraught with challenges, not least being their elusive nature and the likelihood that sample sizes will be small. Nevertheless, research conducted on New Zealand’s predator-free island sanctuaries has shown that, “when released from predation,
existing populations respond rapidly and in spectacular fashion, showing not just increases in population density but changes in spatial distribution, habitat use, behaviour and body size” (Whittaker & Gaze, 1999). It is therefore possible that skinks and geckos have been thriving in the Sanctuary since the predator removal efforts although the effects of the abundant mouse population that established following the main pest removal is not well understood.
In November 2019, gecko prints were found in one of the monitoring tunnels.
Native Fish
(Including content and graphs from a 2022 report by a volunteer)
In New Zealand, 18 fish species undergo migration between freshwater and marine habitats and those species can be grouped in three categories:
• Catadromous fish such as eels and inanga (common galaxias/whitebait) which enter freshwater rivers as juveniles, spend most of their lives there and then migrate to the sea to breed.
• Anadromous fish such as lamprey and some brown trout which enter rivers as mature adults and migrate upstream to breed.
• Amphidromous fish such as kōara (climbing galaxias) and bullies which enter rivers as juveniles, migrate upstream and breed in freshwater. The hatched larvae then migrate downstream to the sea.
Known species of fish observed in the stream below the Big Dam include:
• Longfin eels and kōaro have been found in significant numbers.
• Brown trout, upland bullies, common bullies, inanga and smelt have been recorded in lower numbers.
Within the Sanctuary, longfin eels, shortfin eels, kōaro, banded kōkopu and kōura (freshwater crayfish) have been recorded.
Although the Brook Waimārama stream has been extensively modified as a flat-bottomed concrete channel near Nile Street and from Bronte Street to Brook Terrace, some migratory native fish manage to travel as far as the Sanctuary. As part of the Resource Consent granted for the Sanctuary there is a requirement that “All works shall be undertaken in a manner that maintains fish passage, both during and after construction.”
To complete the Sanctuary’s pest-proof surroundings, the large cut taken out of the 1904 Big Dam when it was decommissioned was fitted with a swinging water gate clad with pestproof fence mesh. According to Hudson Dodd, it is the largest flood gate in New Zealand and its design and construction involved three different engineering companies. The gate remains closed by gravity when the stream’s flow is low and is swung open by the water flow in flood events during which it is extremely unlikely that a mammalian predator could enter against the flow. However, the mesh and the high flow during flood events also present an unsurmountable barrier to fish attempting to migrate upstream.
To comply with the consent, a manual trap and translocation system was constructed to assist fish passage upstream at the 1904 Big Dam. The system consisted of a gently sloping PVC tunnel leading up to a trap and connected into the stream at the lower end by a rope. Water entered above the trap and flowed down through the tunnel and rope to enable fish to enter. However, access to the passage was influenced by the volume of water flow and the hanging rope proved unsuitable to assist access by all the fish species below the dam. When the water flow is high, it was difficult for fish to climb the hanging rope and when the water flow is low, there was limited wet surface on the rope.
Records for the 2018-19 to 2020-21 seasons (August to June) show that fish numbers found in the trap had reduced with kōura falling from 213 to 146 to 96, longfin eels from 29 to 13 to 3 and kōaro from 14 in 2018/19 to nil during the following two years.
Weather events such as high rainfall and long dry periods are likely to influence the numbers of fish able to migrate up the stream with high flow during flooding and higher water temperatures in the shallow flow down the long concrete channel in the lower reaches during dry periods. For example, it was noted that the average carapace size of kōura found in the trap had not decreased as expected in November 2019 during the period when there
are usually more young kōura present and it was thought that that could have been influenced by the long rain periods experienced at the time.
Because of the trap design issues together with its location which enabled a flood to wash it away completely and concerns regarding the decreasing numbers of fish caught, one of the team involved recommended that a new design be investigated. Furthermore, that the presence of an adult eel in the pool where the rope was positioned corresponded to reduced capture numbers in the trap prompted a suggestion that the pool below the rope be fenced off to prevent the entry of larger fish.
The fish trap did not survive the massive flooding event in August of 2022. One part of the tank was recovered by the Nelson harbourmaster.
