Forest & Bird Magazine 341 Aug 2011

ISSUE 341 • AUGUST 2011 www.forestandbird.org.nz

Selling NZ down the river PLUS

Nature in the shaky city

Mining threat to Denniston Plateau

Our heroes

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ISSUE 341

• August 2011

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 Communications Manager: Marina Skinner 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: Email: c.todd@forestandbird.org.nz Forest & Bird is a registered charitable entity under the Charities Act 2005.

Registration No. CC26943.

www.forestandbird.org.nz

Contents 2 Editorial 5 Soapbox

42

Backyard conservation

Birds or no birds – our choice

45

Rangatahi

6 Letters 9 Conservation news

From traps to apps

46

Mine – or ours?

50

Going Places

52

Enviro poll

56

In the field

58

Your say on sanctuaries

60

Community conservation

64

Pacific

West Coast wetlands, Endangered Birds book giveaway, Mökihinui River supporters, seabird bycatch, Mackenzie appeals, DOC job cuts

14

Clean, green and endangered

The ill-treatment of our rivers and lakes

19

Nature of tomorrow

Dr Mike Joy on the future of freshwater

24

The force of nature

Christchurch after the earthquakes

30

Amazing facts about …

31

One of us

32

Our people

Basket fungus

Ark in the Park’s Karen Colgan EDITOR: Marina Skinner

ART DIRECTOR /DESIGNER:

DLM Eugenie Sage, Old Blues Jon Wenham, Andy Dennis, John Groom, Mike Joy and Alex Kettles; Golden Spade winners, Pestbusters, President Andrew Cutler and the new Executive; Conservation Ambassador Sir Alan Mark; Kaumätua Puke Haika; Fundraising Manager Rebecca Scelly.

Rob Di Leva, Dileva Design E rob@dileva.co.nz

38

PO Box 631, Wellington.

T (04) 801-2761 F (04) 385-7373 E m.skinner@forestandbird.org.nz DEPUTY EDITOR: David Brooks

T (04) 801-2763 E d.brooks@forestandbird.org.nz

PREPRESS/PRINTING:

Printlink

Last chance to grow

Australian miner eyes up Denniston Plateau

White Island

Political parties share their conservation visions

Red alert

Feedback on fences

Dunedin seabird sanctuary, T-shirts for dolphins, Lilian Valder grants, Wellington seed balls, Ark in the Park käkäriki, Central Otago möhua nesting boxes, Wairarapa rengarenga restoration, D’Urville Island expedition

Fiji haven for seabirds

66 Book reviews

A New Cloak for Matiu, Endangered Birds

68

Parting shot

Tuatara by Nathan Goshgarian

Tipping point

The Firth of Thames is at risk from farm nutrients and silt

ADVERTISING:

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

COVER SHOT A small creek tumbles into the clear, fresh Burke River, Haast Pass, South Westland.

Photo: Rob Suisted/www.naturespic.com

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editorial

New directions Kia ora koutou There’s never been a more important time for Forest & Bird. In recent years there has been little to celebrate: pollution of lowland rivers and streams, illadvised mining proposals, funding cuts to the Department of Conservation and development pressure on wild places like the Mackenzie Country.

These challenges, among others, have led branches and the National Executive of the Society to think long and hard about our direction and priorities.

As a result we’ve adopted important new directions in our new Strategic Plan.

We’re aiming to substantially increase membership and strengthen our branches and their work in communities. We’ve already made a good start.

Membership of the Society is rising – by almost 2000 new members in the past year – and we’ve received funding to employ a volunteer co-ordinator to assist branches in their work.

We’ve decided to take a more active role in issues that underlie our conservation problems, such as how to create a sustainable economy and how to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

We’re also going to focus on how to promote conservation on private land.

Two-thirds of New Zealand’s land is privately owned, and there are significant gains to be made by engaging landowners and urban communities more actively in conservation.

While pursuing these new directions we’ll continue to advocate for better conservation in our marine environments and on public land, and hold politicians and bureaucrats to account for poor choices and decisions.

