Forest & Bird Magazine 335 Feb 2010

ISSUE 335 • FEBRUARY 2010 www.forestandbird.org.nz

SPECIAL FEATURE

MINING NEW ZEALAND’S GREEN HEART: how you can help

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Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand Inc. General Manager: Mike Britton Advocacy Manager: Kevin Hackwell Services Manager: Julie Watson North Island Conservation Manager: Mark Bellingham South Island Conservation Manager: Chris Todd Central Office: Level 1, 90 Ghuznee St, Wellington.

PO Box 631, Wellington 6140.

Tel: (04) 385-7374, Fax: (04) 385-7373 Email: office@forestandbird.org.nz Web: www.forestandbird.org.nz Auckland Office: 34A Charlotte Street, Eden Terrace, Auckland, PO Box 108 055, Symonds St, Auckland 1150.

Tel: (09) 302 0203, Fax: (09) 303 4548 Email: n.beveridge@forestandbird.org.nz Christchurch Office: 190-192 Hereford Street, Christchurch PO Box 2516, Christchurch 8140.

Tel: (03) 366 4190 Fax: (03) 365 0788 Email: c.todd@forestandbird.org.nz KCC Coordinator: Ann Graeme 53 Princess Rd, Tauranga 3110.

Tel: (07) 576-5593 Fax: (07) 576-5109 Email: a.graeme@forestandbird.org.nz Forest & Bird is a registered charitable entity under the Charities Act 2005.

Registration No. CC26943.

ISSUE 335

In memory of Helen Bain 22.9.71– 29.12.09

www.forestandbird.org.nz

2 Editorial

33

Reader survey

5 Letters

38

Ancient haven

40

Lost and found

44

A national park of the sea

48

A forest saved

50

In the field

52

Going places

54

Rangitahi

56

Pacific

58

Branching out

62

One of us

64

Book reviews

68

Parting shot

Barry Wards on mining core conservation land Rivers, SI kokako, energy alternatives

6 Soapbox

Mike Britton says protection gains more than exploitation

7 A forceful voice for nature Helen Bain 22.9.71– 29.12.09

8 Conservation news

Whangarei Harbour Marine Reserve, sea lions, Honda Tree Fund, BirdLife Community Fund and JS Watson Trust grants

11 Comment

Rivers at Risk - David Young says the RMA has failed the Manganuioteao River

12

Cover story: Mining NZ’s green heart

Helen Bain reports on plans to mine New Zealand’s core conservation land

18

Fierce but fragile

Helen Bain looks at a project working with landowners to protect Wairarapa’s coast

22 EDITOR: Helen Bain DEPUTY EDITOR: Marina Skinner

PO Box 631, Wellington.

T (04) 801-2761 F (04) 385-7373 E m.skinner@forestandbird.org.nz DESIGNER: Rob Dileva, Dileva Design

E rob@dileva.co.nz PREPRESS/PRINTING: Kalamazoo

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Vanessa Clegg, T 0275 420 337 E vanclegg@xtra.co.nz Karen Condon T 0275-420 338 E mack.cons@xtra.co.nz Membership & Circulation T 0800 200 064 F (04) 385 7373 E membership@forestandbird.org.nz

• February 2010

The whales return

Tony and Jenny Enderby welcome the comeback of southern right whales

26

Heart of the high country

Helen Bain talks to high country heroes battling to protect the Mackenzie Basin

30

Kiwi in the pines

Hugh Stringleman discovers an unlikely bond between Northland kiwi and forestry workers

Let us know what you want in Forest & Bird Charles Hurford reports on protecting a 7000-year-old oak forest in suburban London Rod Morris and Erin Anson report on efforts to protect a “Lost World” in Fiordland Karen Baird puts the case for protecting the ocean around the Kermadec Islands Marina Skinner looks at Whirinaki Forest Park 25 years after the chainsaws stopped Ann Graeme crosses the ditch Marina Skinner visits Ark in the Park Jenny Lynch meets Teen Green Bethany Mathers Debs Martin meets the colourmorphing Kakerori in Rarotonga Pollen Island, Ruapehu Lodge, Obituaries, Kaimai Mamaku, Swamp maire, Wild rivers Meet Forest & Bird marine advocate Kirstie Knowles

The Best of NZ Geographic, Majestic NZ, Natural NZ Craig McKenzie shoots godwits

COVER SHOT Normally Forest & Bird’s cover celebrates the splendour of New Zealand’s wildlife with photographs of some of our most beautiful native plants, animals and wild places. In this issue we are making a rare exception and publishing a photograph that is anything but beautiful. This shot of Solid Energy’s open-cast Stockton coal mine is a graphic example of how many parts of our conservation estate could look if a Government proposal to open up core conservation land to mining goes ahead.

The last time we published an “ugly” cover was 16 years ago, in 1993, when the cover focused on the felling of native forests on the West Coast and conservationists’ efforts to save them. We eventually won that battle, but our most precious natural places now face just as serious a threat.

We hope you will join us in calling for the protection of our national parks and other core conservation land from the threat of mining. We want to make sure that New Zealand’s natural beauty is protected – then we can go back to bringing you beautiful Forest & Bird covers.

Forest & Bird

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editorial Defending our green heartland

O

n one of our many family holiday trips up the West Coast of the South Island, my father took us to see the Kaniere gold dredge near Hokitika. I remember being awestruck, not only by the size of this behemoth, but also by the scale of devastation in its wake: a vast landscape of gravel hillocks interspersed by “wetlands” of rock and debris.

Surrounding this was a seemingly healthy native forest ecosystem bordering, I presumed at the time, on lands that were part of the public estate, the great swathes of pristine forest we’ve come to associate with the West Coast.

I know now that this was an illusion: slowly and silently, the forest was succumbing to the effects of the nearby extraction of natural materials – man’s voracious greed for gold. In my naivety as a child, I was also unaware that the forest was being eaten alive by possums and farmed for native timber.

Go forward 40 years and, while man’s voracity for gold and other precious metals hasn’t diminished, our need as a nation to protect those public lands has increased. Many of us thought those major battles had been won. Memories of Manapouri, Whirinaki and Timberlands beech-milling campaigns mark significant milestones in Forest & Bird’s proud history.

We’d thought that helping establish the Department of Conservation was a further measure to preserve and protect those natural values. Were we being too naïve? The intrinsic values that inspired Val Sanderson to found Forest & Bird, which impelled our forefathers to fight for this nation’s freedom and, more recently, that drove grizzled old green activists like Sir Alan Mark, Gerry McSweeney and Craig Potton, are now under threat, along with the sanctity of our national parks.

While we may be suitably impressed by the advances in keyhole surgery in medicine, we should not be so cavalier to apply it to the conservation state. Mining inevitably comes at an environmental cost. The detritus of mining, sediment and acid-laden water and the intrusion of man and his machinery into treasured lands and wild places will harm those ecosystems which New Zealanders thought were permanently protected for future generations to enjoy and cherish.

Our country prides itself on a clean, green image and earns billions of tourist dollars from it. Our conservation estate is central to our national – and natural – heritage.

I urge you to help us protect it.

Barry Wards, Forest & Bird President

50 years ago

There are those who see only progress in the flooding of Lake Manapouri under 100 feet of water for power for an aluminium manufacturing plant, and Lake Te Anau under 15 feet.

Others are appalled at the very idea. If the proposal is carried out, damage will be done to the natural plant association which cannot be restored for generations, the lovely islands and the flats of the lakes’ shores will be submerged, but the worst feature will be that the sanctity of National Parks will be violated and a most dangerous precedent established.

Editorial, Forest & Bird, February 1960

Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand Inc. (Founded 1923) Registered Office at Level One, 90 Ghuznee Street, Wellington.

PATRON: His Excellency the Hon.

Sir Anand Satyanand, GovernorGeneral of New Zealand NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Barry Wards DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Craig Potton IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT: Peter Maddison NATIONAL TREASURER: Graham Bellamy EXECUTIVE COUNCILLORS: Andrew Cutler,

Anne Fenn, Mark Fort, Alan Hemmings, Joan Leckie, Janet Ledingham, Peter Maddison, Jon Wenham.

DISTINGUISHED LIFE MEMBERS:

Forest & Bird is published quarterly by the Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society. Forest & Bird is a member of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and is the New Zealand Partner of BirdLife International.

Opinions expressed by contributors in the magazine are not necessarily those of Forest & Bird.

Forest & Bird is printed on chlorine-free paper made from wood fibre sourced from sustainably managed forests.

The magazine is bulk mailed in NatureFlex film, which is made from wood pulp sourced from managed plantations and is fully biodegradable and compostable. *Registered at PO Headquarters, Wellington, as a magazine. ISSN 0015-7384. Copyright. All rights reserved.

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Bill Ballantine, Stan Butcher, Ken Catt, Audrey Eagle, Alan Edmonds, Gordon Ell, Philip Hart, Hon. Sandra Lee-Vercoe, Stewart Gray, Joan Leckie, Peter Maddison, Sir Alan Mark, Gerry McSweeney, John Morton, Margaret Peace, Guy Salmon, Lesley Shand, Gordon Stephenson, David Underwood.

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letters Forest & Bird welcomes readers’ letters and photographs on conservation topics.

Letters must be no longer than 200 words and must include the writer’s full name, residential address and daytime contact number. Due to space limitations we may not be able to publish all letters. Letters may be edited and abridged.

The best contribution to the Letters page of the May issue will win a copy of Wild Encounters, an omnibus book edition of the nature travel articles from Forest & Bird, published by Penguin, rrp $40. Please send contributions to: Editor, Forest & Bird, PO Box 631, Wellington, or email to h.bain@forestandbird.org.nz by March 15, 2010.

River Memories

Wet and Wild

I would like to express my pleasure in your latest copy of Forest & Bird featuring water – such beautiful photography and presentation.

It evoked many memories of my youth, living in a valley near Wakefield, Nelson, where water was ever-present in my daily life. I crossed the Wai-iti River by swing bridge every day en route to school, college, church and later work. I saw it in flood, and in low ebb in dry summer, played in it, swam in it, caught eels, and when the home tanks ran dry it was my weekly bath. Creeks on the farm were sources of pleasure: creating mini-dams, catching crawlies, small fish and frogs – all part of the freedom to enjoy the outdoors and endless variety of nature. Thank you for stirring memories of those carefree days, long past.

Thank you to everyone who contributed their words and photos to the November “Wet and Wild” issue of Forest & Bird – it was even more of a treat than usual to read the magazine. It is so easy to take our natural surroundings for granted, so reading of the many threats to our lakes, streams, rivers and wetlands – some of them in my own city and region – is a timely wake-up call. We must all do our bit to ensure they do indeed remain “wet and wild” and call to account those whose actions do them harm. I hope you will repeat the idea of a “theme” for the magazine – I would suggest an oceans issue (“Blue and Beautiful”?) could highlight the many wonders (and worries) involving our marine environment.

Faith Delaney, Wellington.

Offering alternatives Congratulations on the recent special edition devoted to New Zealand’s waterways. At the same time as supporting efforts to protect the Mokihinui River I would like to extend a challenge to the environmental community.

Currently around two-thirds of New Zealand’s electricity is generated from renewable sources. If we want to become a sustainable nation there are at least two things that need to happen: our transport fleet needs to go electric (at least a 60% increase in our generation capabilities) and we need to scrap all non-renewable energy production.

So renewable energy production, even with the strictest energy conservation measures, will need to double.

Energy production inevitably comes at the expense of the environment (land flooded by hydro production, birds killed in wind power) so at the same time as opposing the more destructive projects we need to support and encourage power companies to develop power in low value conservation areas. It’s much harder to shoot down an idea than come up with a solution. As a movement we need to become more positive and solution oriented.

My challenge is that for every dam we oppose we identify and communicate at least two other similar sized projects that we will support.

Steve Corin, Lower Hutt (This letter is the winner of Galapagos: Preserving Darwin’s Legacy by Tui De Roy)

Geoff Baker, Hamilton (We intend to publish a “themed” edition of Forest & Bird about once a year, and marine is a probable topic for a future issue – Ed)

November cover I apologise to readers for inadvertently providing the wrong information on the age of the duckling that appeared on the cover of the last issue. The blue duckling shown is only an hour or two out of the egg – you can still see the egg tooth on the little chap’s bill. The photo was taken with the help of DOC field staff in Te Anau (as were the other photos of Fiordland blue duck in that issue).

I felt your tiny “poster boy” was entirely appropriate to the “Wet and Wild” theme. Up close a blue duckling has the most beautiful soft iridescent green/grey down on head and back, which changes colour with the light.

When coupled with the disruptive patterning of the white cheeks, these ducklings become miracles of camouflage in the lively water of a river. At this size they are already capable white-water rafters, and for me nothing quickens the heart more than to come upon a blue duck family along a turbulent stretch of wild river, the ducklings as carefree as corks, guided by the deft liquid movements of their capable and attentive parents.

Rod Morris, Dunedin

Forest & Bird AGM Forest & Bird’s AGM will be held at the Mercure Hotel, 355 Willis Street, Wellington at 8:30am on 26 June 2010. All Forest & Bird members are welcome to attend.

Forest & Bird

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soapbox

The battle lines redrawn Forest & Bird general manager Mike Britton says we will gain most from our conservation lands if they are protected, not exploited.

T

he National Parks Act describes its purpose as “preserving in perpetuity as national parks, for their intrinsic worth and for the benefit, use, and enjoyment of the public, areas of New Zealand that contain scenery of such distinctive quality, ecological systems, or natural features so beautiful, unique, or scientifically important that their preservation is in the national interest.”

This statement reflects what was in the minds of 19th Century conservationists who started the long fight to see iconic New Zealand protected for future generations.

New Zealand is now very proud of the fact that 30% of its land area is protected but that figures belies the reality that most of what is protected is only that which was not wanted by the early settlers in their drive to create pasture and towns, to mill the forests, to drain the wetlands and to transform New Zealand’s unique landscape and biodiversity into a European countryside.

It was only in the 1980s, when the Department of Conservation was formed and indigenous forests protected, that the future of most of the remaining natural lands was secured.

The last iconic area still threatened is the South Island high country, where the tenure review process was starting to make progress in protecting those lands with high conservation, recreation and landscape values and allowing greater production on those lands where conservation values were not threatened.

So we could see a time when the main areas of remaining biodiversity and unique landscapes would be finally realised.

A further important concept behind the protection of public conservation land was that of public commons.

These lands belong to all New Zealanders and they are not to be captured by private landlords creating exclusivity – which has been the case in the South Island high country where pastoral leaseholders have assumed trespass rights.

Public access for recreation on Crown-owned leasehold properties has been, until tenure review and the creation of high country parks, at the grace and favour of the leaseholders.

The National-led Government, lobbied by production

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interests, sees public conservation land as a burden on business and a barrier to economic development.

Rather than see forests, tussock lands and wetlands as New Zealand’s natural taonga, they see hills to mine and pastures to graze. They also see opportunities to privatise and to reduce Government management responsibilities.

DOC has strategically moved to promote the economic contribution of conservation lands, in particular their “ecosystem services” which protect the catchments from which we gain our water supplies, reduce soil erosion, act as buffers against flooding, and assist New Zealand in meeting its greenhouse emissions targets.

Conservation land is core infrastructure for our $21 billion tourism industry, representing an excellent return on investment. For example, a $9m investment in DOC management of Fiordland National Park returns 1600 jobs and $196m of revenue.

DOC’s total budget is equivalent to about 14% of the total GST raised from tourist spending – what we spend on looking after our conservation land is paid back in spades.

Yet the Government barely recognises its economic contribution and has no appreciation of the real value and the real importance of protecting landscapes, as enshrined in law, “that contain scenery of such distinctive quality, ecological systems, or natural features so beautiful, unique, or scientifically important that their preservation is in the national interest.”

When DOC was created, native forests protected and high country parks established, we thought that the key battles fought by Forest & Bird since our inception in 1923 were won and the intrinsic value of our public protected conservation land was welded into the fabric of New Zealand’s society.

Alas, the vociferous noise of a greedy few seeking their own economic gain over the long- term future for all New Zealanders is threatening that. It is up to Forest & Bird and its allies to show the Government that “catching up” with Australia is not New Zealand’s top priority. Let Australia keep its dust storms.

Helen Bain 22.9.71 – 29.12.09

A forceful voice for nature

T

he conservation movement suffered a great loss when Forest & Bird magazine editor and communications manager Helen Bain died on 29 December 2009. She drowned after being swept off her horse while crossing the Ruamahanga River in the Wairarapa.

With a background as a journalist and parliamentary press secretary, Helen became a strong and well-connected advocate for Forest & Bird, taking conservation messages to a wider audience and showing political astuteness.

Her feisty, outspoken character, colourful language and irreverent sense of humour made her a dynamic force within Forest & Bird.

Helen joined Forest & Bird as a communications officer in mid-2006 and took over as communications manager and magazine editor in January 2008.

Many of Forest & Bird’s campaign successes owe much to Helen’s creativity and hard work. When Forest & Bird became concerned about South Island high-country tenure review dealing a blow to unique landscapes and excessive Crown payouts to farmers, Helen came up with the idea of a high-country cake on Lambton Quay. Cake slices – and $1 million notes – were handed to lunch-time passersby. The high country became front page news on the NZ Herald and a cover story in North & South magazine.

The then government changed its policies and committed to creating 22 high-country parks, of which there are now 10.

In March 2009, Helen was the driving force behind a protest on Parliament lawns featuring cardboard sea lions, one for each of the 95 sea lions Fisheries Minister Phil Heatley allowed to be killed in the sub-Antarctic squid fishery.

Helen was known for her persuasive language and her skill at distilling complex topics into easy-to-read messages.

She was a dynamo who always met project deadlines, and expected the same high standards of others. Revamped Forest & Bird and KCC websites were discussed for years but Helen made the projects happen within months.

Under Helen’s editorship, Forest & Bird magazine soared to new heights. The November Wet and Wild edition was the first specially themed issue in its 86-year history, with a bold and beautiful centrefold photo and strong messages about the importance of our waterways and the need to protect them.

Helen collected many of the magazine’s Going Places articles into a book – Wild Encounters – published before

Christmas. It also featured many of Helen’s well-crafted and lively articles.

A love of the outdoors attracted Helen to Forest & Bird.