Mapping, Health & Safety and Volunteer Wellbeing
Mapping
As the Track Cutting Team began to make inroads into the Reserve, the need for agreedupon names for the many topographical features became apparent so that volunteers could communicate about specific areas of interest. Jane Stevens, an early volunteer in the project and partner of another early stalwart, Iain Stewart, recorded that “In July 2007, Alastair Wiffen asked Iain Stewart, one of the early members of the Track Cutting Team and a retired geography teacher, to form a group to ‘establish a naming protocol … for features within the Sanctuary including ridges, spurs, waterways, historic features, etc.’ Iain and the group drew up a set of guidelines suggesting attributes to be taken into consideration for names which would be suitable and those which should be avoided such as: ‘trivial or trendy names that date quickly; political figures, local and national, are soon forgotten; names in bad taste are best avoided.’
“Many people would have been involved in mainly informal discussions, no doubt, during breaks while working on new tracks. They came up with hundreds of descriptive names based on geographical features and flora and fauna, and also based on cultural and historical links. Many of those names are still in use – Flagstone Crossing, Tuatara Ridge, Gable Endbut some didn't stick such as The Badlands, Nightmare Nettlebed, The Long Drop, Billy Goat Bend. That last one marked the spot where a large and angry billy goat came hurtling down the hill towards the track cutters, nearly knocking them into the valley.
“The first maps of the Sanctuary were drawn by hand, were very basic and were time consuming to create. Iain worked for many hours on a large map in late 2008. When it was complete, it hung on the wall in the Visitor Centre office for many years.
“Don Fraser made the first maps for volunteers to use and later helped Tony Stephens to keep them updated. The first GPS mapping started in 2007, led by Thorsten Kather, an enthusiastic German visitor who worked tirelessly in the Sanctuary during the early years. The Sanctuary newsletter, Leaves from the Brook issue 14 of February 2007, reported that ‘Thorsten's goal this year is to have the exact position of every trap - there are 240 in totaland each of the 10 monitoring lines mapped.’ Later work on establishing the GPS-based maps was done by visiting German interns who worked in the Sanctuary.
2006 aerial map showing trapping and monitoring lines in the lower valley
“In later years, every one of the approximately 2,500 devices placed throughout the Sanctuary would have its own unique GPS coordinates, but the early days of the Sanctuary were also early days for the GPS system. In 2005, measurements under dense canopy were accurate to plus or minus ten metres (Wing, Ecklund & Keeling, 2005) and some track makers were sceptical about its value noting that ten metres made the difference between staying at the top of the cliff or falling off the edge.”
Deryk Mason also talked about the limitations of the early maps and GPS system. “When we were track cutting, I said, ‘This is crazy. We don't know where we've been or what we've done or where we need to go.’ We know that we're going up the track cutting but to try to tell somebody else where to start or where to finish or where to go up, it just didn't work.
So, with Pete Hay, we sat down and said, ‘Let's work all this out and we will know what we’ve done and we could measure it and know how far to go.’ We also divided the Sanctuary up into the segments that we use. Mike McConchie was also involved. We argued about what we were going to call what because at that stage, we were calling all of the things ‘ridges’ and there were arguments about whether or not ridges were only spurs. That all got changed at that time.
“At that stage there were only hand drawn maps of the Sanctuary tracks so I ended up, for my own interest, going through with my iPad GPS-ing several of the existing lines and then GPS-ing the new lines yet to be formed to see where they were, and with some scepticism from the old hands, to understand we were basically on track. I put it all on Google maps and presented it to Rick Field.
“I got quite involved in that side of things when there were the all the trapping/monitoring stations to be made for all the lines. There were around 3,000 of them. I had managed a team over 18 months building of all the new tunnels. We had a factory in the old classroom that had been ‘red stickered’ by NMIT opposite Cummins Street. We needed to know what to put where and people needed to put traps out every 25 metres so with the GPS on the phone it became easier. We did all the little blue triangles with the barcodes on them. I ended up getting all those printed and I had them all over my lounge floor sticking them on to the blue triangles. Installation of those meant we had the ability to record to within 50 meters, any pest incursion.”