At times like these we need to build Forest & Bird’s ability to be a strong, energetic advocate for the environment. The truth is we cannot rely on government or its agencies to do the right thing when it comes to decisions on our natural environment. As an independent, community-based charity, Forest & Bird’s focus is on protecting and restoring our natural treasures, not pleasing the Minister, placating a lobby group, or compromising with powerful local interests.

So a warm welcome to our new members and thank you to those who continue to support and work for conservation in our branches and communities.

Ngä mihi nui

Help create a chorus for nature Fill out the postcard in this magazine and return it to us. We will send a free Forest & Bird magazine to your friend or family member. Together we can be an even louder voice for nature.

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:

Andrew Cutler DEPUTY PRESIDENT:

Mark Hanger IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT:

Barry Wards NATIONAL TREASURER:

Graham Bellamy CONSERVATION AMBASSADORS:

Sir Alan Mark, Gerry McSweeney, Craig Potton EXECUTIVE COUNCILLORS:

Brent Barrett, Lindsey Britton, Alan Hemmings, Craig Potton, Ines Stager, John Wenham DISTINGUISHED LIFE MEMBERS:

Andrew Cutler Forest & Bird President

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

Forest & Bird is published quarterly by the Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society of New Zealand Inc. 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 biodegradable cellulose film, which is made from wood pulp sourced from managed plantations. • Registered at PO Headquarters, Wellington, as a magazine. ISSN 0015-7384. Copyright. All rights reserved.

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soapbox

Birds or no birds – our choice Kevin Hackwell endorses the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s findings on 1080.

O

ne might hope the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s report would settle once and for all the debate over the use of 1080 to save our fastdisappearing native birds and other species. That hope is sure to be dashed, but sincere people prepared to put aside preconceptions and prejudices will find that Dr Jan Wright lays out a compelling case that 1080 is not only the best way, but the only practical way, that we can save large areas of our forests and the native animals in them.

Her report surveys the scientific work that has been done on the decimation of our native birds and other species by introduced pests, the use of 1080, the risks involved and alternative control methods. The report released in June demolishes some of the myths surrounding the use of 1080 – sodium monofluoroacetate – in a concise, easily digestible way.

But it will not win over all the opponents and doubters.

At one extreme are those who believe among other things that 1080 manufacturers, the Department of Conservation and Forest & Bird are involved in some kind of corporate conspiracy. Some of these people are also likely to believe the moon landings were faked.

There are also some hunters who fear for the welfare of their dogs and the game they want to hunt in the forests.

That’s a legitimate interest but 1080 is applied only on a tiny fraction of the conservation estate each year. In 2009, just over an eighth of all conservation land was being managed for pests and about an eighth of that area – or a 64th of all conservation land – received aerial 1080 drops. The Animal Health Board, which controls pests to prevent the spread of bovine tuberculosis from pests to cattle, did control work on 3.4 million hectares, and aerial 1080 drops were done on just 400,000 hectares. 1080 operations are well advertised, so surely hunters can still do their thing by avoiding areas where there have been recent drops.

No doubt many people believe that “scattering poison from the sky is a bad thing to do”. Sure, that doesn’t sound good, but neither does the fact that animals introduced by humans to New Zealand are eating 25 million defenceless native birds a year, according to Landcare Research.

If that poison effectively targets the pests that are driving native birds towards extinction, without harming humans and with minimal or no damage to other wildlife, surely we need to look past “poison from the sky”.

Some also believe we should value all animal life and not divide animals into good and bad, some to treasure, some to kill. It’s worth repeating that these stoats, possums and rats – native to other parts of the world – are every year eating 25 million New Zealand birds found nowhere else. Some, like the käkäpö, saddleback and hihi are extinct in our mainland wild forests and even our

iconic kiwi is gradually disappearing in areas where there is no pest control.

There are no simple choices. We either support the use of 1080 as the only practical way of saving our unique wildlife in isolated bush areas or give up these forests and their native inhabitants to the pests. Not only will the birds disappear but the forests themselves could eventually collapse.