She and her partner Mark planted hundreds of native plants on their Wairarapa lifestyle block. It was also home to their horses and a base for their long-distance horse treks. They both competed in endurance riding championships around New Zealand, and Helen volunteered large chunks of her time organising riding events and publicising the sport.

Helen began her journalism career at the Wairarapa Times-Age and spent a decade at Wellington’s Dominion newspaper from the mid-1990s as a news, political and features writer. She won several Qantas media awards for her reporting there and, later, as political editor of the Sunday Star-Times.

In 2003 she began a spell away from journalism when she became press secretary for outspoken Labour MP John Tamihere. He proved a difficult politician to keep in line, even for someone with Helen’s strength of character. She wrote his biography, Black and White, published in 2004.

Jarring with Helen’s green credentials was her love of cars. She began test driving and writing about cars while at The Dominion newspaper, and until her death edited Mitsubishi magazine Brilliant. Late last year she gained her HT licence so she could drive the horse truck that she and Mark bought to travel with their horses.

Helen was born in Wales, and moved to New Zealand with her parents and older sister Jan when she was 18 months. She grew up in Lower Hutt, and went to school there and in the Wairarapa before studying journalism and politics.

Helen’s great sense of fun shone through her purposeful and professional exterior. She knew the value of humour in getting a message across. She spearheaded Forest & Bird’s Bird of the Year poll – a light-hearted and hugely popular way of raising the profile of native birds and the threats to them with ordinary New Zealanders.

Helen brought a new level of professionalism to Forest & Bird’s communications. Forest & Bird’s mission is to give nature a voice, and Helen more than anyone showed how to make that voice heard loudly and clearly.

Forest & Bird

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conservation

news

Hands around the marine reserve The world’s first human chain around a marine reserve joined hands to celebrate the third anniversary of Whangarei Harbour Marine Reserve.

The chain was organised by the Experiencing Marine Reserves programme, supported by the Department of Conservation, and involved more than 1000 people during Conservation Week.

While a chain of humans, including students from 14 local schools, marked the landward boundary of the reserve, boats lined up at sea to mark its seaward limit – and dolphins and a seal turned up on the day as well.

The event aimed to help instill a sense of pride and ownership in the reserve, EMR Programme Director Samara Nicholas says.

Whangarei Harbour Marine Reserve was first proposed by students of Kamo High School in 1990. The reserve was opened in 2006, and now protects 253.7 hectares (2.54% of Whangarei Harbour). It is made up of two sites: a rocky reef site at Motukaroro (Aubrey/Passage Island) and an intertidal mudflat/mangrove environment at Waikaraka.

EMR works with schools and communities in New Zealand offering first-hand marine experiences and encouraging action for the marine environment.

“It was awesome to have been part of such a massive event that drew attention to the boundaries of the reserve through a colossal amount of community teamwork and spirit,” Samara Nicholas says.

You can watch the human chain event on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GAWmkpLwO8

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$2-milliondollar trees

Save our Sea Lions About the time you receive this magazine, the annual squid fishing season will be beginning around the Auckland Islands – and so will the killing of New Zealand sea lions as “by-catch” in this fishery.

The New Zealand sea lion is a threatened species, listed on the IUCN’s red list of species at risk of extinction, and is now found mostly around these sub-Antarctic Islands, with few now seen off New Zealand’s mainland. Their primary Auckland Island breeding population has been declining for the past 11 years.

Each year the Minister of Fisheries sets a quota for the number of sea lions which the southern squid trawl fishery is permitted to kill in its nets. Fisheries Minister Phil Heatley has set the sea lion kill quota for this season at 76.

Department of Conservation research at the main breeding colonies around the Auckland Islands last year recorded a shocking drop in the number of females turning up to breed (more than 600 fewer) and a 31% drop in the number of pups born.

Forest & Bird marine advocate Kirstie Knowles says the minister should have set a lower limit, given the decline in pups and the total sea lion population.

Despite the use of “sea lion exclusion devices”, which aim to release sea lions trapped in nets, by most vessels off the Auckland Islands, sea lions continue to be killed, Knowles says. She says the number of deaths is far too high.

“Just as we don’t support an allowable kill of kiwi or kakapo, Forest & Bird does not support an allowable kill of New Zealand sea lions.”

Honda TreeFund has passed the $2 million mark in its nationwide programme to plant native trees.

The programme has now planted 400,000 native trees since its inception in 2004, reaching this milestone during Conservation Week in September.

Honda TreeFund sees Honda NZ fund the planting of 13 native trees for every new Honda sold. The funds are distributed in the areas they are accumulated, and local and regional councils select projects meaningful to their communities.

Honda New Zealand Managing Director Graeme Seymour says the benefits of Honda TreeFund are far more wide-reaching than simply planting trees to offset emissions.

In 2009, 17 councils – from Northland Regional Council to Environment Southland – allocated Honda TreeFund funding to community projects that help control water run-off and erosion, store carbon, promote coastal protection, restore local biodiversity, rehabilitate urban waterways, raise public awareness about the environment and beautify public spaces.

Yet another native plant is added to the millions planted so far under Honda TreeFund. Photo Honda NZ.

How you can help

bird.org.nz) to check Go to our website (www.forestand impact on sea lions the the latest information, including during this squid fishing season. tley urging him to Write to Fisheries Minister Phil Hea kill this threatened to e tinu stop allowing the fishery to con n Minister Tim atio serv species. You can also write to Con w the sea allo to tion Groser, urging immediate interven ministers both to e writ can lion population to recover. You ton. ling Wel (no stamp required) at Parliament,

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conservation

news

BirdLife Community Fund The BirdLife Community Fund supports community projects which conserve or restore globally threatened bird species or important bird areas in New Zealand and the Pacific.

The fund was established in 2007 by UK-based conservationists, David and Sarah Gordon, and Forest & Bird branches, BirdLife International partners, partners designate and affiliates, and associated community groups are eligible to apply for grants from the fund.

Projects accepted for funding in 2009 include conservation of a wide range of endangered bird species in New Zealand and throughout the Pacific. Grants approved in 2009 were: • $7600 to Kerry-Jane Wilson to establish a New Zealand seabird colony database.

• $15,000 to the Chatham Island Taiko Trust to transfer Chatham Island tomtits from South East/Rangatira Island to the main Chatham Island.

• $28,000 to the Ririwha Trust for conservation of Pycroft’s petrel on Ririwha (Stephenson) Island.

• $25,066 to Societe D’Ornithologie De Polynesie to conserve the monarch in French Polynesia, especially through rat control.

• $15,570 to Societe Caledonienne D’Ornithologie to appoint a species guardian and fund research into the conservation of the crow honeyeater, and write a Species Action Plan.

• $21,815 to BirdLife International Pacific Partnership Secretariat to search for the “lost” Pohnpei mountain starling and Makira moorhen.

• $14,449 to NatureFiji-MareqetiViti (Fiji Nature Conservation Trust) for feral pig control in the Gau Island community to help conserve the Fiji petrel.

• $25,000 to Arthur’s Pass Community Centre Roroa Recovery Project to protect great spotted kiwi/roroa in the Bealey Valley.

You can apply for the next round of funding online at www. forestandbird.org.nz or by contacting Samantha Partridge at s.partridge@forestandbird.org.nz or phone 04 801 2762.

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3 1 Rowi (great spotted kiwi).

Photo BNZ Save the Kiwi Trust.

2 Albatross. Photo by Craig Potton.

3 Chatham Island tomtit.

Photo Don Merton.

Driving Creek Wildlife Sanctuary Trust With the Xcluder fence complete (June 08) and all feral pests now eradicated, a Coromandel first, our next priority is to repair the old barn and create an interpretation and educational facility. Donations towards this are sought and will be recognised within the display area.

Your help with any contribution is appreciated. Or you can become a Friend of the Sanctuary and receive our newsletters. Visitors are welcome with a guided tour offered.

Contacts: Chairman (Barry Brickell), P O Box 87, Coromandel 3543.

Ph/fax 07 8668703. sanctuary@drivingcreek.co.nz

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| Forest & Bird

River at risk David Young says the RMA has failed to protect the pristine Manganuiateao River and its endangered whio.

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f ever there was an example of the failures so often allowed in the name of the Resource Management Act, it has to be the acquiescence to poor planning and process that authorities have permitted, if not enabled, to put at risk the hallowed treasure of the Manganuiateao River.

This lustrous, mountain-fed river has had a conservation order protecting it for 20 years, while nearby Tongariro National Park has achieved dual world heritage status.

Yet the Ruapehu District Council last year granted an un-notified consent for a subdivision in a rural district not far from Raetihi, which will permit up to 20 homes (with another 20 possible) to be built close to the river’s banks.

Those who seek to protect the environment know only too well how the script too often plays out. Even ratepayers discover that they are beggars at a feast in which developers and councils – seemingly ever ready for increased revenue – appear to work against their wishes. They end up lamenting the lack of the impossibly large sums of money to take the fight to the people whose salaries they pay and the councillors they elect.

Meanwhile, the rollercoaster of development rides blithely over them.

They can have a say in the district plan, but even that notion is based on ideas of

community democracy that is rarely realised. Besides, who would have thought that a sound plan would be needed to ensure that private development could not imperil places that most believed were already protected?

The quality of water in the Manganuiateao is so high that it enjoys the ultimate seal of ecological approval: the presence of a flourishing population of the endangered whio/blue duck. Not to mention a famed trout population.

Concerns were raised by a lone protestor, a long-term conservation-minded resident who discovered the council’s intentions, and feared the impact of the sub-division on the whio, and the western North Island brown kiwi and the native falcon which also live in the area. There is also risk to the river’s pristine waters.

When he got to a promised “mediation” on the issue in November, he and Forest & Bird representative Aalbert Rebergen discovered that it was all over in three hours.

The subdivision sections now have a 70 metre set-back from the river; there is an unenforceable ban on pets and protection for an existing wetland, but it will still go ahead.

Both the Department of Conservation and Horizons Regional Council agree that the subdivision plan and its waste water disposal will meet the regional council’s One Plan, which has been largely saluted by conservationists.

Once again, another piece of pristine New Zealand has been put at risk, in the full knowledge of those agencies empowered to protect it. If the RMA has been left by successive laissez-faire governments to become the “Risk Management Act,” when will national standards finally be put in place and enforced?

Whio – sold down the river by the RMA? Photos Jordan Kappely.

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SPECIAL FEATURE

Mining New Zealand’s green heart

Mining HELEN BAIN

reports on a proposal to open up New Zealand’s core conservation land to mining.

If the mining we see happening right here and now in New Zealand is surgical, then the surgeon must have gone mad and run amok 1 12

with a chainsaw | Forest & Bird

2 1 Coal Mining in New Zealand. Photo Crown Minerals.

2 Kahurangi National Park – under threat if mining is allowed on core conservation land. Photo Debs Martin.

New Zealand’s green heart S

“

urgical” and “mining” – those two words go together about as well as “honest” and “politician”.

Last year when Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee announced a “stock take” of New Zealand’s most precious conservation land to see if it should be mined, Prime Minister John Key commented that modern techniques meant that mining could be done “surgically” with little effect on the environment.

Unfortunately the reality of mining in New Zealand’s wilderness areas would be anything but surgical, Forest & Bird Advocacy Manager Kevin Hackwell says.

“If the mining we see happening right here and now in New Zealand is surgical, then the surgeon must have gone mad and run amok with a chainsaw,” he says.

“Most modern mining still has serious and irreversible consequences for the environment, and opening up our national parks to mining would be devastating to our landscapes and wildlife.”

Mining has a long history in New Zealand, with coal mining beginning here in the 1830s and gold rushes from the 1850s-1870s.

The amount of coal being mined has grown steadily, and today most mining in New Zealand is coal mining – 4.9 million tonnes of coal were mined in 2008. Most coal mining is centred on the West Coast, Waikato and Southland.

The biggest coal mining company in New Zealand is Solid Energy, a State-owned company, which mines about 4 million tonnes of coal a year and plans to expand mining significantly in the next 20 years. Its current licences and exploration permits cover more than 700 million tonnes of coal.

Operations at Solid Energy’s Stockton Mine on the West Coast illustrate the scale of the environmental impact of mining.

Open cast mines like Stockton have a much greater impact than underground mines. Up to the 1940s, almost all coal mining was in underground mines, but since then open cast mining has grown to where most coal is now mined in open cast mines (in 2008 five underground and 20 open cast coal mines were operating, and 63% of coal was mined from open cast mines.) The result: massive open scars on the landscape, entire mountaintops and hillsides removed to get at the coal below.

Solid Energy runs a programme of “rehabilitation” following mining operations – earthworks that involve rebuilding landforms and replanting vegetation on top.

But of more than 1000 hectares of “disturbed” land at Stockton, only 20ha was “rehabilitated” in 2008/09 and only 30ha are planned for rehabilitation this year.

“The idea that you can dig a 1000-hectare hole in the ground, and then put it all back again and everything will be just the same is ludicrous,” Kevin Hackwell says.

“Natural ecosystems cannot simply be recreated – you will never restore a mined area to anything even approaching a natural state.”

That’s bad news for the unique native species that exist in land being mined. Of most concern is the native giant Powelliwhanta Augustus carnivorous snails which are found nowhere else but the mountaintop which Solid Energy wanted to mine. Solid Energy’s solution was to remove the snails with the aim of translocating them to alternative habitat. Unfortunately a large number of the translocated snails have not survived in their new home, and many remain in a chilly limbo, stored in refrigerators.

“The outcome for the snails is not looking good – it could well be the extinction of this unique native species,” Kevin Hackwell says. The habitat to which the snails have been transferred is proving to be an unsatisfactory Forest & Bird

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SPECIAL FEATURE

Mining New Zealand’s green heart

substitute for their original habitat which was destroyed by mining. Many other native species, including kiwi and other native birds, rare tussock grasslands and endangered native frogs, are under threat from mining.

Another problem caused by mining is the acidification and pollution of waterways. Coal mines expose sulphide in rocks to the air and water, which produces sulphuric acid and causes groundwater, streams and rivers to become more acidic. The effects of acid mine drainage and sedimentation on freshwater systems can be severe, killing freshwater life such as fish and invertebrates.

While gold mining is on a smaller scale than coal in New Zealand – annual gold production is about 11.8 tonnes, most from only two large mines: Macraes Mine in Otago and the Martha Mine in Waihi – it also has significant impact on the environment. To extract the gold, thousands of tonnes of rock are dug up, crushed and processed.

Gold mining contaminates waterways with toxic substances and heavy metals such as cyanide, arsenic, cadmium, lead and zinc, with devastating effects on freshwater habitats.

Solid Energy was praised by Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Jan Wright for improvements in water quality in waterways near the Stockton Mine. By dosing streams with crushed lime, acidity was reduced, while settling ponds reduce the amount of coal dust suspended in the waterways.

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But Kevin Hackwell says that improvement is nowhere near good enough.

“You could say that the rivers used to flow black with coal dust and now they flow brown with the mixture of remaining coal dust and lime – they are hardly pristine.”

The commissioner’s 2009 report also limited itself to the immediate impact of mining – it didn’t concern itself with the fact that burning coal is the single largest global source of greenhouse gases, which are causing climate change.

Coal comes in four grades: anthracite (the most valuable), bituminous coal, sub-bituminous coal, and lignite – or brown coal, which is the least valuable. Most coal mined in New Zealand is bituminous and sub-bituminous, but Solid Energy is expanding mining of the least-valuable and dirtiest coal, lignite. Of all the coal remaining in the ground, 74% is lignite, compared to 20% sub-bituminous and just 6% bituminous.

“Lignite or brown coal is one of the dirtiest fossil fuels there is,” Kevin Hackwell says. “So not only are we looking at the direct impact of mining on the surrounding environment, we are also creating a massive amount of carbon emissions from burning lignite and using it to produce fertiliser for dairy farms.”

The visual scarring and pollution of mining have an effect not only on the wildlife that depends on the protection of our conservation estate, it also threatens the security of New Zealand’s number one international selling

The idea that you can dig a 1000-hectare hole in the ground, and then put it all back again and everything will be just the same is ludicrous

point: our clean, green reputation on which we base our “100% Pure New Zealand” brand.

Earnings from minerals make up just 3% of New Zealand’s wealth. In comparison, earnings from New Zealand’s conservation land make up 20%.

The total value of minerals mined in New Zealand is $1.6 billion – compared to $21 billion earned by tourism, which relies heavily of the preservation of conservation land.

If more mining is allowed in conservation lands, it will damage the unspoiled natural landscapes, habitats and wildlife that attract tourists from around the world – and end up costing us billions.

National has said that exploiting our mineral wealth would help New Zealand “catch up” with Australia in economic performance – but New Zealand does not have the large quantities of valuable minerals which are mined in Australia.

Conservation (and the associated service industries it supports in tourism) also supports many more jobs than mining. In 2008, 5800 people were employed in mining in New Zealand – compared to 108,000 people who are

directly employed in tourism, and many thousands more who are employed in others sectors boosted by tourism, and in conservation.

The experience of towns like Waihi shows that economic benefits do not always flow to residents – despite gold mining profits being made by the gold mines, the town’s residents still experienced high levels of economic deprivation and unemployment. Highly paid and skilled jobs rarely went to locals.

A further risk is that mining companies have a track record of making their profits, then going into liquidation, leaving behind a toxic legacy. These abandoned mines – known as “orphan mines” – can be very expensive to clean up. For example, taxpayers are currently footing a $10 million bill to clean up the abandoned Tui Mine.

“Mining has been the ultimate extractive and unsustainable industry – it really has been rip shit and bust,” Kevin Hackwell says. “That is the sad legacy of mining in New Zealand and there is no evidence that anything is going to change.”

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4 7 3 Coal mining, Mt Augustus, Stockton.

4 “Tailings” and dams from mining operations, Oceana Gold, Reefton.

5 Rock dump and tailings dam, Oceana Gold – mining is hardly a “surgical process” and its environmental impact can be severe.

6 Coal mine. Photo Crown Minerals.

7 Macraes goldmine, Otago.

Photo Craig Potton.