Health & Safety
With the project developing in a somewhat organic manner during the early years, Health & Safety systems took some time to be implemented. However, some early events underscored the need and one of the first involved was Tom Brett who later became the coordinator of the Health & Safety Committee.
Tom himself was up in the Sanctuary with his wife, Diann, in 2009 when he had a heart attack. Tom downplayed the incident as “a wee bit of a hiccup” that resulted in him taking time off from his work coordinating the trapping while he recovered. However, Lincoln MacKenzie offered a much more concerning evaluation of the event. “Tom Brett was so lucky. It just happened that he was there with his wife and she’s a nurse. I don't think there was any suggestion that he had a heart problem, but he suddenly collapsed. She realised the problem and they just happened to be on the east side were there was cell phone reception. She called up the helicopter and it just happened to be at the airport and ready to go. They were there within minutes and were able to spot them because they were able to describe where they were. My understanding is that his heart stopped on the way and they started it again. So, any later and it was touch and go.”
Lincoln was also involved in another of the early incidents while working at track cutting with Torsten Kather. As Lincoln recalled, “We were just laying out a line. I can't really remember exactly where it was except it was on the western side of the valley and up near an area they called The Badlands. We went over this rocky spur and then when we came back, he was behind me. I went up, got to the top of it and the whole thing just gave way. It was quite dramatic, big hunks of rock. Since he was below me, he had to jump out of the
way as I came down on this rock and in doing so, he twisted his knee. I tumbled down and I hadn't appreciated how he'd been injured. After we got out, I went up to A&E to get stitched up and then he turned up with his crook knee. I think he probably still has it because it affected him for quite a while after that. It's important to know how unstable some of that terrain is. It's all crumbling. It's very weak in places. I'm surprised there hasn't been another accident like that, that I know of.”
Lincoln told of another alarming incident involving another German visitor who was working with the track cutting team. “We were working up on the eastern side where you drive up the Dun Mountain Walkway and leave the truck up there and go down a spur. At the end of the day, you work your way back up. We were a fair way down in the valley and we had this young German backpacker who somehow had been corralled into working that day. He was a big fellow. Young but quite big and he stood on a wasps’ nest, I think. Anyway, he got stung by a wasp. Up his shorts and stung in his testicles and things. He was in a lot of pain and he had this panic attack but we thought he was having an anaphylactic shock. He couldn't really walk. He was pretty helpless and we had to drag him up the hill to get back to the wagon up on the road. If he had had anaphylaxis, he would have been dead for sure. But he wasn't. He was just having a panic attack. It was Ro and Pete and I, and someone else, dragging this big German up the hill while trying to encourage him.
“That's when we thought we should have epi pens but there was resistance to giving us pens. I think it can be given to the wrong person. I have a friend who was stung by a bee and she is allergic to bees so she carries and epi pen. She hadn’t used it for years but she was in such haste getting it out that instead of putting it in a big muscle, she stuck it into a finger or thumb or something and consequently it went straight to her heart. She basically had a heart attack, but she's recovered. So, I think that's what they are concerned about with giving us epi pens.”
Rick Field recalled one of his early occasions of having to enforce basic Health & Safety with a volunteer who turned up in sandals with a slasher to go and work in the bush. “We had quite a discussion about how he was not going to be going in with a slasher in sandals, regardless of how many years he’d been doing that in the bush around the country. We didn't see him again. He left.” With regard to other concerns during those early years, “Everyone has their own ideas of how it should be done and you're trying to impose Health & Safety on top of it. Everyone using their own vehicles as well. That was always really hard, that we just didn't have any. So, we had people using their own vehicles to drive up to Jenkins and then move down from there. Busting vehicles up.”
Tom talked about his involvement with developing a formal Health & Safety programme. “I first got involved because I knew that, as an organisation that had paid employees, we had to make sure that we had a good Health & Safety programme. I remember going with Dave Butler down to the City Council to see Paul MacArthur to show him this wonderful new Health & Safety programme we'd developed. It was a bit of a robbery from somebody else's way but after that we did get more serious and made sure that we had a good training programme.