Ground control through trapping and baits can only be part of the answer because of the expense and inaccessibility of some areas. Conservation Minister Kate Wilkinson says she does not expect any expansion of 1080 use in the short term because of financial constraints on the Department of Conservation. The aerial application of 1080 costs between $12 to $16 a hectare and ground control in more isolated areas of forest would be up to $80 a hectare.

If there is no money for 1080, there certainly won’t be money for more ground control.

Based on her careful analysis of the evidence, Jan Wright came to the view that not only should the use of 1080 continue to protect our forests, but we should use more of it. She has seldom come to such a strong conclusion after an investigation. The possums, rats and stoats that have invaded our country will not leave of their own accord. Most New Zealanders will agree with her conclusion that “we cannot allow our forests to die”.

Kevin Hackwell is Forest & Bird’s Advocacy Manager.

Introduced pests have sent saddlebacks to the brink of extinction. Photo: David Hallett

Forest & Bird

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letters Forest & Bird welcomes readers’ letters on conservation topics. Letters should be up to 200 words and must include the writer’s full name, home address and daytime phone number. We don’t always have space to publish all letters or publish them in full.

The best contribution to the Letters page of the November 2011 issue will win a copy of New Zealand Horizons by Andris Apse (Craig Potton Publishing, $14.99). Please send letters to Editor, Forest & Bird magazine, PO Box 631, Wellington 6140 or e-mail m.skinner@forestandbird.org.nz by September 19.

Success with plant pests Many of us have been aware of the recent frightening spread of invasive plants and trees from home gardens and overseas containers on to farm land, national parks and reserves but not of the recent miracles worked by officers of Bay of Plenty Regional Council (formerly Environment Bay of Plenty) and the Department of Conservation.

I recently tramped in the Little Manganuku River area, east of Öpötiki, where the whole of the river flats had been taken over by the purple-flowered shrub buddleia.

Every plant was dead, killed by the recently introduced Chinese weevil. Attempts had formerly been made to control buddleia spread by cutting and spraying but this was prohibitively expensive and an impossible task. Now a miraculous remedy is at hand.

I witnessed similar results elsewhere in the Eastern Bay of Plenty. In the Urewera area, success has been achieved by the cinnibar caterpillar in controlling ragwort on bush flats and nearby Maori-owned farmland.

Mainly unobserved but similarly spectacular has been the destruction by cutting and spraying of invasive willows beside the Waiöeka River, Japanese chestnuts in the Cheddar Gorge reserve and nearby farmland, ginger plant infestations beside Öhiwa Harbour and the pampas bushes along the coast in the Matata Straight reserve.

I hope government cost cutting will not halt these commendable endeavours and, hopefully, more funds will be available for biological control research.

Tom Bayliss, Whak tane This letter is the winner of Best Short Nature Walks in New Zealand by Peter Janssen.

Grey teal. Photo: DOC

Shooting shame I have recently rejoined Forest & Bird and I want to say thank you to all of you on the Executive team, the advocates, managers of conservation and communications and the team behind the monthly publications, which are very informative and supportive of us everyday conservationists spread wide and far throughout Aotearoa.

With the duck shooting season upon us now, I want to share a sad but ultimately positive story about how we can make a difference to our precious native birds even in small corners of the world.

Last season my son noticed a lot of activity from a maimai set up not far from our house, and during a break in shooting he kayaked out to check out the site. Shortly after he returned, very upset saying: “Mum, mum, there are lots of baby ducks dead in the water.” I asked more about these “baby ducks”, so he went back and returned with a small grey adult duck.

Research showed this little duck was a fully protected, small grey teal. We called the local field officer for hunting and fishing and the shooter was prosecuted and fined several thousand dollars for leaving spent shells, entrails, feathers and many bird bodies in the lake and, sadly, for shooting several small grey teals. He also had his gun licence revoked.

While I do respect the rights of hunters to pursue their “sport”, it was great to see that breaches of the regulations can be and are enforced, and that action by a young lad can make a difference in protecting our own local birds.

Chris Foster, Kerikeri

Pampas grass. Photo: DOC

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Ancient trees need protecting Why is there never a public campaign by Forest & Bird about all the councils who do not have rules to protect indigenous flora and fauna?