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SPECIAL FEATURE

Mining New Zealand’s green heart

What is Schedule 8

Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act identifies

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conservation land, which, due to its high conservation values, should be excluded from the possibility of being mined. This land includes national parks, nature reserves and scientific reserves – land considered to be core conservation land. About 40% of the conservation estate (13% of New Zealand’s landmass) is in Schedule 4.

Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee has proposed a “stock take” of Schedule 4 land to see if it could be opened up for mining.

Some permits have already been granted to mine Schedule 4 land, including in national parks, and mining is carried out on other conservation land outside Schedule 4, including some highly sensitive areas.

If the “stock take” of Schedule 4 land recommends increasing mining, it threatens some of the most precious conservation land in New Zealand, including Fiordland, Paparoa, Abel Tasman and Kahurangi National Parks.

8 Fiordland National Park – under threat if “Schedule 4” conservation land is opened up for mining. Photo Craig Potton.

9 Kahurangi National Park (also under threat). Photo Debs Martin.

10 Mt Augustus, Stockton

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How you can

help A discussion document on the review of mining on land protected under Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act is due to be published this month.

This document will be open for public consultation after that, ahead of recommendations to the Cabinet in June. You can help by making a submission to protect our core conservation land from mining. Let the Government know that: • The value of conservation land is worth more to our economy through supporting our clean and green image than the amount it would yield from mining.

• Mining in core conservation land is likely to cause serious environmental damage to our landscapes and wildlife.

• Our national parks and other core conservation land is at the heart of New Zealand’s national heritage – we must not sacrifice them for short-term gains by the mining industry.

For further detail of how and where to make a submission go to

www.forestandbird.org.nz We’ll keep you informed when the submission process is finalised.

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1 Rock formations, Pahaoa River mouth. Mike Heydon.

2 Wairarapa’s coast is a stronghold for katipo. Photo Aalbert Rebergen.

Fierce but HELEN BAIN looks

T

at a project working with landowners to protect Wairarapa’s east coast.

he east coast of Wairarapa is a wild, windswept place.

Here you will find gravel beaches, ephemeral wetlands, sand dunes and weird and wonderful rock formations, and rare coastal plants and animals.

While there are settlements here, and the coast is a popular destination with campers, fishermen, swimmers, surfers and walkers over summer, Wairarapa has so far avoided the worst excesses of large-scale coastal development experienced elsewhere on New Zealand’s coast. Yet the eastern Wairarapa coast is not immune from the threats imposed by human activity.

Forest & Bird Lower North Island Field Officer Aalbert Rebergen has been working with the Department of Conservation on a project to protect this fierce yet fragile coastline, working closely with coastal landowners.

He says the eastern Wairarapa coast has many unique coastal habitats, particularly dune systems, gravel beaches and ephemeral wetlands, and is home to rare and threatened species, some found almost nowhere else. Yet little of it has any formal protection.

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Beginning at Akitio in the north and extending 150 kilometres to Ocean Beach in the south, Rebergen has identified the natural treasures found on this coast and the threats they face, and has proposed ways to work with landowners to protect them.

“Dynamic dune systems” are an important feature of the coast – “there one minute and gone the next” Rebergen describes them. Yet these constantly changing dunes support diverse life, including native pingao, spinifex, sand coprosma, matagouri and the sand daphne, Pimelea arenaria.

Sand daphne in particular is troubled – it is one of the most threatened coastal plants in New Zealand.

This low-growing shrub, with hairy grey-green leaves and creamy white flowers, is failing to reproduce in the wild.

It produces fertile seeds, but for some unknown reason the seeds are not producing plants that survive to replenish populations.

There are more than a thousand Pimelea plants at Flat Point on the Wairarapa coast, but only a few hundred

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fragile in total elsewhere, and eventually even the large main population will die out if it fails to replace itself with new seedlings. Rebergen says Pimelea must be grown in a nursery to be planted in the dunes as a short-term solution to keep the plant population alive.

Introduced marram grass – introduced to “stabilise” sand dunes – has ended up competing with the native pingao and spinifex, over-running it in most areas. Other pest plants like kikuyu and buffalo grass are a more recent problem. Fortunately some of the Wairarapa coast’s native dune plants are protected from grazing by livestock, but rabbits remain a threat to coastal plants.

The dune plants support an entire ecosystem of animal life, including the notorious katipo spider, which is found in natural dune systems right along the Wairarapa coast. This is one of the most important remaining strongholds of the katipo, which has disappeared from many other parts of New Zealand’s coast.

Despite its reputation as venomous, Rebergen says the katipo is virtually harmless.

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“If you pick up a piece of wood they tend to cling to the wood so you can pick them up and not even notice. I have had them right next to my fingers and they haven’t done anything – they seem to be very docile creatures. You’d have to really be doing something to them to get bitten.”

Another important habitat on the Wairarapa coast is its ephemeral wetlands – shallow depressions on the coastal flats that fill with water (and some salt water from the sea spray) during winter, and slowly dry out over summer.

These wetlands support specialised plants that live for just a short period, and can tolerate the salty conditions.

They are tiny – just a few centimetres tall – and rare, some found in just half a dozen sites in New Zealand. The main threat to the wetlands is invasion by exotic grasses and weeds such as pennyroyal.

The coast’s gravel beaches are another surprising haven for plants and animals. What might seem like an inhospitable environment of salt-lashed stones actually Forest & Bird

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support all kinds of unique plants, such as the rare Muehlenbeckia ephiroides and the dwarf forget-me-not, and are the breeding grounds of banded dotterels and oystercatchers.

The gravel beaches are most under threat from fourwheel-drive vehicles and quad bikes, which cause the gravel to become so unstable that nothing can grow on it.

The damage inflicted over the last 6-8 years is marked, and urgent action is needed to prevent 4WDs causing further harm, Rebergen says.

Also important are the coast’s karaka groves, flax and raupo swamps, shrublands, patches of broadleaf coastal forest, dune lakes and numerous waahi tapu (sacred sites) and all could benefit from enhanced protection.

Fur seals, more common to the south in Palliser Bay, are now being seen more frequently up the eastern coast, and the area is also home to rare native skinks and geckos, white-fronted and Caspian terns, reef herons, pipits and other shore birds.

Almost all the coastal land – with the exception of four reserves – is privately owned, either in individual of Maori ownership, and in most cases in large coastal stations covering thousands of hectares, so collaboration with landowners is vital to securing its protection.

Rebergen says that a positive effect of private

ownership is that it limits public access to vulnerable sites.

“Private ownership means landowners regulate access – some people might see that as a negative but there is definitely an up-side to that. You only have to go to the areas where there is unrestricted public access to see the damage that large numbers of people have caused.”

He says the response of landowners has been universally positive, with all taking a strong interest in protecting “their” coast.

“All the landowners genuinely enjoy these beautiful coastal areas and want to be involved in looking after them.”

Rebergen says covenants will be an important tool in helping landowners achieve that protection – till now there have been few covenants established here, and there are none protecting ephemeral wetlands.

However that could change, and funding of 70% of the cost required to fence livestock out of covenanted areas is a good incentive for farmers to sign up. Nga Whenua Rahui – the equivalent of QEII Trust covenants but covering Maori land and applying for limited time periods – may also contribute to coastal protection.

Rebergen says while purchase of vulnerable areas to establish reserves could be another way of protecting the coast, it might not be necessary if covenants can secure adequate protection.

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Education is also important – while landowners are keen to protect their land they don’t always have very good knowledge about the particular habitats, plants and animals that exist there, or the threats to them. Similarly, visitors to the beach may be unaware of the impact of their vehicles, littering, fires, dogs and other potentially damaging activities.

Rebergen favours raising public awareness rather than introducing tighter restrictions. Involving local communities will be crucial, he says. People living in the area are much more effective at keeping an eye out for damaging behaviour, and a word from them is likely to be much better received than if it came from an “outsider”.

Already community coast care groups are making an important contribution and Rebergen hopes to strengthen relationships with the community to build on this.

After a decade away from Wairarapa, Rebergen says the continued survival of so much of these coastal habitats he witnessed on his return surpassed his expectations.

“When I went back to these places I thought ‘wow, it hasn’t changed much in the last 10 years.’ It wasn’t half as bad as I feared it might be. But the pressure for development is always there and we are already starting to see some of these threats taking their toll.

“It is great that many of the landowners are happy to

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say ‘yes, I want to look after the coast,’ but we need to make sure they take that next step and really do something about achieving that.

If we can help provide the expertise and the support for them to do that, in another 10 years, hopefully all these wonderful things will still be there.”

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3 Native skinks are common along the coast. Photo Aalbert Rebergen.

4 Layering and tilting creates dramatic rock formations. Photo Aalbert Rebergen.

5 Honeycomb Rock, Wairarapa coast. Photo Aalbert Rebergen.

6 Oystercatchers. Photo Aalbert Rebergen.

7 Fur seals are making a comback on Wairarapa’s east coast. Photo Aalbert Rebergen.

8 New Zealand pipit. Photo Aalbert Rebergen.

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WAIRARAPA

It is great that many of the landowners are happy to say ‘yes, I want to look after the coast,’ but we need to make sure they take that next step and really do something about achieving that.

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whales The

Jenny and Tony Enderby report on the comeback of southern right whales

N

o one will ever know how many southern right whales populated New Zealand’s coast before whaling greatly reduced their numbers. Estimates range from 10,000 to nearly 30,000.

Maori knew the southern right whale as tohora (or tohoraha) and whales were included in the family known as te whanau puha – animals that expel air.

Although Maori didn’t hunt whales they benefited from those that stranded. As well as meat, whales provided bone for walking sticks, battle axes, spears and meremere.

Southern right whales got their name because they were the “right” whale to hunt, and their numbers declined dramatically once American and European whaling ships arrived in the late 1700s. By 1839 about

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200 whale ships were working the New Zealand coast.

About 14,750 southern right whales were killed in New Zealand waters between 1828 and 1967. In the peak period from 1837-1841, 10,000 were killed, yet Wellington residents still noted the noise of the whales breaching and blowing in the harbour in the 1840s.

By the 1850s southern right whale numbers had dropped still further and they were virtually extinct around mainland New Zealand. But it wasn’t until 1935 that the southern right whales’ plight was recognised and they were given international protection from whaling. Illegal Soviet whaling continued until the 1970s and the whales remained endangered until relatively recently.

Southern right whales are easily identified by their large

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Increasing sightings of Southern right whales around New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic islands have been followed by a growing number of sightings around the mainland.

Southern right whales got their name because they were the “right” whale to hunt

return

AUCKLAND ISLANDS

CAMPBELL ISLANDS

1 Right whales can be identified by the unique markings known as callosities.

black bodies, up to 16 metres long, lack of dorsal fin, and heads covered in white raised growths, known as callosities.

These markings differ from whale to whale, making it easy to identify individual whales from photographs.

Southern rights are baleen whales, with long strands of baleen plates which hang from each side of their upper jaws. These plates, up to 2.8m long, are fringed by long, fine, greyish bristles. Prey is crushed between the baleen plates and tongue, the water is forced through the baleen and the prey swallowed. Baleen whales have twin blowholes, unlike the single blowholes of toothed whales.

New Zealand’s southern right whales spend summer in the Antarctic Ocean, feeding on small crustaceans known as krill. Winter is usually spent in warmer northern waters.

Large numbers probably once populated the bays and harbours of both North and South Islands over winter and spring, where females would have given birth to young in sheltered locations.

The first signs that the whales were making a recovery were sightings of up to 100 southern right whales around Campbell Island in the mid-1980s. Then Royal New Zealand Air Force flights over the sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands counted 70 whales in the Port Ross area in 1992 and 43 the following year.

Expeditions to the islands in the late 1990s confirmed a recovery was occurring, and sightings of southern right whales around New Zealand’s mainland have increased since the 1990s, with whales recorded off Hawkes Bay, Forest & Bird

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Wellington,Taranaki, Otago, Southland, Fiordland and Stewart Island, and a few sightings in the north of the North Island.

The Department of Conservation studies have discovered links between southern right whales found around the sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands and those seen around mainland New Zealand, and research by the University of Auckland has identified four genetic matches between the sub-Antarctic whales and those from the mainland.

Sightings in northern New Zealand remain rare, but in July 2009 a female southern right whale and her calf were seen off Milford Beach, Auckland, for a few days before they moved north to Waiwera, where they remained for more than a week.

Early one morning a phone call confirmed a couple of whales close to the Leigh coast. We grabbed binoculars and headed to a vantage point to see two southern right whales lolling only 100m from shore. This was an exciting sight for

us and the first southern right whales seen in Omaha Bay for many years. These whales spent a week in the area before slowly moving north along the coast, probably following the migratory paths of whales several centuries ago.

Such sightings give us hope that more of these magnificent creatures will begin to reappear around the New Zealand coast. Maybe future generations will complain about being kept awake at night by southern right whales on their doorstep.

DOC scientists are interested in receiving reports of sightings and photographs of southern right whales.

Contact 0800 DOCHOT (0800 36 24 68).

2 Southern right whales blowing. Like other baleen whales they have twin blowholes.

3 Southern right whale breaching off Puerto Piranides.

Photos Jenny and Tony Enderby.

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Such sightings give us hope that more of these magnificent creatures will begin to reappear around the New Zealand coast

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Whale-watching

Argentina

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Worldwide there are fewer than 13,000 right whales, divided into North Pacific (Eubalaena japonica), North Atlantic (E. glacialis) and southern right whale (E. australis) species.

Our interest in southern right whales took us to the Valdes Peninsula in Argentina. From the moment we reached the coast at Puerto Madryn we spotted numerous whales as they rolled, blew, breached and lolled about.

Two large bays on the Valdes Peninsula, Golfo Nuevo and Golfo San Jose, winter as many as 2000 southern right whales, which arrive around June and return south to their feeding grounds in December.

Puerto Piramides on the Valdes Peninsula is Argentina’s whale-watch capital. From the lookout above the town on one very calm day we saw 40-50 whales, and often

whales cruised just 40m from the rocky shore.

We avoided the daytime tourist crush and opted for a sunset cruise. Although boats must keep 50m from the whales this didn’t stop inquisitive whales from nosing right alongside. Being with these beautiful animals as the sun went down was special.

We stayed with Juan Copello, who works with New Zealand orca researcher Ingrid Visser studying the local orca populations. Juan guided us onto desolate beaches where we carefully walked and crawled to view colonies of sea lions, elephant seals and Magellanic penguins. All the while southern right whales cruised just off the beach.

At Punta Norte we watched a pod of orca attempt to take a southern right whale calf. The calf’s mother showed great skill in manoeuvring her calf into the shallows and protecting it with her body. Her massive tail flailed any orca venturing too close and after 20 minutes the orca moved away.

On our return along the coastal road to Puerto Madryn, we stopped several times to watch southern right whales just metres from the beach. Mostly they lolled about rubbing their backs on the pebbles with their pectoral fins in the air.

Maybe the lack of shore whaling along this coast has contributed to the large numbers of southern right whales here. Whatever the reason, the Valdes Peninsula is an amazing place to see southern right whales in numbers close to what they would have been once around New Zealand and in other parts of the world.

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The heart of the high country visits the Mackenzie Basin and talks to some of the high country heroes who are battling to protect this most iconic part of New Zealand’s natural heritage.

HELEN BAIN

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D

epartment of Conservation botanist Nick Head shakes his head in dismay as he explains that some people see the vast, open landscapes of the Mackenzie Basin as a “wasteland”.

To Head, the Mackenzie Basin is the most distinctive and largest inter-montane basin in New Zealand, a landscape found nowhere else in the world, and habitat for a rich and unique biodiversity.

“These landscapes are our natural heritage and how we sell ourselves to the world. We lament what happened to the Canterbury Plains; we say ‘how did that happen?’ but it is happening in the Mackenzie today.”

Head says that while the landscape has undergone many changes, much of its natural character remains. The Mackenzie Basin was once covered in a mosaic of forest, scrub and tussock, but the arrival of Maori about 900 years ago had a profound impact, with fire destroying most of the scrub and forest. By the time of European arrival in the 1840s, the Mackenzie Basin was largely covered by great expanses of tussock grassland, not too different from what you can see today – minus the hydro canals and power pylons, of course.

There are 68 rare and threatened plant species known to live in the Mackenzie Basin – as well as its distinctive red tussock, the basin floor is home to some of the rarest plants in New Zealand, many specifically adapted to survive in this harsh environment.

Head says you won’t find anything anywhere else like the collection of kettlehole tarns – small wetlands created by glacial moraines – that exist in the Mackenzie Basin, which support hundreds of native species. As well as unique plants, you will also find distinctive species of weta, moths, beetles and grasshoppers in these places.

Chris Woolmore is manager of DOC’s Project River Recovery, a programme working to protect the Upper Waitaki River and Lakes Takapo, Pukaki and Ohau.

He says the region’s braided rivers are among its most special features.

High rainfall in the Southern Alps erodes the greywacke and soft sedimentary rocks, and when this material flows from the mountains and reaches the plains it spreads out, creating rivers with many braids that divide, rejoin and divide again.

These riverbeds are nesting grounds for some of New Zealand’s rarest birds. Rarest of them all is the black stilt – only about 180 remain in the wild and they are critically endangered.

The Black Stilt Recovery Programme is trying to “shortcircuit” the predator cycle by taking the eggs from the wild, incubating them and raising the chicks in a captive rearing centre at Twizel before releasing them back into the wild as juveniles.

Without such intervention the stilts’ nests in the gravels of the riverbeds are easy prey for feral cats, hedgehogs, stoats and ferrets, and in the late 1970s the wild population fell as low as 23 adults. But truly heroic recovery efforts have been very successful – in the last 10 years the population in the wild has doubled, and it is hoped that eventually pest control will be enough protection so that the stilts can nest safely ouside the wire mesh of the breeding facility.

Predator-proof fences around their wild breeding environment are not an option in the dynamic environment of braided riverbeds – pest control here requires an intensive programme of poisoning and trapping.

Four-wheel-drive vehicles are a growing problem: they can easily crush black stilts’ grey-and-black speckled eggs and tiny grey chicks, which are highly camouflaged in the river gravel.

Other rare riverbed species are also threatened.

Wrybills (which number just 3000-6000 nationally) use their unique “bent sideways” bills to retrieve insects from under the riverbed stones. Black-fronted terns, also nationally

1 Ruataniwha Conservation Park, near Lake Ohau in the Mackenzie Basin. Some parts of the Mackenzie’s unique landscapes and biodiversity are protected in conservation parks, but much more remains under threat.