“At the start it was mainly verbal, but we did start to produce little booklets that tell you what you should take here, this is what you do here, and the minimum requirements that we asked you to do. Such as, we want you to report issues like near misses and unsafe conditions and things like that. But there was a bit of resistance probably because a lot of older generation people had this concept and that Health & Safety issues are your own personal responsibility. You might fall off something, but it is your own stupid fault. It's nothing to do with the organisation. But unfortunately, the law does not see it that way. What we found was quite challenging because of the volunteers and where they come from regarding what the Sanctuary and what the Board is responsible for and why.
“Plus, there were three or four bad accidents. Looking back, they were real, bad accidents. There was at least one accident where somebody went off the side of the track and that wasn't the only one. I remember Thorsten had a great big rock fall on him and he was off on ACC for many months. Pete Hay got a bunch of traps caught on a vine hanging over the line and off he went down the hill. The traps went one way, he went another and his glasses went another way.
“Obviously, it became important that we did have a good Health & Safety programme and that's what I've been involved in mainly, lately, because I knew the risk involved if we had a serious accident. I was aware that WorkSafe, or the Department of Labour as they were called, would take a pretty tough line if there was a serious accident. The attitude was changing through the early 2000s and 2010s in that they were becoming more prosecutorial, rather than educational. Back in the 1990s and the early 2000s, you could rock up to the Department of Labour and say, ‘Look, what do you think about this? Is this a viable option as a safety measure, etc?’ And they would give you good feedback. But then, all of a sudden that changed to where they thought that if they told you how to do it, they might end up taking a risk so there was absolutely no communication from then on. And all the good guys that I knew that I could talk to about things were disappearing off the scene. They became more prosecutorial and in wasn't any fun at all, really.
“That was from my working life, that feedback, and as soon as I realised that they had upped their game regarding the Sanctuary as well, we started regular Health & Safety Committee meetings to try and push it along a bit harder and to try and encourage some of the older generation to recognise that if they have an unsafe condition, to let us know about it so we can collate that information and do something about it. If you don't tell us, we don't know.
“The younger generation, of course, know all about that because they get it at their workplaces now. It's much easier. We are getting a lot of feedback. We might get three or four ‘near misses’ or ‘unsafe conditions’ reported every month at a Health & Safety Committee meeting. One of them was people falling off tracks regularly and spraining ankles and getting injured just from walking along the track. So, now we put a whole lot more emphasis into the training of new volunteers on track safety, walking safety and things like that. Such as not looking for kākāriki at the same time as walking along a track that's overgrown.
“I've actually set a task for the committee members this month. I've given them three scenarios where there's the possibility of a major accident happening and I have asked,
‘What do we do? What do we learn from this? How would we go about making sure that that doesn't happen in the future?’ And I included a summary of what WorkSafe do when they do an investigation into a major accident. What they will be looking for, and how they would address each aspect of the organisation's total Health & Safety plans, not just one individual incident. We know it's hard to get enthused about Health & Safety because it's a pretty dry old subject and it's hard to make progress with it and see the progress. But at the same time, it's one of those things that has to be done.
“I pushed for the radios out there as well so that you've got two forms of communication. I also pushed for the on-line map to coordinate with the positioning of the radios so that you can spot where the radios are. The first map that we had for a couple of years just showed a Google map of the Sanctuary, which wasn't really that helpful. The guys in the office knew where certain things were because they'd been looking at this map for so long but anybody who just glanced at it would never have a clue where it was until we were able to overlay the monitoring stations on top of the radio receiver GPS. Each radio has GPS and positions itself in relation to wherever it is in the Sanctuary.”
Deryk Mason spoke of the value of the numbering system on the tracks in terms of Health & Safety. “If somebody's got a mobile phone, you can go along and record that you've been to the station. Unfortunately, it didn't take off but they're still there and we still know if somebody says, ‘Well, I am at such and such’ we can put a finger on it straight away. That's made life extremely easy for tracking people and now it's even got easier with the radios as well. In those days, we only had three or four radios and the new radio system wasn't there. With technology, it's just so much easier.
“We had one person who phoned her husband and said, ‘I don't know where I am.’ He rang the Visitor Centre and we asked, ‘Where did she say she was?’ He said, ‘She's on E line somewhere.’ He gave us her phone number and we managed to get a text message to her and she came back with one of the blue tag codes so we were able to go back with a text message to say, ‘You're here. Just head down.’ Within about 15 minutes she gave us a call and said, ‘I am good. I'm on my way out.’ It was a piece of cake.”