In 2004, Whangarei District Council, along with the Department of Conservation and the Northland Regional Council, consented to the deletion in the Whangarei District Council Plan of its significant ecological area rules.

At the same time, it inserted a clause in the indigenous clearance rules that harvesting of native trees on private land may take place when a permit is obtained from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.

Right now there are many permits issued on land where DOC has identified endangered species. DOC has recommended that no harvesting take place but the permits are given anyway. There is no protection for ancient trees in the Whangarei district on private land.

Indigenous trees, thousands of years old are being cut down round New Zealand right now – witness Country Calendar on July 3 showing a case in Taranaki. No recognition is made of the Resource Management Act requirements or the need for consultation with iwi.

Forest & Bird does wonderful work – and I wouldn’t want it to do any less – but our very ancient indigenous plant life has yet to be recognised as a stand-alone issue to save inherent ecosystems and our rivers and our oceans.

Bev Woods, Ruakaka Forest & Bird North Island Conservation Manager Mark Bellingham replies: In the past 30 years I cannot remember a time when Forest & Bird has not been seeking rules from councils to protect native forests. Unfortunately, we cannot be everywhere at once and there are some instances when councils and DOC have got it wrong.

In the Whangarei case, the District Plan permits people to log native trees with a Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry permit or plan, and ignores any effects on the environment.

As MAF forestry staff take no account of ecosystem values and regularly ignore all the advice from DOC, there can be significant effects on wildlife and ecosystems.

Unfortunately, both Whangarei District and Northland

50 years ago

A protected ancient forest giant, Ratanui, at Bushy Park. Photo: Marina Skinner

Regional councils, DOC and the judge who signed the consent order were all ignorant of the 1995 Environment Court precedent (Minister of Conservation v Southland DC A039/01). There, Judge Sheppard observed that the Forests Act was about logging and the RMA addressed the adverse effects, and since then this has been upheld in Gisborne (RFBPS v Gisborne DC ENV2008 WLG000090).

This is why in recent times Forest & Bird staff and branch advocates have been ensuring councils have adequate rules in plans to address the effects of logging on biodiversity. In some regions we are assisted by regional councils, as district councils have to comply with regional policies and plans. In Stratford District, where there has been considerable logging activity on private land and minimal MAF controls, Stratford District Council has proposed rules to regulate the effects on indigenous ecosystems. Our branch and staff have been involved in that case also.

The opossum menace First of all there is little question that the bounty [for possum skins] was in general a failure. It did not prevent the animal from spreading. It did not deal with bad infestations. For instance in the Poverty Bay, East Coast region, probably the most heavily infested rural area from where some 15 per cent of all opossum tokens have come, it has been admitted in a recent meeting that the bounty failed to deal with the infestation. On the West Coast of the South Island the rata-kamahi forest on the flanks of the Southern Alps has been badly damaged of recent years by very heavy infestations, which attracted virtually no hunters at all. The same thing has happened on a more moderate scale in some forests in the North Island.

Forest & Bird, August 1961

Forest & Bird

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letters Turoa car race folly On April 9-10 the Turoa alpine access road at Tongariro National Park was closed for a minor car racing club from Taupo, which was given the sole privilege to race up and down this road for two days. Road closure denied access to all others: climbers, tourists, botanists and other visitors.

In my mind, this kind of activity is totally incompatible with the environmental sustainability of the wildlife we are trying to protect in this national park. This must not be tolerated as an annual event or at any time.

Andrew Geddes, Auckland

Thank you very much Thank you to everyone who gave to Forest & Bird’s seashore and river bird appeal in autumn.

More than $60,000 was donated, which will go towards several initiatives to protect coastal and river birds and their environment.

These initiatives include predator and weed control programmes, campaigning to stop vehicles crushing nests, and working with river engineers to avoid destroying bird habitat during flood control work.

Forest & Bird Seabird Advocate Karen Baird will be able to do further work this spring and summer to help the 40 remaining fairy terns that live north of Auckland.

We are grateful for your generous donations, which will help us continue our work for seashore and river birds.