2 Black stilt are critically endangered but recovery efforts have doubled the wild population in the last 10 years.

Photo Tom Marshall.

3 Lake Tekapo, Mackenzie Basin. Photo Helen Bain.

MACKENZIE BASIN

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4

5

6

endangered, with a national population of about 10,000, also rely on the riverbeds, as do banded dotterels, which appear to have undergone major population decline recently.

Woolmore says hydro dams have had a big impact on the braided riverbeds’ wildlife and ecosystems: damming the rivers for hydro lakes created an extra 22,000 hectares of water – but lost 7400ha of braided riverbeds.

As river flows are diverted in hydro canals, braided riverbeds are “de-watered”. Managed lake levels for hydrogeneration, and measures such as stopbanks and planting of willows to protect farms, roads and settlements, also mean there are few floods, on which the naturally dynamic processes of braided riverbeds rely.

Invasion by weeds is another problem. Introduced weeds such as lupins colonise riverbeds and displace native plants and bird habitats, and change the way braided riverbeds operate, trapping sediment and stabilising the once-shifting gravels. DOC monitors weeds and remove small infestations before they become big ones, but don’t have the resources to tackle the problem everywhere, Woolmore says.

On land, Pete Williams, based at DOC in Twizel, has been fighting a similar battle against the spread of wilding pines for the last four years in the Mackenzie Basin.

Originally planted to control erosion, these pines have been dispersed across the landscape by their wind-blown seed – at first the red and brown of the tussock is dotted with dark green specks, which steadily grow till they form a dense blanket that completely covers the landscape, blocking out all light and preventing anything else from growing.

Williams and his team use powered saws known as scrub bars to cut the pines down before they are 4-5 years old, when they bear cones. “After that you lose the battle.”

The wilding pine warriors are also experimenting with chemical sprays – trialling “different brews” – to see what nails the pines most effectively, and “skid-hopping” – jumping down from the skid of a helicopter to cut down isolated pines, before flying on to the next, which is the only way you can cover the huge expanses of land.

4 Dairy irrigators are changing the face of the Mackenzie Basin.

Photo Helen Bain.

5 Lupins infest braided riverbeds, stabilising the naturally dynamic braids and shifting gravels. Photo Helen Bain.

6 Cattle-stop road sign, Mackenzie Basin. The expansion of dairy farming and irrigation is turning this naturally dry, red-brown landscape bright green. Photo Helen Bain.

7 Hydro canal, Mackenzie Basin. The canals de-water braided rivers, affecting riverbed birds and other native wildlife. Photo Helen Bain.

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8 A wrybill nesting in a riverbed is highly vulnerable to 4WD vehicles and predators. Photo Andrew Walmsley.

Exterminating wilding pines costs millions – funding comes from DOC, Environment Canterbury and landowners – but Williams believe the battle can be won, as long as sufficient resources are available for them to hold the line against the spreading dark green menace.

Another kind of green – bright grassy green – is also spreading through the reds and browns of the Mackenzie landscape. Driving through the main highway you can see huge irrigators pumping water on to the naturally dry land to feed the enormous thirst of ever-expanding dairy farms.

One irrigator ran parallel to a long, straight stretch of road – checking the odometer I noted that it was nearly two kilometres long.

Forest & Bird resource management planner Anna Cameron says there are currently 110 applications to

Environment Canterbury to irrigate the Mackenzie Basin, which would irrigate more than 18,000ha and take more than 90 million cubic metres of water each year. If granted, the Mackenzie Basin of the future will bear little resemblance to the iconic landscapes we all think of when we think of New Zealand.

Stopping to photograph a vista of tussock flats with a craggy mountain range behind, I chat with a German couple, among many tourists in campervans exploring this wilderness, who have stopped to also photograph the scenery.

“Is beautiful, ja?” the man suggests, and I readily agree, wondering whether he and his fellow travellers will be so impressed if they return to find this magnificence replaced by dairy farms.

Four-wheel-drive vehicles are a growing problem: they can easily crush black stilts’ grey-and-black speckled eggs and tiny grey chicks, which are highly camouflaged in the river gravel 8 Forest & Bird

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in the pines 1

HUGH STRINGLEMAN

F

discovers an unlikely bond between Northland kiwi and forestry workers.

orestry workers might seem unlikely conservationists, but in Northland relocating kiwi is part of their job description.

Our national bird can make its home in exotic plantations for the 25-plus years of the trees’ existence, but eventually pines must come down. While most kiwi scarper when they hear the logging crews approach, others, particularly males sitting on eggs, stay holed up in their burrows as the forest topples around them.

But northern forestry contractors are being encouraged by the Department of Conservation to know where every kiwi is located, and work around those positions.

The agreement has been forged by members of the Forestry Environment Group of Enterprise Northland and DOC in Northland, whose job includes protection of the brown kiwi.

About one-third of all brown kiwi are found in Northland – of an estimated national population of 25,000 brown kiwi, 8000 are in Northland. They are found from coast to coast across the peninsula between Whangarei and Kaitaia, a large region which was extensively planted in pines during the 1970s and 80s. About 65 logging crews

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| Forest & Bird

work in Northland forests as the pines mature, are cut down and the plantations replanted.

Forestry contractors took up an invitation to learn more about managing plantation forests with kiwi residents, and a productive forum ended with some direct kiwi contact in Waitangi Endowment Forest, where DOC staff caught and micro-chipped two newly-hatched kiwi chicks.

DOC Bay of Islands manager Adrian Walker says that 15 years ago there was not much dialogue between the forestry industry and DOC, but that is completely different today, and the consciousness of all Northlanders about the kiwi in their midst is much higher.

The average life expectancy of kiwi is 45 years, but Northland kiwi struggle to reach 15 years, mainly due to predators, in particular dogs, which are the greatest threat to mature kiwi.

“We know that the kiwi population will decline by 2% each year without conservation management, which means in a few decades they will be extinct,” Walker says.

He encourages forest owners to require permits for any hunters allowed in to the forests to hunt pigs or game birds, and to make kiwi aversion training for hunters’

dogs a condition of getting those permits.

DOC Bay of Islands looks after the 550-hectare Waitangi Endowment Forest, which is being progressively logged and replanted in pines. As manager of a commercial forest, DOC has an ideal opportunity to balance the needs of forestry and kiwi, forest consultant Ian Page says.

Based on monitoring of kiwi’s night calls, and capture and tracking of kiwi using a certified kiwi tracking dog and handler, DOC estimates there are 20-30 breeding pairs of kiwi in Waitangi Forest.

DOC ranger Steve McManus, whose work is assisted by kiwi tracking dog Maggie, says Waitangi is laid out in “compartments” separated by protected wetlands, which makes capturing and relocating kiwi easier.

From November 2008 to February 2009, seven kiwi were monitored within the Mt Bledisloe compartment of Waitangi Forest where a forestry gang from Aucklandbased HarvestPro was logging. All survived the logging, but three had to be moved and one egg uplifted for artificial incubation, with the chick released back into the forest six months later.

Over the last three years contractors and DOC have developed kiwi conservation guidelines, which they shared with the forum.

At the top of the list, holding a planning meeting with the logging contractor before felling starts is very important, McManus says.

Looking for signs such as probe holes and excreta can

alert forestry workers to the presence of kiwi, and a trained dog can be brought in to pinpoint nests and burrows.

This is followed by daily monitoring of kiwi, and if necessary arranging the removal of birds and eggs from the path of felling and removing logs from the forest. This person assigned to this task doesn’t have to be a DOC staff member, but training and commitment is required, perhaps for a willing volunteer in the logging gang.

Most kiwi seemed to move out of the logging areas ahead of time because of noise and activity. If a bird comes back to a cut-over territory and finds a lack of cover it moves to another area, McManus says. But gangs needed to make sure that kiwi remaining in an area due to be logged weren’t harmed.

In Waitangi, transmitters were attached to all captured birds, so that pre-dawn scanning established where each bird was, and whether it needed moving before that day’s logging.

HarvestPro supervisor Roger Leaming says the forestry haulage operation costs $9000 a day, so even short disruptions can be expensive. Timely monitoring and relocation of kiwi by DOC meant there was minimal disruption to logging, and the HarvestPro logging crew was right behind efforts to look after kiwi.

Page says the forestry industry has to continue to develop ways of co-existing with kiwi. “It would be nice to pre-empt the spotlight which will inevitably be turned on us if we don’t,” he says.

NORTHLAND

2

While most kiwi scarper when they hear the logging crews approach, others, particularly males sitting on eggs, stay holed up in their burrows as the forest topples around them

1 Forestry workers get acquainted with the kiwi which live in their “workplace”.

2 Kiwi and their eggs are removed from areas before they are logged.

3 Forester Dennis Te Tuhi bonds with a kiwi chick.

3

Forest & Bird

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A special offer for Forest & Bird readers Wild Encounters Our popular Going Places articles and other naturethemed travel stories from Forest & Bird magazine have been collected together in a handy book edition, Wild Encounters, published by Penguin.

From the rocky shore to dense rainforests, from braided riverbeds to alpine meadows, Wild Encounters is a handy guide to the best place to experience New Zealand’s wildlife and wild places.

Wild Encounters will retail in shops for $40, but Forest & Bird readers can purchase this book for just $35, including post and packaging, with $10 from each copy ordered going towards Forest & Bird’s important conservation work.

That means you will receive this beautifully illustrated guide and get to help nature in New Zealand.

Please send a cheque for $35, or provide your credit card details in the form below and send to: Wild Encounters Forest & Bird PO Box 631 Wellington

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Every reader who sends in a completed survey form will go in the draw to win one of 10 copies

of the book Wild Encounters, an omnibus edition of the Going Places stories published in Forest & Bird. One survey per reader please.

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New Zealand has moved to a new mapping system. If you use maps, make sure you’re moving with us.

A lo lot ha has as ch chaannge ngge ed ssiinncce w we e first st beeggaann maakkiin ng to opo poggrrap phica hicaal ma hi maps ps in th the 1930 the 1930 19 300s. s. s.

No N ow w we e haavve aallsso o cha cha hang nged ged edd,, to to a sys yste stte em tth haatt’s ’s com omppaattiibl ble wi with th int nter erna er natition ion onaall nna aavi vigga vi attiioon nal al tec echnol hnoollogie hn ogie og es, s, suucch ch aass GP PS S. We S. We’ e’r ’re us usin ing ddiiffer in ereennt co eren oor ordi rdi dina nate tes es to to map ap the cco th the ouun ntr try an and, d, as a re resu sultt, even su eevven en ouurr laarrge gest st laan ndm maarrks ks havve ssh hifte ifftte ed by by abo bout ut 200m.

20 200m 0m. Off cou 0m ours rse, e, itt’’s nnoot a mo movve e tha hat’t’s vviisi sibl ble tto o the h nnak aked ak ed eye e but ut it ma make kes a diff di ffer erren eren ence nce ce whheen yo youu’’re re try ryin yin ing to to tel ellll soome meon eone onne w wh herre yoou arree..

For more information, visit www.topo50.govt.nz or ask for a Topo50 map from any DOC visitor centre or map retailer.

RAPP0 RAP P00 000 07F 07 7F&B B

Ass Neew A w ZZea eala ea land nd’ss map appi ppi ping ng auutthho orriity ity ty, we we’vve re rele eassed ed new ew top oppog ogra og aphhic icaall map ical aps ttoo ssh hoow w the he cha hang nge. e. Top opoo550 ma m ps ps are re des esiig gned ne ed tto o hel elp yyo oouu find d you our way way th wa thro roug ugh gh remote re mote mo te are eas, ass, aan nd in nccllud lud ude upda up pda date ted in nffoorm mat atio ion on on Dep epar artm ment een nt ooff Con onse onse serv rvat ation io on ((D DOC OC) hutss annd hu d trra ack ckss.. Anndd em me ergen rgen rg enccyy seerrvviice iccees wi willl be us usin usin ng thhem m shhooul uld yo you nne eed ed heellp. p.

haven Ancient

Forest & Bird member Charles Hurford is helping protect a 7000-year-old oak forest in suburban London

N

ot far from Wembley Stadium in London is Perivale Wood Forest Reserve, one of Great Britain’s earliest sanctuaries for native plants and animals. This reserve is owned and managed by the Selborne Society, which was founded in 1885 and is one of Britain’s oldest conservation organisations.

The 11-hectare reserve consists of ancient oak forest, grassland and a small wetland, which is a haven for waterfowl. The dominant forest species is English oak with a sub-canopy layer of hazel, hawthorn and elder.

What is remarkable about this reserve is that it is one of the few remaining forest fragments in London that has never been cleared for agriculture. It is truly an ancient forest, dating back 7000 years to when the last Ice Age ended and the deciduous forests of Britain replaced the retreating glaciers.

The wood survived millennia because it was owned by the local parish and designated as a working wood for the community. Local people treated the forest as a self-renewing resource, cutting timber when needed but allowing the forest to regenerate naturally. In 1902 the Selborne Society bought the land as a wildlife sanctuary.

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The most famous feature of the wood is the bluebells that bloom in early May. When the bluebell is in full flower the scent is delightful and the forest floor becomes a sea of blue.

Charles Hurford, a Forest & Bird member who emigrated from New Zealand 13 years ago after completing a degree in Botany at Canterbury University, serves on the wood’s managing committee. He works in London as a hospital radiographer but his true passion remains conservation. His projects in the reserve include the bird box scheme, which has been running since 1911.

“We have 95 bird boxes in the reserve and this year I have counted 365 blue tit and great tit chicks in the boxes,” he says proudly. Thanks to the continuation of the scheme for nearly a century, Perivale Wood has the highest density of blue tits in the country.

Charles also surveys the native small mammals in the reserve. The animals are caught in small cage traps to be sexed, weighed, and have samples of fur clipped before being released. The data collected allows population densities to be estimated. Unlike in New Zealand, where introduced mammals are a menace, here mammals are the

1

2

1 The most famous feature at Perivale is its bluebells.

2 Checking bird boxes.

natives and are welcomed by conservationists.

“We have voles and field mice but I am still hunting for the elusive shrew that hasn’t been seen for some years.” Charles says.

Human interference is kept to a minimum, and the reserve’s perimeter is protected by an eight-foot fence.

Management practices haven’t changed much in the last thousand years: in winter, the hazel is coppiced and hedges are trimmed; during summer, tracks are maintained and horses graze the pastures.

In the evening, 3000 native wood pigeons roost in the forest canopy. A small population of tawny owls prey on the wood mice that hop around the forest floor. Strange legless lizards called slow worms live in the meadow and hunt invertebrates. In summer small birds of prey called hobbies migrate from northern Africa to nest in Perivale Wood’s tallest tree.

Unfortunately there are some modern environmental problems in the reserve. American grey squirrels and Caribbean ring necked parrots have established themselves in the oak. The bluebells are blooming earlier each year as a direct result of climate change, and the waterways have

London calling – how you can help Forest & Bird would like to provide opportunities for its many UK-based members to share their passion for conservation, and Perivale Wood could be a focal point for activities. If successful it could even be the beginning of a UK branch of Forest & Bird.

Perivale Wood’s guardians welcome help from volunteers in surveying plant and animals, woodland management, clearing paths and waterways, and assisting with bird boxes. If you are a UK-based member or are visiting London and would like to help or visit Perivale Wood, please contact Charles Hurford at 287 Conway Crescent, Perivale, London UB6, or charleshurford@hotmail.com.

been invaded by the New Zealand mud snail Potamopyrgus antipodarum, which is competing with the native snails.

But Charles is not too worried about these changes.

“The wood has survived here for the last 7000 years and as long as we have the contribution and hard work of our enthusiastic members, we will overcome all sorts of problems in the future. I think Perivale Wood will be around for a long time yet.”

Forest & Bird

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Lost and 1 40

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Rod Morris and Erin Anson report on efforts to protect the unique inhabitants of a “Lost World” in Fiordland.

A

sk any New Zealander where Sinbad Gully is and most would be lost for an answer. Ask them about Mitre Peak and they know. Every postcard of Fiordland’s Mitre Peak also features Sinbad Gully, for the valley lies in the shadow of the world renowned peak.

Now the Sinbad itself is to become better known, and better protected, as one of our newest wildlife sanctuaries.

In the 1970s Sinbad Gully was one of the valleys where three of the last wild kakapo survived in Fiordland. Don Merton, head of the kakapo rescue team in Fiordland at the time, felt the only reason the three birds had lasted as long as they had was because they lived high up the steepsided valley, protected from possums and stoats by its sheer walls.

There were no kakapo lower down the valley, where possums and stoats had already penetrated, and it was only a matter of time before they spread up the valley.

Merton proposed a novel idea: to maintain the Sinbad Gully as a natural “mainland island” – a term that has become fashionable now, but in those days was unheard of.

Merton felt stoats and other pests could be kept at near zero levels, simply because the massive, sheer rock walls surrounding much of the valley had already proved an effective barrier against these invaders for so long, compared to the rest of Fiordland. Unfortunately Merton’s dream was not realised – the authorities of the day decided there were insufficient funds for a sanctuary, and voted against it.

Merton was left to explore other options to save the last of Fiordland’s kakapo, and finally obtained approval to remove about a third of the Fiordland kakapo from their failing natural sanctuary, to the comparative safety of an island in the Marlborough Sounds. Kakapo have done well on inshore islands, while the remaining two-thirds of the

2 population left unprotected in Fiordland were lost within about 10 years.

By 2004 Merton was again proposing that the Sinbad was still as effective a management option for kakapo as protecting them on islands.

Though the concept of “mainland islands” was by then well established in New Zealand, the idea was again turned down. But despite the lack of official recognition, the Sinbad’s natural mainland island qualities remained.

Late in 2004, the gully attracted renewed attention when a kind of “lost world”, rich in previously undescribed reptile and invertebrate species, was discovered at the very head of Sinbad Gully.

The unique animal community had survived 1100-1200 metres above sea level in a tiny tussock basin, protected by a 200-metre-high wall of cliffs and cascading waterfalls.