In 2020, Murray Neil, the Sanctuary’s Field Operations Coordinator, completed a Worksafe NZ training course and became an officially qualified Health & Safety representative. With him taking that role, Sanctuary staff and volunteers had somebody to talk to regarding any concerns around Health & Safety while working at the Sanctuary who could represent their concerns, investigate complaints and risks, and provide feedback to workers and the Trust around Health & Safety matters. In December 2020, an external Health & Safety audit and review was conducted by Navigate H&S Ltd. and the Sanctuary received ISO 45001 accreditation It gained re accreditation again in 2022.
Volunteer and staff hosts communicate to all visitors about health and safety and potential hazards before they enter the Sanctuary. Visitors are required to sign in (digitally on tablets) and complete an intentions sheet. They are then requested to sign out when they leave. Visitor Centre hosts spend a great deal of time checking that everyone signed in has been accounted for and signed out. If it appears that any person(s) has not signed out, a first step is to call Operations staff, then the Police who then work to check if the person(s) has gone
home without signing out. In the event that the person(s) is missing and possibly in the Sanctuary somewhere, a Search and Rescue operation can be initiated.
On 19 April 2023, Search and Rescue Nelson conducted an evening/after dark training exercise in the Sanctuary that involved searching for several ‘lost’ people. Five Sanctuary staff members, Murray Neil, Chelsea Haley, Chris Sheehan, Jazz Scott and Mary-Anne Cameron were included in the exercise along with more than 20 Search and Rescue Nelson personnel including some new recruits. As well as providing the Sanctuary staff members with some valuable experience, the exercise helped with updating the Sanctuary’s ‘lost persons’ procedures.
Wellbeing
To support volunteer and staff wellbeing, there are designated two volunteer representatives who represent the Visitor Centre volunteers and the field teams. These representatives can be approached with concerns and who can present those concerns directly to senior management and/or to the board of trustees.
At a social level, regular barbeque and shared meal evenings are held to provide a context for spending some leisure time with people on the same team as well as catching up with or meeting others not normally encountered when working in the Sanctuary. As well, there has been an ongoing series of invited speaker events for volunteers to attend that provide a continuing education element related to environmental research and information about other conservation and restoration projects. Such events began early in the project, two of which were:
• 18 May 2006: Dr John McLennan: Research regarding kiwi in the wild.
• 7 Jun 2006: Glen Holland, Director of Auckland Zoo: ‘Conservation in Africa and conservation with the community at Auckland Zoo.
The list below of such events from 2020 through to 2023 provides an indication of the range of topics and the expertise of the presenters:
• 3 March 2020: Al Bramley, CEO of Zero Invasive Predators: Trialling and utilising current technology for predator removal.
• 27 July 2020: Paul Atkins, CEO of Zealandia: The Zealandia experience.
• 14 August 2020: Professor Nicky Nelson: Habitat assessment.
• 25 October 2020: Dr Tania Cochran, managing director of Inala Nature Tours (Australia).
• 27 April 2021: Evening workshop to learn about tīeke.
• 9 August 2021: Dave Hansford, writer and producer of documentary series ‘Fight for the Wild’.
• 12 April 2022: Update on kākāriki from Ru Collin, Sanctuary CEO, Robert Schadewinkel, Sanctuary ecologist and Sean McGrath, Sanctuary monitoring volunteer.
• 5 July 2022: Peter Butler: Wharakiki Ecosanctuary.
• 6 September 2022: Alison Balance: Pest Detection Workshop and kākāpo presentation.
• 3 November 2022: Wasp information evening with Phil Lester of Victoria University and Richard Toft of Vespex.
• 19 April 2023: Rebecca Bowater: ‘The fantastic world of fungi.’
• 6 June 2023: Henk Louw, urban ecologist: ’Growing the halo – what happens when birds jump the fence’ with a focus on the relationship between Wellington City Council and Zealandia.
• 7 November 2023: Dr Mike Joy: ‘Freshwater management in New Zealand - A scientist’s perspective on the gulf between science, policy and outcomes.’