Earlier orchid discovery In the obituary for Ross Beever (August 2010 Forest & Bird), it was noted that the native orchid Danhatchia australis, was discovered by him in Atuanui Scenic Reserve. Reference was also made to an earlier discovery of this orchid in Northland. This earlier discovery, believed to be the first, was made in 1955 by Elizabeth Kulka/Bing, at the time a 16-year-old student on an Auckland Botanical Society trip.

Her discovery is documented in the June 2008 Auckland Botanical Society Journal and can be viewed on line.

Tongariro National Park. Photo: Simon Hayward

Judy Simpson, Wellington

Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society

Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society

CONSERVATION CALENDAR 2012

NEW ZEALAND CONSERVATION DIARY 2012

Featuring images of both wildlife and wilderness habitat from New Zealand’s extraordinary natural heritage and conservation areas.

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This beautifully produced diary includes photographs of New Zealand landscapes, plants and wildlife. It includes ‘week to view’ pages and is spiral bound so it will lie flat when open.

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Both calendar and diary are available now. Send orders with cheque and delivery details to: Craig Potton Publishing, PO Box 555, Nelson 7010, New Zealand To order online please visit the Forest & Bird website: www.forestandbird.org.nz or www.craigpotton.co.nz

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| Forest & Bird

conservation

news

Forest & Bird wins wetland victory F

orest & Bird has won another court victory for West Coast wetlands, this time in the High Court. Forest & Bird, along with the Department of Conservation and local conservation group Friends of Shearer Swamp, has successfully defended an Environment Court decision that paved the way for greater protection for West Coast wetlands. The High Court rejected an attempt by the West Coast Regional Council to have that decision overturned.

In 2010, the Environment Court agreed with Forest & Bird that the criteria that had been used in the West Coast regional plan to identify “significant” wetlands were ecologically inadequate. Under the Resource Management Act, local councils are directed to provide for the protection of significant areas of indigenous vegetation or habitat for wildlife. It is common practice to use ecological criteria to help determine which areas of vegetation or habitat, including wetlands, meet that significance test.

Forest & Bird argued that the criteria the West Coast Regional Council had used were inadequate, which meant only a few West Coast wetlands were identified as significant under the regional plan. This in turn meant very few wetlands received protection under the plan against the threat of land drainage for farming.

The Environment Court instead adopted a set of criteria that was ecologically robust, and that captured more of the remaining West Coast wetlands. For the purposes of the regional plan, the new criteria mean many more wetlands will go through a robust ecological assessment as part of the resource consent process, and they are much more likely to be protected.

The West Coast Regional Council objected to the criteria adopted by the Environment Court, and late last year lodged an appeal to the High Court. The council argued that the Environment Court had wrongly decided what “significance” meant in the context of the West Coast region. The council tried to argue that in determining the significance criteria for West Coast wetlands, the Environment Court had placed too much emphasis on the national scarcity of wetlands. A mere 10 per cent of

West Coast wetland

New Zealand’s original wetlands remain. The council claimed that because the West Coast has more wetlands remaining than other regions, the bar for significance should be very high, so only a few wetlands should be called “significant” and worthy of protection.

The High Court rejected that appeal for several reasons, and found that the Environment Court made its decision correctly, and took into account all the relevant factors it should have in deciding on the significance criteria for wetlands.

This is a great victory for West Coast wetlands because it ensures the progress made in the Environment Court towards better wetland protection has not been unravelled.

The High Court win also has wider implications because it upholds an ecologically sound set of criteria. These criteria are specific to wetlands but many of the concepts embodied in the criteria are relevant for determining the significance of any kind of indigenous vegetation or wildlife habitat.

Forest & Bird hopes other local councils will be guided by the criteria when fulfilling their obligations under the Resource Management Act. The High Court’s decision was only on the issue of significance criteria. The rest of the planning provisions for wetlands still need to be finalised, and will be argued in the Environment Court in August this year. n Erika Toleman

Win a book Forest & Bird is giving away a copy of Endangered Birds: A survey of planet earth’s changing ecosystems by Martin Walters in association with BirdLife International, worth $49.99. To enter the draw, email your entry to draw@forestandbird.org.nz Please put Endangered Birds in the subject line and include your name and address in the email. Or put your name and address on the back of an envelope and post to Endangered Birds draw Forest & Bird PO Box 631 Wellington 6140

Entries close on September 30.