Abundant everywhere were large and spectacular “naïve” species, normally at risk from predators such as stoats, possums and rodents that had survived long after

found

FIORDLAND

1 A Sinbad skink found by Tony Jewell.

2 Mitre Peak with the Sinbad Gully below, shrouded in mist. This “Lost World” is a refuge for rare and fascinating creatures found nowhere else.

Forest & Bird

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they had disappeared from much of Fiordland. It was the insect and reptile equivalent of the kakapo discovery of the seventies – once again the Sinbad was offering conservationists a second chance.

Though predators had been slower to invade this natural fortress, eventually they would infiltrate it – and already the first incursions of mice and possums were beginning. Tony Jewell, a member of the small party who found many of the new species in the little basin, worried that unless effective predator control operations were quickly established, conditions would deteriorate as soon as predators such as predators found their way into this last small, naturally protected site.

And so a small group of people found themselves sitting out in the basin one evening in 2007 surrounded by spectacular peaks and with the site of the old kakapo camp of the seventies far below, worrying about what they could do to protect such a remarkable place.

Among them was film-maker Jinty McTavish, who suggested they holding public meetings around Te Anau to get local people involved. With the support of Merton, the Department of Conservation and the new Fiordland Conservation Trust, we visited Te Anau to give public talks on the “Wonders of the Sinbad”.

McTavish showed her film, Jewell talked about the reptiles and invertebrates, and we retold the story of the kakapo in the seventies. We returned several times to

give that talk, and each time more local people came up to us – they were equally concerned and trying to solve the problem.

The in August 2009 tourist operator Southern Discoveries announced it would sponsor a project that would see the Sinbad Gully become a protected sanctuary for many of Fiordlands’ Native species.

Working with project partners the Fiordland Conservation Trust and DOC, Southern Discoveries will donate $25,000 in the first year and $35,000 each year after that to the Sinbad Gully Pest Control Project.

Southern Discoveries general manager John Robson says the company is totally committed to the project.

“We are really excited to support such a worthwhile project in this beautiful area of New Zealand. We are passionate about the project and determined to see results.”

Southern Discoveries plans to promote the Sinbad Gully project in the information provided to tourists in Milford Sound.

Control of stoats and possums on the project will immediately benefit a number of Sinbad species which have been showing signs of population collapse for some time, such as tokoeka (kiwi), blue duck, kaka, weka and mohua.

Even before the deal was struck, DOC had begun work on a track up the valley. Stoat trapping was underway on the valley floor and rodents and lizards were being

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monitored in the upper basin by the end of the year.

Next year possums will be targeted throughout the valley and further rodent monitoring will be carried out lower down the valley.

The greatest challenge long term will be to control the smallest of our introduced predators. The tiny house mouse can be easily overlooked as a predator, but DOC knows it may well be the greatest enemy of the rare reptiles and invertebrates, and small birds such as the rock wren that still thrive in the upper Sinbad Basin.

Mice pose a threat because they are far more tolerant of cold than rats and other larger predators. Because mice are so small they don’t hibernate and are active even in the depths of winter, entering small crevices in search of food and attacking any hibernating lizards they may find.

But with a committed group of people helping, the prospects of the Sinbad look promising: with predators controlled, this natural mainland island could be home to species long lost from Fiordland, like saddlebacks and little spotted kiwi. If re-introductions of those species are successful, perhaps kakapo can be returned. It would certainly be a fitting tribute to the one man who saw the Sinbad as a sanctuary 30 years before the rest of us.

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3 Juvenile Sinbad skink. The skinks and other native wildlife in the Sinbad Gully are threatened by predators such as mice and possums but pest control will give them a brighter future.

4 Tiny terror: a mouse raids a rock wren nest.

5 Cascade gecko, Sinbad Gully. The gecko’s camouflaging makes it almost invisible against the lichen and moss-clad rocks.

6 Mahogany skink in the Sinbad Gully. Many of the skinks and other animals in the Sinbad are found nowhere else.

7 The Sinbad was one of the last mainland refuges for the kakapo – and it may now be a haven for other unique and endangered wildlife.

8 Sinbad saviours: Tony Jewell and Jinty McTavish go to great heights to protect the unique wildlife of the Sinbad Gully.

8 Murray Judge, one of a team dedicated to saving the Sinbad, scales its sheer rock walls.

All photographs by Rod Morris

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A national park of the sea

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1 Tasman booby guards its nest. Photo Karen Baird.

2 Migrating humpback whales and their young are commonly seen passing the islands. Here a humpback calf is breaching. Photo Karen Baird.

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KERMADEC ISLANDS

Forest & Bird Kermadec Advocate Karen Baird puts the case for creating the largest marine protected area on the planet around the Kermadec Islands.

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rotecting the world’s oceans has never been high on any country’s agenda. Essentially treated as a global commons, exploitation has been the name of the game for centuries.

Once one fishery collapses, fishing companies simply move on to the next, with virtually no effort to maintain the oceans’ bounty. We are now teetering on the brink of ocean ecosystem collapse. But New Zealand now has an opportunity to make a very real difference to the global effort to protect ocean biodiversity in am ambitious project called Global Ocean Legacy.

Our contribution will be to formally declare the largest marine protected area on the planet, creating the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary around our northernmost territory, the Kermadec Islands.

Global Ocean Legacy is a project initated by Pew Environment Group, a US non-government organisation (www.pewtrusts.org). Its aim in the Kermadecs is to establish 3-5 marine protected areas similar in scope to the 140,000 square miles of ocean protected off Hawaii.

Forest & Bird and WWF have joined Pew to promote similar protection around the Kermadecs.

The Kermadec Islands are located 1000 kilometres north-east of New Zealand, and have been a part of its territory since 1887. Situated between latitudes 29°S and 31.5°S, the islands are the only subtropical habitat in New Zealand territory.

The islands are a volcanic island arc, formed where the Pacific tectonic plate subducts beneath the Indo-Australian plate. The four main islands in the group, Raoul, Macauley, Curtis and L’Esperance Rock, are the tops of volcanoes that rise above sea level. Raoul and Curtis are active volcanoes and earthquakes are common.

The islands have been a nature reserve since 1937 and are on the nomination list to become a World Heritage Site. The waters around them have been protected in a

marine reserve out to 12 nautical miles offshore, covering 7450 square kilometres, since 1990.

These subtropical waters are well known for their friendly fish – especially their huge spotted black grouper – and are considered one of the last unfished marine ecosystems anywhere in the world.

The Kermadec volcanic arc is the longest submarine volcanic arc in the world: 1200km of the Pacific tectonic plate is forced under the Indo-Australian plate, creating thermal activity all the way from White Island in the Bay of Plenty to Samoa, part of the Pacific “Ring of Fire”.

This line of more than 90 submarine volcanoes and the deep ocean trench creates some of the deepest ocean habitats on the planet – the Kermadec Trench to the east of the islands is 10,047 metres deep, not far off the depths of the world’s deepest, the Mariana Trench at 10,911m.

A third of the waters in the Kermadec region are of depths greater than 5000m.

In these deepest layers of the ocean, beyond the lifegiving energy of the sun, virtually nothing can exist without returning to the surface to gain energy. But scientists have discovered that bacteria living on hydrothermal vents (where superheated water warmed by geothermal activity is exuded into the cold ocean floor) gain their energy directly from this source, completely independent of the life processes closer to the surface, which are dependent on photosynthesis.

This unorthodox way of life has created bizarre creatures, many unique to each vent system. Marine scientists struggle to gain funds to study these deep-sea communities and have only had tantalising glimpses of the alien treasures found there, many completely new to science.

An expedition in November to survey these great depths using “Alfie”, a deepwater remote operated vehicle, revealed amazing creatures, including one of the deepest Forest & Bird

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living fish on the planet, a wrinkly pink snail fish (Notoliparis kermadecensis) which was found more than 7000m below the surface. These creatures from the abyss have to survive incredible crushing pressures of that massive amount of water.

In my former position as Department of Conservation programme manager for the Kermadec Islands in 2007 I was lucky enough to hitch a ride on the NIWA vessel Tangaroa on an expedition to study and map the sea floor and study its geology. My biologist colleagues and I were always present on deck when a dredge was brought up and pounced on the sea creatures incidentally caught up in the dredges, and marvelled at their magnificence. What struck me was how different they were from anything I am familiar with around New Zealand’s coasts.

Closer to the light nearer the ocean’s surface the waters are occupied by fish and marine mammals. These communities are dominated by sharks, tuna, billfish such as the swordfish, marlin and bramids. Here, too, species new to science and endemic to the region are found, for example the spiny dogfish (Squalus raoulensis) discovered

by DOC scientist Clinton Duffy.

The Kermadecs used to be known as the French Rock whaling grounds – enormous catches of sperm and right whales were taken to the east of the islands in the late 1700s till the early 1800s. The deep oceanic trenches provide hunting grounds for sperm whales and the less commonly seen beaked whales.

The whaling settlements are long gone but humpback whales now delight the handful of DOC staff who live on Raoul Island as the whales come past with their calves on their annual southward migration from September to November. A lazy afternoon on the deck of the hostel

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at this time is punctuated with the sound and sight of humpbacks breaching and cavorting. A count on just one day during the migration last year recorded more than 100 whales around Raoul Island.

Highly visible above the oceans around the Kermadecs are the seabirds – on 10 trips to the islands over the last three years I have seen all the seabirds known to breed on the now completely predator-free Kermadec Islands.

Exciting new discoveries about the seabirds around the Kermadecs are still being made. The species of booby found on the islands was recently confirmed to be the Tasman race of masked booby, which was previously thought to be extinct.

Some 10-15 million seabirds now breed on the Kermadecs, but it would have once been an unimaginably large number – and will be again, now that pest control is again making their island breeding grounds safe from predators.

The most recent and final rat eradication in the Kermadecs took place on Macauley Island in 2006, enabling our smallest and most vulnerable seabirds, the Kermadec storm petrel, white-bellied storm petrel and Kermadec little shearwater the freedom to return there to breed.

One bird that didn’t really seem affected by the Polynesian rat on Macauley is the magnificent white-naped petrel. Exterminated on Raoul Island by the ravages of humans, Norway rats and cats, Macauley is the petrels’ sole remaining stronghold.

But these seabirds need protection at sea – where they spend most of their time – as well as on land. Feeding this burgeoning population of seabirds requires vast areas of productive ocean, and safety from being inadvertently caught in fishing gear.

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3 Sea urchins are among the weird and wonderful marine life found around the Kermadec Islands. Photo Malcolm Clark.

4 Monowai vent fauna – many weird creatures are found at the incredible depths of the ocean near the Kermadecs. Photo Malcolm Clark.

5 White-bellied storm petrels are among the many seabirds found on and around the Kermadecs. Photo Tubenose Project (A&C Black)/Hadoram Shirihai 6 A Kermadec petrel is dwarfed by the Muppet-like fluffiness of its chick.

Photo Karen Baird.

7 Black-winged petrel chicks are an endearing ball of fluff. Photo Karen Baird.

In 2006, the sword fish fishery was closed down when one Australian boat killed 54 albatrosses, among other species. Observer records indicate at least 10 southern breeding seabird species have been caught as fishing bycatch in the region – as less than 6% of fishing is observed, this estimate is likely to be conservative.

Fishing in the Kermadec Fisheries Management Area is not intense, largely due to the high cost of operating in an area so distant from New Zealand, and lack of shelter for smaller vessels. The seabed is designated as a Benthic Protection Area throughout the region, which means it is off-limits to seabed trawling.

However the pressure caused by fishing could intensify.

The oceans beyond our EEZ in the Kermadec area are intensively fished by Taiwanese fishing boats, and once a fisheries management plan is prepared for the Kermadecs joint ventures could target these waters, too.

The potential for seabed mining could pose an even greater threat. Crown Research Institutes such as GNS Science and NIWA having been surveying the seafloor to see what minerals are there. One estimate put the value of seafloor minerals in our EEZ at $500 billion, but the economic reality is likely to be less lucrative.

There is little doubt that minerals, including gold, silver, copper and zinc, exist in the region. They are

present in the superheated water exuded through seafloor vents, creating massive sulphide deposits on the surrounding seabed.

Two mining companies are exploring the region for its mineral wealth, though it seems likely that mining will be decades away, if it proceeds at all, but there is still cause for concern about its potential impact on the fragile, largely unknown seabed life. NIWA concluded that mining “poses a potentially significant threat” to these seabed communities.

The financial return to New Zealand from the Kermadec Islands from commercial activities is minuscule.

The enormous potential benefit for New Zealand of creating the largest protected area of ocean on the planet is much greater.

Global Ocean Legacy’s proposal would establish a marine reserve out to the 200-mile EEZ limit around the islands, encompassing a 630,000-square-kilometres “national park of the sea”. To achieve this, Forest & Bird will be urging the Government to create special legislation declaring this area totally protected.

To learn more about the proposal go to www.pewtrusts.org and type “kermadec” into the search box.

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A forest

saved

Marina Skinner looks at the success of Whirinaki Forest Park a quarter of a century after the chainsaws stopped, and revisits the battle to save it.

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n Whirinaki Forest Park, you’re always looking towards the sky. The treetops are up there somewhere. At Whirinaki are some of New Zealand’s tallest trees – magnificent, mature rimu, totara, matai, miro and kahikatea. They have thrived on the fertile valley floors since the great Taupo eruption almost 2000 years ago. Some of these giants were saplings when the Normans were hatching battle plans on one side of the English Channel.

During the 1970s and 1980s Whirinaki became a battleground as conservationists fought to protect New Zealand’s finest remaining giant podocarp forest from Forest Service logging.

“Whirinaki is one of the great forests of the world,” wrote John Morton, John Ogden and Tony Hughes in their 1984 book To Save a Forest: Whirinaki. “Whirinaki’s appeal is not only in its antiquity and complexity, but in its virtual uniqueness.”

The forests were relatively undisturbed for centuries – until the 1930s when clear felling began. By the 1970s this had been scaled back to “selective” logging.

The Forest Service justified this practice by saying it was cutting down just the odd tree without damaging the forest – much like the “surgical mining” that Prime Minster John Key has in mind for our prime conservation land today.

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The loggers – led by local Forest Service staff – tried to make an ecological case for logging, arguing that the podocarp forest was in its death throes. Judicious logging of trees near the end of their natural lives would allow seedlings to be planted in the gaps. The Forest Service tried to reinvent itself as a kindly doctor to native forests, gently euthanising the oldest members and nurturing a new generation.

Ecologists pointed out the fallacy of the loggers’ arguments. Forest & Bird advocacy manager Kevin Hackwell – in the late 1970s working for the DSIR’s ecology division – did research that disproved the Forest Service theories. “It was just a convenient excuse for the Forest Service to justify logging,” he says.

His work revealed the natural cycle of podocarp forests and how the deepest deposits of volcanic ash supported the most dense stands of forest.

Academics, including zoology professor John Morton, botany senior lecturer John Ogden and biology researcher Tony Hughes – all from the University of Auckland – and Auckland Museum Herbarium curator Ewen Cameron spoke up for Whirinaki’s native forest.

As conservationists started bringing visitors to see Whirinaki’s wonders and the damage the loggers were

doing, the Forest Service enlisted support from locals, including the Ngati Whare iwi, concerned about their mill’s closure and job losses.

The Native Forests Action Council (NFAC) spearheaded the Whirinaki protests, but Forest & Bird became a key player. The activists who came through the Whirinaki and Pureora conservation campaigns brought new blood to Forest & Bird. Some outspoken people in the Whirinaki campaign joined Forest & Bird’s Executive, including John Morton and Alan Edmonds.

Forest & Bird veteran Carole Long visited the forest many times during the campaign. “A large tree had been felled, cut up with a portable mill and was ready for a helicopter to lift out the timber,” she remembers.

“It was just so wrong to see timber extraction in that fabulous forest.”

After the Labour Party won the 1984 election, selective logging at Whirinaki ended, and later that year Whirinaki Forest Park was born.

The Minginui timber mill continued for another four years, handling windfall trees and plantation pines. Once the small mill closed, the remote area was forced to look for other employment options.

Eco-tourism has grown during the past quarter century, and the forest park now attracts mountain bikers, horse trekkers, hunters and trampers. Last year during commemorations of the 25th anniversary of the forest park’s creation, new campground facilities and a new bike and walking trail were opened.

Ngati Whare today celebrates its forest for its natural values, rather than its timber, and the iwi is leading the way with guided forest tours. “We realise now that for a period our economic survival instincts caused us to lose touch with our traditional values,” the iwi says on its website.

“We thank those dedicated ‘greenies’ who fought so hard to protect the remaining forest from milling by the government forestry programmes at the time. A painful lesson for all is being healed by knowing that together we can safeguard this treasure for the future.”

The iwi in December signed an agreement to settle outstanding Treaty of Waitangi claims. It means the iwi and the Department of Conservation will work together to manage Whirinaki Forest Park.

Ngati Whare is working on Project Whirinaki, which has a 500-year vision to replant areas of harvested pine with totara. The Mangawiri Basin’s magnificent totara forest was clear felled in 1973 and planted in radiata pine, douglas fir and eucalypts. The exotics were harvested in 2002 and the area may be one of the first to be replanted with podocarps and other native trees and shrubs, according to forest ecologist Tony Beveridge, who is working with Ngati Whare.

Kevin Hackwell returned to the battleground at the Whirinaki 25 celebrations in September, and he came away feeling positive about the forest’s future. “It was great to see the forests still standing. It was nice to acknowledge that the battles were of the past. And it was great to see Ngati Whare’s commitment to restoring those forests that were lost.”

Whirinaki Forest Park borders Te Urewera National Park, and is about 100 kilometres south-east of Rotorua, at the end of SH38.

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Support from an international

TREE HUGGER

3 English botanist David Bellamy threw his celebrity weight behind the closing stages of the Whirinaki campaign, and he returned last September to mark the 25th anniversary of the forest park.

During the campaign he sang the praises of the ancient podocarps – the “dinosaur forest” – and supported the reinvention of Whirinaki as an eco-tourism destination.

His international reputation undoubtedly gave the campaign a huge publicity boost but many Whirinaki veterans point out that the hard work was done by the New Zealanders in the years before Bellamy first set eyes on a Whirinaki totara.

1 Podocarp forest at Whirinaki Forest Park. Photo Craig Potton 2 Minginui residents put up a barricade of signs to “welcome” visiting conservationists in June 1978. Photo: New Zealand Herald Archives 3 From left, activist Stephen King, botanist David Bellamy and academic John Morton barricaded inside a hut at Whirinaki Visitor Centre in 1984 while the locals were outside bashing on the walls. Photo Elise Macdonald.

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in the field

Transtasman relations Ann Graeme crosses the ditch “Where have you been?” our friends ask.

“We’ve been camping in national parks in Australia.”

“But what about the snakes?”

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oor snakes, carrying the burden of our fears, for they are not a problem to campers in Australia. Snakes mind their own business. Not so the biting insects but they can be repelled with insecticide or, better still, with live bait. My husband is excellent in this role. No self-respecting mosquito or biting marchfly will bother me while Basil is around.

But these irritations are minor and our camping holidays are a delight. As the title of Richard Dawkins’ new book says, evolution is “The greatest show on Earth” and there is no better way to enjoy it than in a tent in Australia. This is not to decry New Zealand but to celebrate our differences.

Long ago, both our fledgling countries were part of the Gondwana super-continent and populated by its plants and animals. New Zealand drifted away into temperate latitudes and, surrounded by sea, it became a cool, wellwatered refuge for some of those Gondwana species. We were quarantined from the rest of the world and only a few immigrants crossed the Tasman and reached our shores.

Our giant neighbour Australia drifted north into warmer latitudes and her continental climate of drought, flood and fire was ill-suited to the old Gondwana plants. But she had the ingredients for evolution; the vast land mass, the varied landforms, immigrant species from nearby Asia, and time, for Australia is very, very old. Australia is now home to a vast diversity of living things, each unique, some bizarre and many beautiful.

Now we have these lands of contrast: New Zealand like a string quartet, a few special players performing on a little stage, while Australia is like a huge orchestra playing in an opera house.

Excerpts from the holiday diary: Despite its well-deserved reputation for heat, Australia can be very cold, especially inland. So it is a pleasure to snuggle in my sleeping bag and listen to the dawn chorus.

In the Bunya Mountains it starts with the doleful cawing of the crows and then the kookaburras warm up. Their manic laughter rises to a crescendo and then abruptly stops.

The family group disperses, each to its favourite perch to keep a beady eye out for insects, lizards or the breakfast of careless campers.

Now the currawongs and butcher birds began to sing, the currawong with its ringing chimes and the butcher bird with its flute-like melody. They are related to magpies.

Then above the chirp and twitter of other birds comes a long-drawn call ending in a ringing crack. It is immediately followed by a soft wi-choo, which is the female whip bird replying to her mate.

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We lie smiling, and then comes the peevish yowl of a tomcat. Oh dear! A pest in this paradise?

But no, it is the catbird, a shy, kakapo-green bird foraging on the forest margin.

Australia has its own native predators, snakes, lizards and birds, but introduced pests have made their mark.

Cats and foxes wreak havoc on many species, especially the small marsupials. But the native plant and animal species are so diverse and so resilient that the landscape remains unmistakably Australian and much of the wildlife is still plentiful and easy to see.

Bunya mountains National Park, Queensland The satin bowerbird perches on a branch above the picnic table, watching us with its sapphire eyes. We shield the food, knowing it might be after the sandwiches. But when it swoops down it takes us by surprise. It seizes the blue milk bottle top and flies off.

We find a bower, sturdily built of twigs with its yard tastefully decorated with blue ornaments: sweet wrappers, plastic lids, a peg, a plastic bead necklace, even a plastic mug – which must have been hard for the bird to carry.

Before people came, the satin bowerbirds would gather blue flowers or berries but now they prefer the brighter and more durable human trash.

How extraordinary that natural selection should lead to this extravagant work – all to entice a female and persuade her to mate. The satin bowerbird is one of eight species of bowerbird, all different in appearance and behaviour.

A female satin bowerbird would disdain the greater bowerbird and his bower – he collects bleached bones and snail shells rather than her species’ preferred blues.

Bald Rock National Park New England National Park is high country, 1500 metres up on the tablelands of northern New South Wales. The plateau ends abruptly in cliffs facing east over the forested mountains to the coast. At Lookout Point the snow gums and banksias are crouching before the dust-laden wind from the interior. Then we go down the cliff track and step into another world.

It could be New Zealand. Moisture seeps down the sheer rocks, draped with ferns, mosses and leafy liverworts.

We know the ferns, Blechnum, hound’s tongue, filmy ferns and weki ponga with chubby trunks. We recognise the silhouettes of the trees – they are Nothofagus moorei, the Antarctic beech. Here is a little corner of old Gondwana in Australia.

Unlike New Zealand, Australia’s Gondwana heritage included the earliest mammals, the egg-laying platypus and echidna and the marsupials. The marsupials flourished, evolving to fill the niches offered by the vast and diverse land, and unhindered by the more recent placental mammals

that would out-compete them elsewhere. Bats probably flew in a long time ago but it seems that rodents only reached Australia between one and four million years ago.

From the shelter of our tent we watch a wallaby grazing in the early morning. Hopping is a really smart way of getting around. Like walking, it involves only the back legs, but unlike walking, she can use her tail as a third leg for extra balance and propulsion.

The wallaby moves slowly about, nibbling the grass.

She is “heavily freighted” as the Australians say, carrying a large joey in her pouch. She sits up, resting on her tail while her joey climbs out of the pouch. It bounces around the clearing as if propelled on a pogo stick, delighted to be out and about. Then it bounds back to its mother and parts her pouch with its tiny hands. While the mother stands resignedly, her forearms dangling, the joey thrusts its head in for a drink, which makes its bottom stick up and its tail point skywards. It looks so funny that we laugh out loud, and the mother and joey bound away.

Girraween National Park As the days pass we become not blase but accustomed to the landscape. We still marvel at the towering eucalypts, the gaudy flash of king parrots and the leaf-tailed gecko flattened along the branch but we no longer go into ecstasies over a scrub wren or another honeyeater feeding in the flowers.

On the flight home, cocooned in the pressurised cabin and eating from our plastic trays, I cannot help but envy Australia’s rich natural diversity compared to our own.

New Zealand’s fauna was once bizarre and extraordinary.

Imagine coming upon a moa plucking leaves, or seeing mainland cliffs crowded with seabirds or ducking as a Haast’s eagle swooped overhead. But our fauna is still extraordinary, I remind myself. Although much has been lost, much remains for us to cherish.

READER GIVEAWAY

Where to See Birds in Victoria Forest & Bird has a copy of Where to See Birds in Victoria, edited by Tim Dolby, Penny Johns and Sally Symonds, published by Birds Australia, to give away to a reader.

To enter the draw to win this full-colour, 192-page guide, send your name and address and the correct answer to the question below to Birds in Victoria Draw, Forest & Bird, PO Box 631, Wellington by March 15.

Question: which of the following is NOT an Australian bird?

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Purple-gaped Honeyeater Orchard Bilbrough Spangled Drongo Pale-vented Bulbul

Then I think about the fantail. We saw fantails in Australia just like our piwakawaka. This little bird was one of the handful of species that crossed the Tasman Sea and colonised New Zealand. It survived the 6000-kilometre journey without rest or food, battered by the storm that had tossed it aloft and carried it to land exhausted on our shores. At least two, a male and a female, must have arrived together to begin the fantail population that dances in our forests today. The odds against this happening were enormous.

As well as cherishing our old Gondwana species; kiwi, kokako, tuatara and weta, let us celebrate our immigrants: piwakawaka, riroriro, pukeko and kahu the harrier. They have earned their place amongst the native wildlife on New Zealand.

Illustrations by Pamela Robinson

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going places

Noah Just call us

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The volunteers at Auckland’s Ark in the Park have helped create a forest refuge for endangered birds. By Marina Skinner.

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RK in the Park looks like a beautiful kauri forest. It sounds good, too, with the sort of birdsong you’d expect from a green patch of the Waitakere Ranges.

But if you listen carefully you’ll pick out a few unexpected notes among the tui, fantail and grey warbler calls. There’s the “zit-zit” of a stitchbird, or hihi, and the long “cheep” of a North Island robin. Our guide, Yvonne Vaneveld, points out the musical ditty of a whitehead. If we’d been deeper into the park, we might have heard the melancholy chime of a kokako.

You don’t need to squeeze through a gate to get in to this mainland restoration project. There are no fences. And no admission fees.

There’s one reason why the Ark can support populations of translocated endangered birds such as the kokako: pest control. Possums have been controlled since the late 1990s but since early 2003 baiting and trapping for rats, mice and stoats have led to astonishing results.

Before pest control started, 80% of the rat monitoring tunnels showed signs of rats. Since 2007, the figure has rarely gone above 1%. Outside the Ark – where there’s no pest control – more than half the monitoring tunnels have rat footprints. In the Ark even mice numbers are down to less than 5%.

To achieve this, the Ark has been divided into a grid of 2160 bait stations every 50 x 100 metres. There are also 218 stoat traps.

An army of volunteers checks the traps and bait stations regularly. Some volunteers are so committed that they “own” bait lines, taking over particular lines for at least a year.

“Volunteers are the backbone of the Ark,” says park ranger Riki Bennett – one of the few paid employees involved.

The commander-in-chief of this volunteer army is Karen Colgan, who deploys up to 334 people, including more than 80 who turn up very regularly.

Ark in the Park – a partnership between Forest and Bird’s Waitakere branch and the Auckland Regional Council – has become phenomenally successful, and the Ark’s Auckland City Walk is one of the most visited walks in the Auckland area. This bush track is an easy stroll 2 through regenerating forest, crossing the shaded Anderson Stream.

Walkers can get close to kauri giants – though not too close to risk spreading kauri dieback disease.

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Nikau palms, ferns and kiekie tangles create a dense, green backdrop.

If you stop quietly on the track for a minute or two, you might see North Island robins. On my first visit to the Ark, two robins almost hopped on my boots near the start of the Auckland City Walk.

The robins – first reintroduced in 2005 and topped up last June – have settled in to their new home, and this summer more than a dozen nests were spotted.

The yellow-dappled male hihi are reasonably easy to see in the trees once you pinpoint where they’re calling from.

Kaka are in the park, and it’s hoped that they might set up a base at the Ark. Usually kaka return to where they were born to breed. Ark in the Park project manager Maj de Poorter is optimistic: “Last season at least one juvenile was seen and two adults were seen hanging around. We did see kaka mating at the Ark earlier this season.”

Bringing kokako to the Ark has been much harder work.

Four females and two males were introduced last year, and more will follow in the coming two years. Funding for the labour-intensive work of the specialist catching teams is a challenge, and the Ark is looking for the $60,000 needed this year to top up the kokako numbers.

The kokako have moved to the southern reaches of the Ark, and new bait lines covering 300 hectares outside the Ark have been put in over summer to better protect the birds, which include the first pair formed.

As we come to the end of the Auckland City Walk and return to the picnic area and car park, we clean our shoes on scrubbers and squirt them with disinfectant spray. The same drill applies on the way into the Ark. Unfortunately, there are already some cases of kauri dieback (PTA or Phytophthora taxon Agathis) in the Ark area and the risk of spreading it further is treated very seriously. If the microscopic pathogen isn’t stopped it could eventually destroy the unique kauri habitat.

Here, they’re doing all they can to fulfil the grand vision you’d expect of a park called an “ark”.

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1 Volunteers at Auckland’s Ark in the Park

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2 A kokako released in the Ark in November scoffed almost a whole banana before being set free. Photo: Eric Wilson 3 A male hihi feeds a chick at the Ark. Photo: Laurence Bechet 4 A kauri on the Upper Kauri Track. Photo Laurence Bechet 5 North Island robin. Photo: Laurence Bechet 6 A pou whenua, or carved post, in the Ark signifies the links between Te Kawerau a Maki iwi of the area, their ancestors and the land. The pou was carved by Summa Thompson.

Ark in the Park milestones 2003 Pilot area of 250 hectares established 2004 Park extended to 600 hectares Whiteheads introduced 2005 Park extended to 800 hectares North Island robins introduced 2006 Park extended to 1100 hectares First successful robin breeding season

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2007 Hihi introduced 2008 More whiteheads and hihi introduced Park extended to 1200 hectares 2009 Top-up of North Island robins Kokako introduced Another 300 hectares of bait lines added to extend the Ark boundaries

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Getting there: The Cascade Kauri Park in the Waitakere Ranges Regional Park is the main entry to Ark in the Park. It is about five minutes’ drive from Swanson, which is about 25 minutes’ drive from the centre of Auckland. Drive through Swanson and continue to the start of the Scenic Drive. Take the Te Henga Road turn-off, then take Falls Road, the first road on the left. Drive through Waitakere Golf Club to the Ark entrance.

More information: www.arkinthepark.org.nz

WAITAKERE RANGES

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Kiwi: Dick Veich, Ruru: Ian Gill/DOC

Rangatahi

Teen Greens Christchurch teenager Bethany Mathers has turned her hand to many environmental causes: protesting against dams, busting weeds, trapping pests and saving whales are just a sample of her environmental resume.

Growing up with parents who are keen on conservation, and a godmother who got her interested through the Kiwi Conservation Club, Bethany, now 16, was out exploring Canterbury’s wild places from a young age.

She remembers going to the opening of the KorowaiTorlesse Tussockland Park in 2001 where she was awestruck by the fields of tussocks and amazed by the tiny plants that seemed to hang on for dear life on the rocky scree slopes.

She was also involved in community protests against the building of a dam in the Waianiwaniwa Valley in her hometown of Coalgate.

More recently Bethany has helped Forest & Bird by removing wilding pines from the Craigieburn Forest Park.

These rogue pine seedlings can have a huge impact on the tussocklands that Bethany had admired when she was younger.

She tries to learn the names of native plants on these trips, but admits she sometimes has trouble remembering them all afterwards. “I like to take in as much information as I can because I’m working with people who have so much knowledge to share. Even if I remember just one plant name from each trip I’m learning something.”

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Bethany often attends Green Party meetings with her mum, who is an active member of the party. At one of these meetings Bethany and a fellow green teenager, decided to set up Teen Greens, a sub group of Young Greens that provides a teenage perspective on environmental issues.

Teen Greens is based on social networking site Bebo, and allows teenagers from around New Zealand to share their thoughts on conservation and the environment with people their own age. “We felt we weren’t old enough to relate to Young Greens members, who are mostly in their twenties and thirties, so we thought the easiest solution was to set up our own group.”

Membership of Teen Greens is growing and Bethany hopes they can gather together soon face to face, instead of in cyberspace.

Climate change is top of Bethany’s agenda and she is active with her local 350 climate change group and her former KCC leader, Eleanor Bissell, predicts that Bethany will continue her work far into the future.

“She’s a bright young spark and approaches everything with thoughtfulness, determination and an amazing level of maturity. I don’t doubt she will become a great advocate for the environment and conservation in the future.”

To join the Teen Greens forum go to

www.younggreens.org.nz

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The environmental programme, which we’ve called ‘Restoring New Zealand’s Forest Floor’, commits regular funding from every local Flooring Xtra store to Forest & Bird, so that they may plant in excess of 15,000 native plants and trees around New Zealand every year.

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Forest & Bird

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pacific

A brighter future Debs Martin meets the colour-morphing Kakerori in Rarotonga.

I

t was a misunderstanding that revealed how little we knew about the kakerori.

It was previously thought that the male kakerori – aka the Rarotongan flycatcher (Pomarea dimidiata) – was grey and the female orange.

With populations of the kakaerori plummeting, this conventional wisdom wasn’t challenged until the population was “rediscovered” by British ornithologist Derek Todd in 1983. The colouring is actually related to age: young birds are a vibrant orange, with the grey colouring becoming dominant by their third year, and fouryear-old kakerori being fully grey.

When the remnant and rat-plagued population of 20 kakerori was found in1983 it triggered efforts to protect them. From a population dangerously close to extinction in the 1980s, its population has now reached a relatively comfortable 300-plus. That is still far from numerous, but this delightful little bird now appears reasonably assured of a future on both Rarotonga and the outlying island of Atiu.

Takitumu Conservation Area is an initiative led by local landowners, ably assisted by bird enthusiasts and conservation workers from New Zealand, to manage the kakerori – and hopefully see its numbers continue to grow.

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Ed Saul, stalwart of the kakerori population management programme, is passionate about the kakerori – a distant relative of our fantail – and humble about his role in its recovery. It takes Department of Conservation scientist Hugh Robertson to tell me kakerori would be extinct if it weren’t for Ed’s efforts.

Ed arrived in 1989 and became involved in early recovery efforts. At that time only 29 birds were known to exist – predatory ship rats had sent the population into massive decline.

Intensive predator trapping allowed the population to recover to 180 in 1999. Now, a decade on, the yearly census found a secure population of 306 birds.

Permanently settling in Rarotonga in 1991, Ed and the team led an intensive rat baiting programme across 155 hectares in the forested hill country of south-eastern Rarotonga. Laying bait stations every 25 metres up the valleys each year before the nesting season significantly reduces rat numbers – and has further benefits due to the secondary poisoning of feral cats.

While ship rats remain in Rarotonga, the kakerori will continue to need intensive management, but the translocation of 30 birds to Atiu in 2001-2003 provided an

Pacific conservation in focus 3 added safety precaution to ensure the species’ survival.

At the entrance to the Takitimu Conservation Area a sign says “Turou Oromai ki te Au Ngai Taporoporo o Takitumu” – welcome. And visitors provide much-needed income to continue the conservation work.

Ed guides me through tropical rainforest on the volcanic slope, reminding me of our close New Zealand relations of the tropical cousins among the flora here – neinei and karaka connect us in both botanical as well as cultural ways.

The kakerori were not yet nesting when I visited, but Ed is aware of the territories of several pairs of birds where he hopes they will later nest and raise their young.

One, named Gumboot Bill, was the first to receive two identifying bands on each of his legs, which help their guardians keep track of how each of their charges is faring.

The birds are elusive – the weather is cooler and windier than their preferred sunshine – but Ed announces our presence with a fairly persuasive bird call imitation made by a wet sucking sound on the skin between the thumb and forefinger, and the occasional banging on the tree with a small machete.

The birds’ inquisitive nature eventually brings two down to briefly check us out, and I am further rewarded by the close investigation of two “yearlings” – one banded – and I am able to add to the information in this year’s census.

Thanks to those Forest & Bird readers who sent their used binoculars for use in conservation projects throughout the Pacific. We received nearly 100 pairs and most have already been distributed and are being used by conservation groups for work such as monitoring bird populations and ranges. This information could prove vital for ensuring the protection of some of the Pacific’s rarest species.

The binoculars pictured here are being used by local conservation volunteers in Nabukelevu, Kadavu.

1 Juvenile orange kakerori. Photo Marcus Lawson.

2 Ed Saul with kakerori 3 Hugh Robertson and Jo Hoare weighing and measuring kakerori.

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| 57

branching out

City sanctuary Forest & Bird’s Central Auckland and Waitakere branches are keeping a watchful eye on a birdlife haven just a stone’s throw from the city’s notorious motorway congestion.

Motu Manawa (Pollen Island) Marine Reserve protects 500 hectares of the inner reaches of Waitemata Harbour, including the mudflats, saltmarches and estuaries surrounding Pollen and Traherne Islands. The reserve is a haven for a rich variety of birdlife – despite its close proximity to the roar of traffic along the busy North-western Motorway.

Forest & Bird was a driving force in securing protection of the area as a marine reserve. Its former owners, Ports of Auckland, leased the area to Forest & Bird for 10 years until 2005, saving it from port development. During this time Forest & Bird drew up a management plan for the island, and identified its endangered and rare birds, insects and plants.

When the lease ended in June 2005, ownership of Pollen Island was transferred to the Department of Conservation and the island joined the surrounding Motu Manawa (Pollen Island) Marine Reserve, which Forest & Bird applied for in the mid 1990s.

The area is one of the few sizeable remnants of marine estuarine mangroves remaining in Waitemata Harbour.

The marine reserve is a resting point for migratory birds flying between the Manukau and Kaipara Harbours and hosts a rich diversity of bird species, some of them rare and endangered, including fernbirds, banded rails, New Zealand dotterels, white and white-faced herons, spotless crakes, black, pied, little and little black shags, red-billed and black-backed gulls, white-fronted and Caspian terns, pied stilts, banded dotterels, godwits, knots, sandpipers, South Island pied oystercatchers, wrybills, pukeko and kingfishers.

Its sparkling white shell banks and panoramic views across Waitemata Harbour are a remarkably peaceful haven amid the urban sprawl of our biggest city. Forest & Bird has lobbied for improved signs to increase public awareness of the reserve’s existence – and the need to take better care of it.

Despite its protected status, concerns remain about the spread of weeds and rubbish building up around Pollen Island – recent beach clean-ups gathered eight rubbish bags full of plastic bottles alone. Volunteers help by holding beach clean-ups, planting native species and monitoring wildlife.

“One day the fernbirds will sing louder than the traffic along the North-western Motorway – that’s our vision,” Forest & Bird members Kent Xie and Michael Coote say.

To find out more go to the Central Auckland branch page on the Forest & Bird website – www.forestandbird.org.nz.

1 Pollen Island’s shellbanks are a haven for birdlife amid the hustle of Auckland City. Photo Forest & Bird.

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Obituaries Percy Braggins – Wairarapa man of many talents

Ruapehu Lodge update Supporters have donated nearly $100,000 in the first two months since Forest & Bird launched its appeal to help rebuild its Ruapehu lodge.

The lodge on the slopes of Mt Ruapehu was burned down in 2008 and insurance cover was not enough to rebuild it, so Forest & Bird is relying on the generosity of donors to help make up the shortfall.

General Manager Mike Britton says the lodge has been enjoyed by generations of Forest & Bird members over the last four decades, and many people hold treasured memories of time spent there. A contract for the rebuilding has been let, and it is hoped the lodge will be completed by mid 2010.

“So many of our members can recall family holidays spent at the lodge and exploring Tongariro National Park, and they are keen for the next generation of their own families to also be able to have this experience. We are enormously grateful for their support in helping us rebuild the lodge to make this a reality.”

To donate to the Ruapehu Lodge Appeal go to www. forestandbird.org.nz or send your donation to Forest & Bird national office, PO Box 631, Wellington.

The winners of the Audrey Eagle Botanical Art Stationery draw are: • May Adams of Kaikohe • A Mould of Taihape • Isabel Hay of Nelson

Percy Braggins made an enormous contribution to Wairarapa Forest & Bird’s Fensham Reserve over 15 years.

His skills were wide ranging, including marking out and cutting tracks, clearing old man’s beard and wilding pines, and planting hundreds of seedlings.

His great talent was carpentry, and many of Fensham’s fences, boardwalks and bridges are the result of his hard work and perfectionism. Months before his death at the age of 86, he built a pumphouse for Fensham. Mr Braggins was also involved in developing Millennium Reserve in Masterton.

He was recognised for his contributions to conservation with an Old Blue award and a Conservation Week award in 2000 and a Wellington region conservation award in 2002.

Peter Ballance – geologist and conservationist Forest & Bird honoured Peter Ballance for his decades of conservation work with an Old Blue award, just four months before his death in Nelson last October.

He received the honour with his wife, Queenie.

Before retiring to Nelson in 2000, Dr Ballance was at the University of Auckland geology department for almost 40 years.

He was among the first geologists to apply the new ideas of plate tectonics to New Zealand.

Dr Ballance was active in Forest & Bird for more than 40 years, first in the Central Auckland branch and then in Nelson, where he was branch chair for seven years.

He initiated the branch’s Enner Glynn Bush restoration project, inspiring volunteers to rid the area of weeds, launching pest control and planting programmes and gaining funding.

He put his geology background to use as an expert witness at hearings, including one for the Mokihinui dam proposal. Dr Ballance was a popular leader of Forest & Bird walks until last year.

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branching out

Conservation pioneer kicks off Kaimai Mamaku campaign Pioneering conservationist Don Merton has got behind Forest & Bird’s campaign to restore the Kaimai Mamaku forests to health The campaign was launched in Tauranga in November, with Don Merton, well known worldwide for his pioneering work in saving threatened species such as the black robin, as campaign patron.

He says he is excited to be involved with restoring biodiversity close to his new home in the Bay of Plenty.

“I have spent a career’s worth of effort saving birds on isolated islands,” he says. “Now we need to bring them back to the mainland for all New Zealanders to enjoy.”

Don Merton was involved in the 1970s with survey work in the Kaimai Mamaku forests. He says we were then in real danger of losing all the area’s native forests to plantation forests. Now he is heartened by the great work being done to save

the forest from the threat of introduced pests.

Forest & Bird Central North Island Field Officer Alan Fleming says the 37,000 hectares of the Kaimai Mamaku forest is the largest continuous tract of forest in the upper North Island.

The forest once rang with the sound of birdsong, but now that chorus is much reduced. Past mining and logging, and now introduced pests, such as rats, possums, goats and deer, have damaged the density and diversity of the forest. Species such as tomtits, fantails, tui and kokako are either greatly diminished or have disappeared altogether from many areas.

Once the protective cloak of forest is damaged, the impact of wind and rain leaves soil vulnerable to erosion and flooding, and reduces its value as the water catchment for nearby towns and farms.

Alan Fleming says Forest & Bird’s

campaign aims to restore the forest health through work such as pest control, tree planting, translocation and monitoring of native species – and he hopes more of the local community will become involved in bringing their forest back to health.

Bringing swamp maire back to the south The swamp maire (Syzygium maire) is a handsome tree found in swamp and bog forests of the North Island, but just a few sites in northern Marlborough.

Now a Forest & Bird and Nelson City Council project is restoring swamp maire to Marlborough, where it once grew more widely.

Although this endemic species is not threatened nationally – and can be bought in garden centres and cultivated in home gardens – it had become rare in the wild in Marlborough. There are just two known swamp maire trees near Blenheim, and a few scattered around the head of Queen Charlotte Sound, 60

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but the only remaining stronghold in the region is at Croiselles, near Okiwi Bay. A heavy set of seed on the Croiselles trees in 2007 created the opportunity to re-introduce the species to Nelson and parts of the Marlborough Sounds. More than 150 maire seedlings have been raised and more than 50 were planted by the

Forest & Bird and Nelson City Council restoration project at Paremata Flats.

The restoration of swamp maire in Nelson and Marlborough is part of the rare plants project administered by the Tasman Environmental Trust.

Swamp maire grows in wetlands, where it develops breathing roots in waterlogged soils, but is also tolerant of reasonably dry situations. The creamy-white flowers in autumn are followed by large, red drupes in late winter. The fruit are edible and rich in antioxidants – an Otago University study found swamp maire fruit had antioxidant levels 18 times higher than blueberries.

– Martin Conway

Fun events were held at 10 rivers around New Zealand late last year to celebrate wild rivers and highlight the need to protect them from harmful development.

The events included kayaking and rafting, fishing demonstrations, nature walks and talks, children’s activities and picnics.

MPs were among the thousands of people who took part in the celebrations, including Green Party co-leader Russel Norman, who took part in a kayak slalom on the Hurunui River in Canterbury, and West Coast/Tasman National MP Chris Auchinvole, who rafted the Matakitaki River in Buller.

The Day on a Wild River events were organised by nine conservation and recreation organisations that have united to protect wild rivers from hydro development and irrigation dams: Fish & Game, Federated Mountain Clubs, Forest & Bird, Whitewater NZ, the Council of Outdoor Recreation Associations of NZ, the NZ Rafting Association, the New Zealand Federation of Freshwater Anglers, the Environment and Conservation Organisations of NZ and Mountain Bike NZ. These groups are concerned that threats including hydro development and run-off of fertiliser and effluent from agriculture could degrade or completely destroy our wild rivers and the freshwater life that depends on them, as well as the many recreational opportunities provided by rivers.

Forest & Bird Wild Rivers Campaign Coordinator Debs Martin says the weekend of outdoor fun was a positive way of making the public aware of what we have – and how much we have to lose if we take our wild rivers for granted.

For more information about Wild Rivers, go to: www.forestandbird.org.nz or www.wildrivers.org.nz or www.fishandgame.org.nz

1 Hutt Valley Canoe Club member Paul Schofield shows Michael Bird, a year 9 pupil at Upper Hutt College, how to kayak on the Hutt River.

Photo Marina Skinner.

Dart River: Craig Potton

Wild rivers celebrated

Capture a

wild river Your photograph of a wild river could be the winning shot in Forest & Bird’s Wild Rivers: Captured photo competition.

I

f you have already captured your favourite wild river this holiday season, send it to us now. If you’re planning a visit to a wild river soon, look out for a dramatic scene and send it by March 15.

The contest has two categories – a New Zealand river landscape without people and a river landscape with people.

We’d also like up to 100 words about where you photographed your river scene and why it’s special to you.

Prizes include a Leica camera from Camera & Camera (worth $1700), a rugged outdoor jacket from Bivouac (worth $700) and New Zealand’s Wilderness Heritage by Craig Potton and Les Molloy (worth $100).

The best photos will be printed and will be taken on a wild rivers road show touring in autumn.

Photos must be taken this summer. Digital entries only (prints or transparencies can be scanned) must be submitted by March 15. Top wilderness photographer Craig Potton is the judge, and prize winners will be announced on March 31.

For more details, see www.forestandbird.org.nz Entries must be emailed to photocomp@forestandbird.org.nz Forest & Bird

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one of us

A voice for the ocean

S

ometimes you get the feeling Kirstie Knowles would be happiest if she could grow fins and gills, such is her passion for underwater life.

Her boundless enthusiasm for all things marine drives her commitment to her role as Forest & Bird marine advocate, a position she has held for the last 3 ½ years.

Kirstie gained her Masters degree in tropical coastal management in the markedly non-tropical environs of Newcastle University, UK – luckily the field work part of her studies into marine protection was carried out in the Philippines.

She had been studying zoology, writing her thesis on the decorating behaviour of spider crabs – they decorate their bodies with seaweed to protect themselves from predators and to store food – but it was her first experience of diving at age 18 that inspired her to pursue a career centred on the marine environment.

Kirstie, now a qualified dive instructor, is rarely happier than when she is underwater: “It’s the weightlessness, the bubbles, and just loads of marine life.

Every time you go diving it is a completely different, magical experience.”

Before joining Forest & Bird Kirstie was working in the Bahamas as chief scientist for environmental organisation Greenforce, surveying the Bahamas’ coral reef. But with an aunt who had emigrated to New Zealand she had “grown up hearing about this magical place on the other side of the world,” and visiting here herself she was determined to return to stay for good.

When the chance

arose to work for Forest & Bird in Wellington she jumped at the opportunity and has since spearheaded Forest & Bird efforts to protect marine species including dolphins, sharks and sea lions, and campaigns for the establishment of marine protected areas and sustainable fishing practices.

She says probably the most rewarding success in her time at Forest & Bird was seeing the introduction of measures to reduce by-catch deaths of Hector’s and Maui’s dolphins around New Zealand’s coastline.

Being involved in the

world’s first-ever Marine Bioblitz, which discovered several marine species unknown to science, was also a huge thrill.

Living literally a stone’s throw from Cook Strait, Kirstie says Wellington is a paradise for divers, and she disappears under the waves at every opportunity.

Her favourite marine creature is the nudibranch or sea slug – the thick text book Nudibranchs of the World is rarely far from her reach – a passion she delights in explaining to the uninitiated.

“I know they’re not cute and cuddly and furry like some animals, but they’re just awesome – they remind you how amazing nature is.”

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Encounter Kaikoura is a Green Globe certified business

Help nature in Vanuatu

3 stunning properties for sale Private lifestyle blocks with panoramic views set in QE2 covanented bush

You can help nature and have fun in Vanuatu by joining Forest & Bird Field Officer Sue Maturin’s trip this year.

The trip takes you to the Vatthe Conservation Area on the island of Espiritu Santo and the live volcano on Tanna Island.

The tours help the local Matantas landowners protect their forest and wildlife and you will have opportunities to work in the bush alongside local teams to control a rampant convolvulus vine, known as big leaf (Merremia peltata), which is threatening Vatthe’s native forest.

Sue is loved and respected by the people of Matantas and she speaks fluent Bislama. She was instrumental in helping the local landowners protect the Vatthe forest. Sue will share her knowledge with you during the 14-day tour.

During the tour you will have time to explore Vatthe tropical forest and marine life on the shores of Big Bay; help control big leaf; stay in a remote village and get to know local families; snorkel over many different vibrant coral reefs; see Tanna’s active volcano; experience cultural events, relax on tropical beaches and eat fresh paw paw and much more.

The trip departs July 2010 14-day tour, party limited to 12 For more information or to book contact: Sue Maturin s.maturin@forestandbird.org.nz Forest & Bird, PO Box 6230, Dunedin, New Zealand Phone 03 477 9677, Fax 03 477 5232

Go to www.fantailridge.co.nz or contact owner (027)414 4027.

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Forest & Bird

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book reviews Three views of New Zealand The Best of New Zealand Geographic Edited by James Frankham, NZ Geographic, $69.99 It must have been a tough job whittling down just 63 stories for this “best of” collection from the 500 that New Zealand Geographic has published in the last 20 years – not to mention choosing from among the wealth of photography that has appeared in its pages.

Editor James Frankham has somehow managed to corral a selection from this treasure trove and the result is a collection nicely balanced between subject areas of natural history, human endeavours and geography.

Many of the splendid photographs are done full justice by being run full-page in this large-format book. The text is substantial, with the full-length articles providing in-depth information to go with the “wow” photos.

The book is absolutely gorgeous, with a slightly old-fashioned look to many of the photographs and design – much in the distinctive style of New Zealand Geographic’s international counterpart National Geographic.

Its subjects are definitely New Zealand, but with a feel of a New Zealand that existed perhaps 50 years ago – if it ever did – a New Zealand with no fast food restaurants, suburban sprawl or city congestion; a place where musterers ride horses rather than quadbikes, there are no vehicles on beaches or power pylons in the high country and the birds are all native – but what the heck, it looks great.

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Native falcon. Photo Rob Suisted.

Majestic New Zealand

Natural New Zealand

Photographs by Rob Suisted New Holland, $59.99

Photographs by Shaun Barnett Craig Potton Publishing, $29.99

It can be quite a challenge for New Zealand landscape photographers to find something new in scenes that have been photographed many times before.

Many lavish coffee-table books have included the usual topics: snow-capped peaks reflected in southern lakes, sunsets, sunrises, Fiordland, dolphins, lighthouses, sheep, waterfalls. Yes, Rob Suisted has photographed all of these for Majestic New Zealand, but manages to rise above the cliché to bring a fresh perspective.

The photographs are divided into four themes: mountains, rivers and lakes, the coast and farmland, and each manages to show us something new and unexpected about our own country.

I found my favourites had a smaller, quieter scope than the postcard prettiness of the more obvious grandeur. Suisted’s shots of some lesser known spots, and the finely-observed detail of a quiet river pool, stones on a West Coast beach, whitebaiters setting their nets, huge raindrops falling on a group of kayakers in Doubtful Sound, or a ridge-top farm fence lit by sunlight, were among those I found most effective and original.

They possibly don’t fit the “majestic” brief of the book’s title, but are lovely in their own more subtle way.

As well as the similarity in titles, photographer Shaun Barnett faces much the same challenge as Suisted in finding a fresh angle on muchphotographed places, and there is more than a slight overlap in subject material between the two books. Is there some law that says every book of New Zealand landscape photography must include a shot of the Moeraki Boulders?

Barnett, a keen outdoorsman, finds his own niche by viewing many of these places from the perspective of a tramper, and indeed humans make their way into many of his shots, tramping, camping, climbing, kayaking and rafting their way through the scenery.

The tiny humans also serve to reinforce the vastness of the landscapes around them.

Barnett’s expertise also shows in the useful information and quirky details provided in the text and captions – for example, locals’ nickname for the crumbly rock of the Malte Brun Range: Weetbix.

His background in conservation is also apparent – and means he is not tempted to portray just the picture postcard perfect without warning of the many threats to this seemingly unspoiled paradise.

Natural New Zealand is rather less grand in size and format than Suisted’s book, but then it is only half the price.

Reviews by Helen Bain

Join online: www.forestandbird.org.nz • Freephone 0800 200 064

Forest & Bird Membership Join Forest & Bird and you will receive our quarterly Forest & Bird magazine, e-News and e-Alerts. You will have free entry to Forest & Bird reserves around the country and discounted entry to the Society’s lodges at Somes Island, Piha and other scenic locations. You will also have the chance to take part in a variety of branch activities from hands-on conservation projects to talks and field trips.

Kiwi Conservation Club (KCC) Membership Become a junior member and you will receive the Kiwi Conservation Club magazine five times a year, a personalized membership certificate, stickers, and invitations to participate in a range of activities designed especially for children and organised by our KCC volunteer coordinators.

Join now at: www.forestandbird.org.nz Phone: 0800 200 064 for more information or internet banking details Membership Details

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All prices are in NZ dollars and include GST

Forest & Bird Annual Rate Adult......................................... $57 Adult Overseas ........................ $95 Senior (over 65) ....................... $45 Student..................................... $45 Kiwi Conservation Club Junior (1 mag per issue)........... $19 Junior (2 mags per issue)......... $24 Junior (3 mags per issue)......... $29 Junior Overseas....................... $40

For schools, groups or businesses within NZ Forest & Bird Annual Rate Group e.g. Library / School............................ $57 Corporate Silver............................................ $500 Corporate Gold .......................................... $1000 Kiwi Conservation Club Junior Group (class set of 30 magazines) ...... $74 For less than 30 magazines schools may select the Junior option and complete the section below to order additional magazines.

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Additional magazine subscriptions for NZ members only. Memberships include one annual magazine subscription, unless specified above. Additional magazine subscriptions to the same address may be added at the rates shown below. For example, a family with 5 children may require a Junior 3 magazine membership ($29) plus 2 additional magazine subscriptions (2 x $5.00) so each child has their own copy. Total $39 per year for a Junior membership receiving 5 copies of KCC magazine per issue.

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Forest & Bird is New Zealand's leading independent conservation organisation Forest & Bird PO Box 631 Wellington 6140

Giving a membership as a gift

Join a friend by filling in their details on the previous page and your details below

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Join online: www.forestandbird.org.nz • Freephone 0800 200 064

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Join, renew or make a regular monthly donation by Direct Debit Please fill out this form and the one opposite. Once completed please detach this form, fold it and post it to PO Box 631 Wellington 6140.

Membership Please debit my account to pay for the following membership(s) Annually in January / July (select one)

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*Should the membership fee be increased Forest & Bird are authorized to automatically increase this amount.

If you are an existing member this authority will operate from the next day your membership becomes due for renewal. If you join part way through the year a partial payment by direct debit may be required.

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NAME: (of Bank Account) Bank account from which payments are to be made: Bank Branch

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To: The Bank Manager Bank: _

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Your full name (block capitals) Address Daytime telephone number I/We authorise you, until further notice, to debit my/our account with all amounts which ROYAL FOREST AND BIRD PROTECTION SOCIETY OF NEW ZEALAND INC. (hereinafter refered to as the Initiator) the registered Initiator of the above Authorisation Code, may initiate by Direct Debit.

I/We acknowledge and accept that the bank accepts this authority only upon the conditions listed below.

Information to appear on my/our bank statement Payer Particulars

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Date: ___/___ For bank use only Original – Retain at Branch Date received:

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Conditions of this authority The Initiator: (a) Has agreed to give written advance notice of the net amount of each direct debit and the due date of debiting at least four business days before the date when the direct debit will be initiated. The advance notice will include the following message:- “The amount of $...... will be direct debited to your bank account on (initiating date)”. (b) May, upon the relationship which gave rise to this Authority being terminated, give notice to the bank that no further Direct Debits are to be initiated under the Authority. Upon receipt of such notice the Bank may terminate this Authority as to future payments by notice in writing to me/us.

The Customer may: (a) At any time, terminate this Authority as to future payments by giving written notice of termination to the Bank and to the Initiator. (b) Stop payment of any direct debit to be initiated under this authority by the Initiator by giving written notice to the Bank prior to the direct debit being paid by the Bank.

The Customer acknowledges that: (a) This Authority will remain in full force and effect in respect of all direct debits made from my/our account in good faith notwithstanding my/our death, bankruptcy or other revocation of this Authority until actual notice of such event is received by the bank.

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(b) In any event this Authority is subject to any arrangement now or hereafter existing between me/us and the Bank in relation to my/our account. (c) Any dispute as to the correctness or validity of an amount debited to my/our account shall not be the concern of the Bank except in so far as the direct debit has not been paid in accordance with this Authority. Any other disputes lie between me/us and the Initiator. (d) Where the Bank has used reasonable care and skill in acting in accordance with this authority, the Bank accepts no responsibility or liability in respect of:

- The accuracy of information about Direct Debits on bank statements.

- Any variations between notices given by the Initiator and the amounts of Direct Debits. (e) The Bank is not responsible for, or under any liability in respect of the Initiator’s failure to give written notice correctly nor for the non-receipt or late receipt of notice by me/us for any reason whatsoever. In any such situation the dispute lies between me/us and the Initiator.

The Bank may: (a) In its absolute discretion conclusively determine the order of priority of payment by it of any monies pursuant to this or any other authority, cheque or draft properly executed by me/us and given to or drawn on the Bank. (b) At any time terminate this authority as to future payments by notice in writing to me/us. (c) Charge its current fees for this service in force from time-to-time.

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1

2

Parting shot Photographer Craig McKenzie picked up the honour of Otago Wildlife Photographer of the Decade with this image of a bar-tailed godwit. 1 McKenzie took out the top prize marking a decade of the Otago Wildlife Photography Competition for this shot taken at Papanui Inlet on the Otago Peninsula. The photograph earned praise from judges for its beautiful execution of a technically tough subject.

Craig, whose photographs regularly appear in this magazine, also won the animal category in the 2009 competition for his photo of a silvereye in flight. 2

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branch directory

Upper North Island Central Auckland Branch: Chairperson, Anne Fenn; Secretary, Isabel Still, PO Box 1118, Shortland Street, Auckland 1140.

Tel: (09) 528-3986.

Far North Branch: Chairperson, Vacant; Secretary, Michael Winch, 119D Skudders Beach Road, RD 1, Kerikeri 0294.

Tel: (09) 401-7401.

Franklin Branch: Chairperson, Keith Gardner; Secretary, Michelle Leman, 8 Second Avenue, RD 1, Waiuku 2681. Tel: (09) 235-3512.

Hauraki Islands Branch: Chairperson, Brian Griffiths; Secretary, Sue Fitchett, 125 The Strand, Onetangi, Waiheke Island 1081.

Tel: (09) 372-7600.

Hibiscus Coast Branch: Chairperson, Pauline Smith; Secretary, Katie Lucas, PO Box 310, Orewa 0946. Tel: (09) 427-5186.

Kaipara Branch: Chairperson, Suzi Phillips; Secretary, Suzi Phillips, PO Box 187, Helensville 0840. Tel: 021 271 2527.

Mercury Bay Branch: Chairperson, Eve McCarthy; Secretaries, Sharon Barnes Tel: (07) 866-5583 or Vanessa Ford Tel: (07) 866-4355.

PO Box 205, Whitianga 3542.

Mid North Branch: Chairperson, Warwick Massey; Secretary, Raewyn Morrison, PO Box 552, Warkworth 0941. Tel: (09) 422-9123.

North Shore Branch: Chairperson, Alan Emmerson; Secretary, Jocelyn Sanders, PO Box 33873, Takapuna, North Shore City 0740.

Tel: (09) 479-2107.

Northern Branch: Chairperson, Vacant; Secretary, Beverly Woods, PO Box 1375, Whangarei 0140. Tel: (09) 432-7122.

South Auckland Branch: Chairperson, Dene Andre; Secretary, Brian Gidley, PO Box 23602, Hunters Corner, Manukau 2155.

Tel: (09) 278-0185.

Thames-Hauraki Branch: Chairperson, Marcia Sowman; Secretary, Hazel Genner, PO Box 312, Thames 3540. Tel: (07) 868-9057.

Upper Coromandel Branch: Chairperson, Tina Morgan; Secretary, Vacant, PO Box 108, Coromandel 3543. Tel. (07) 866-6720.

Waitakere Branch: Chairperson, John Staniland; Secretary, Janie Vaughan, PO Box 60655, Titirangi, Waitakere 0642. Tel: (09) 817-9262.

Central North Island Eastern Bay of Plenty Branch: Chairperson, Mark Fort; Secretary, Sue Greenwood, Forest & Bird, PO Box 582, Whakatane 3158.

Tel: (07) 307-1435.

Gisborne Branch: Chairperson, Grant Vincent; Secretary, Wendy McLean, 1 Dominey Street, Inner Kaiti, Gisborne 4010. Tel: (06) 868-8236.

lodge accommodation

Arethusa Cottage An ideal place from which to explore the Far North. Near Pukenui in wet-land reserve.

6 bunks, fully equipped kitchen, separate bathroom outside. For information and bookings, contact: John Dawn, Doves Bay Road, RD1, Kerikeri. Tel: (09) 407-8658, Fax: (09) 407-1401.

Email: johnfd@xnet.co.nz.

Tai Haruru Lodge, Piha, West Auckland A seaside haven set in a large sheltered garden on the rugged West Coast, 38km on sealed roads from central Auckland. Close to store, bush reserves and tracks in the beautiful Waitakere Ranges. 1 dble brm and 1 brm sleeps 3, plus large lounge with wood burner, dining area and kitchen. Self-contained unit has 4 single beds.

Bring food, linen and fuel for fire and BBQ. Off peak rates apply. Booking: Jean and Peter King, 10 La Trobe Track, Karekare, Waitakere City. Tel: (09) 812 8064. Email: hop0018@slingshot.co.nz

Waiheke Island Cottage Located next to our 49ha Wildlife Reserve, 10 mins walk to Onetangi Beach, general stores etc.

Sleeps up to 8 in two bedrooms. Lounge, wellequipped kitchen, separate toilet, bathroom, shower, laundry. Pillows, blankets provided.

No pets. Ferries 35 minutes from Auckland.

Rotorua Branch: Chairperson, Vacant; Secretaries, Margaret Dick, Tel: (07) 357-2024 or Delight Gartlein Tel: (07) 357-2575. PO Box 1489, Rotorua 3040.

South Waikato Branch: Chairperson, Anne Groos; Secretary, Jack Groos, 37 Waianawa Place, Tokoroa 3420. Tel: (07) 886-7456.

Taupo Branch: Chairperson, Ann Gallagher; Secretary, Trevor Hunt, PO Box 1105, Taupo 3351. Tel: (07) 378-5975.

Tauranga Branch: Chairperson, Vacant; Secretary, Liz Cole, PO Box 15638, Tauranga 3144. Tel: (07) 577-6412.

Te Puke Branch: Chairperson Cathy Reid; Secretary, Bev Nairn, PO Box 237, Te Puke 3153.

Tel: (07) 533-4247 Waihi Section: Chairperson, Ian Bradshaw; Secretary, Krishna Buckman, 17 Reservoir Road, Waihi 3610. Tel: (07) 863-8455.

Waikato Branch: Chairperson, Philip Hart; Secretary, Jim Macdiarmid, PO Box 11092, Hillcrest, Hamilton 3251. Tel: (07) 849-3438.

Lower North Island Central Hawkes Bay Branch: Chairperson, Max Chatfield; Secretary, Barrie & Judith Bayliss, PO Box 189, Waipukurau 4242. Tel: (06) 858-8765.

Hastings-Havelock North Branch: Chairperson, Ian Noble; Secretary, Lorna Templeton, 11/15 Devonshire Place, Taradale, Napier 4112 . Tel: (06) 845-4155.

Horowhenua Branch: Chairperson, Robert Hirschberg; Secretary, Belinda McLean, 47 Te Manuao Road, Otaki 5512. Tel: (06) 364-5573.

Kapiti-Mana Branch: Chairperson, Tony Ward; Secretary, John McLachlan, 78 Langdale Avenue, Paraparaumu 5032. Tel: (04) 904-0027.

Lower Hutt Branch: Chairperson, Kevin Bateman; Secretary, Stan Butcher, PO Box 31194, Lower Hutt 5040. Tel: (04) 567-7271.

Manawatu Branch: Chairperson, Brent Barrett; Secretary, Anthea McClelland, PO Box 961, Palmerston North Central, Palmerston North 4440. Tel: (06) 353-6758.

Napier Branch: Chairperson, Neil Eagles; Secretary, Margaret Gwynn, 23 Clyde Road, Bluff Hill, Napier 4110. Tel: (06) 835-2122.

North Taranaki Branch: Chairperson, Carolyn Brough; Secretary, Murray Duke, PO Box 1029, Taranaki Mail Centre, New Plymouth 4340.

Tel: (06) 751-2759.

Rangitikei Branch: Chairperson,Diana Stewart; Secretary, Betty Graham, 41 Tutaenui Road, Marton 4710. Tel: (06) 327-7008.

South Taranaki Branch: Chairperson, Dave Digby; Secretary, Lynda Sutherland, 39 High Street, Eltham 4322. Tel: (06) 764-7479.

Enquiries with stamped addressed envelope to: Robin Griffiths, 125 The Strand, Onetangi, Waiheke Island. Tel: (09) 372-7662.

William Hartree Memorial Lodge, Hawkes Bay Situated 48km from Napier, 8km past Patoka on the Puketitiri Rd (sealed). The lodge is set amid a 14ha scenic reserve and close to many walks, eg: Kaweka Range, Balls Clearing, hot springs and museum. The lodge accommodates up to 15 people. It has a fully equipped kitchen including stove, refrigerator and microwave plus tile fire, hot showers. Supply your own linen, sleeping bags etc. For information and bookings please send a stamped addressed envelope to Mike and Linda Hay, 172 Guppy Road, Taradale, Napier 4112. Tel: (06) 8444651. Email: hayhouse@clear.net.nz.

Matiu/Somes Island, Wellington Harbour Joint venture accommodation by Lower Hutt Forest and Bird with DOC. A modern family home with kitchen, 3 bedrooms, large lounge and dining room, just 20 mins sailing by ferry from the centre of Wellington or 10 mins from Days Bay. Ideal place to relax in beautiful surroundings, with accommodation for 8.

Bring your own food and bedding and a torch.

Upper Hutt Branch: Chairperson, Barry Wards; Secretary, Fred Fowler, PO Box 40875, Upper Hutt 5140. Tel: (04) 528-3127.

Wairarapa Branch: Chairperson, Geoff Doring; Secretary, Roger Greenslade, 18 Johnstone Street, Masterton 5810. Tel: (06) 377-5255.

Wanganui Branch: Chairperson, Esther Williams; Secretary, Ray Hutchison, PO Box 4229, Wanganui 4541. Tel: (06) 345-2651.

Wellington Branch: Chairperson, Peter Hunt; Secretary, Janet Coburn, PO Box 4183, Wellington 6140. Tel: (04) 971-8200.

South Island Ashburton Branch: Chairperson, Edith Smith; Secretary, Val Clemens, PO Box 460, Ashburton 7740. Tel: (03) 308-5620.

Central Otago-Lakes Branch: Chairperson, John Turnbull; Secretary, Denise Bruns, 4 Stonebrook Drive, Wanaka 9305.

Tel: (03) 443-5462.

Dunedin Branch: Chairperson, Janet Ledingham; Secretary, Mark Hanger, PO Box 5793, Moray Place, Dunedin 9058.

Tel: (03) 489-3233.

Golden Bay Branch: Chairperson, Jenny Treloar; Secretary, Jo-Anne Vaughan, Puponga Road, RD 1, Collingwood 7073.

Tel: (03) 524-8072.

Kaikoura Branch: Chairperson, Ailsa Howard; Secretary, Barry Dunnett, Pooles Road, RD 1, Kaikoura 7371. Tel: (03) 319-5086.

Marlborough Branch: Chairperson, Andrew John; Secretary, Lynda Neame, PO Box 896, Blenheim 7240. Tel: (03) 578-2013.

Nelson-Tasman Branch: Chairperson, Helen Campbell; Secretary, Jocelyn Bieleski, PO Box 7126, Nelson Mail Centre, Nelson 7042. Tel: (03) 548-6803.

North Canterbury Branch: Chairperson, Bruce Coleman; Secretary, Catherine Timbers, PO Box 2389, Christchurch Mail Centre, Christchurch 8140. Tel: (03) 338-3084.

South Canterbury Branch: Chairperson, Marijke Bakker-Gelsing; Secretary, Margaret McPherson, 29 Mountain View Road, Glenwood, Timaru 7910.

Tel: (03) 686-1494.

South Otago Branch: Chairperson, Roy Johnstone; Secretary, Suzanne Schofield, 64 Frances Street, Balclutha 9230. Tel: (03) 4184415.

Southland Branch: Chairperson, Craig Carson; Secretary, Jenny Campbell, PO Box 1155, Invercargill 9840. Tel: (03) 248-6398.

West Coast Branch: Chairperson, Kathy Gilbert; Secretary, Jane Marshall, 115 Hoffman Street, Hokitika 7810. Tel: (027) 388-5887.

Smoking is banned everywhere on the island, including the house.

For more information, visit www.doc.govt.nz and for bookings, contact the DOC Wellington Visitors Centre at wellingtonvc@doc.govt.nz, ph (04) 384-7770 or mail to PO Box 10420, The Terrace, Wellington 6143.

Mangarakau Swamp Field Centre, North West Nelson Borders Kahurangi National Park and Te Tai Tapu Marine Reserve. New, 10 bed lodge with two bathrooms, fully equipped kitchen.

Sleeping bags, towels and food required.

Contact Jo-Anne Vaughan – Golden Bay Branch Secretary for details: javn@xtra.co.nz or phone (03) 5248072.

Tautuku Lodge, Otago State Highway 92, Southeast Otago. Situated on Forest and Bird’s 550ha Lenz Reserve 32km south of Owaka. A bush setting, and many lovely beaches nearby provide a wonderful base for exploring the Catlins. The lodge, the Coutts cabin and an A-frame sleep 10, 4 and 2 respectively. No Animals. For information and rates please send a stamped addressed envelope to the caretaker: Diana Noonan, Mirren St, Papatowai, Owaka, RD2. Tel: (03) 415-8024, fax (03) 415-8244. Email: diana.keith@ruralinzone.net