The winners of the Matiu/Somes draw in the May magazine are: Geoff Patterson, of Wellington; Colleen Grayling, of Auckland; David L & Anne Evans, of Mäpua; Dannielle Jordin, of Rolleston; and Jan Jones, of Wellington. Your books will be mailed.

Forest & Bird

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conservation

news

Rangiora students paddle for Mökihinui R

angiora High School students are helping to defend the West Coast’s Mökihinui River by buying a mock share certificate as part of Forest & Bird’s campaign to save the river from damming.

Forest & Bird is defending the wild river from stateowned Meridian Energy, which wants to build an 85-metrehigh dam that would drown 330 hectares of forest and riverbed leaving several endangered species homeless. As part of the campaign, mock share certificates and virtual pieces of the Mökihinui River and the river bank are for sale, to help raise money for the legal costs of the Environment Court appeal next year.

Rangiora High School students are passionate about helping to save the Mökihinui River. Every year the school sends two year 13 physical education classes to Murchison for a 3½-day kayak trip. The students work on their kayaking skills on the Buller River, and paddle down part of the Matakitaki River.

During their trip this year, Mick Hopkinson, of the New Zealand Kayak School, spoke to the students about the need to preserve our wild rivers. The students decided to show their support by buying a $100 Mökihinui share.

Student Olivia Gray says: “After having Mick speak so passionately about the Mökihinui and other rivers and

experiencing our great natural environment firsthand, we felt somewhat responsible to stand up against the proposed dam that is being put forth. I feel this issue has touched everyone very personally and for others not to experience what we got the opportunity to do on a river would be a big loss.” n Michelle Te Ohaere To buy a share certificate, see www.savethemokihinui.org.nz

Some of this year’s Rangiora High School kayaking students, who have bought a share certificate to help save the Mökihinui River.

Fine art of protest Cushla McGaughey has taken an artistic approach to speaking up about the Mökihinui River.

Her submission against the proposed hydro scheme on the Mökihinui River is a painting, Cry the Wild River: Whio on the Mökihinui.

The Wellington artist painted whio, or blue ducks, on the Mökihinui River, and sent a photograph of the painting with a letter to Conservation Minister Kate Wilkinson.

The Mökihinui River is one of the few remaining wild river habitats in which whio can be found. Cushla says she is “helping to heighten awareness of our wonderful, unique heritage and our responsibility to preserve it”. n Michelle Te Ohaere

In brief Halt on wandering willie: Landcare Research and the Auckland Council have got together to bring to heel wandering willie weed, or tradescantia. In late March, Landcare Research and the Auckland Council released the tradescantia leaf beetle (Neolema ogloblini), for the first time in New Zealand. The beetle feeds on the foliage of the weed. Landcare Research scientists have tested the beetle to ensure it won’t attack other plants or have any unwanted effects on native plants and animals.

New stoat control: A new toxin believed to be the first registered for mammalian pests in the world for at least 20 years has been developed in New Zealand. The new poison, known as PAPP (para-aminopropriophenone), is aimed at 10

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controlling stoats and feral cats. DOC co-ordinated research on the new toxin and has invested significantly in its product development with commercial partner Connovation Ltd. PAPP will be an alternative to traps in remote locations, or when a quick result is needed for stoat control.

Forest & Bird T-shirts: Buy a green, white or black T-shirt and show you’re proud to be a member. Order from Forest & Bird’s shop at www.forestandbird.org.nz or 0800 200 064.

Sub-Antarctic winner: Nicholas Allen from Ilam, Christchurch was the winner of the Heritage Expeditions and Forest & Bird albatross competition. He has won a trip on Heritage Expeditions’ Forgotten Islands of the South Pacific expedition cruise to New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic Islands.

Seabirds lose out under fisheries policy T

he Ministry of Fisheries’ recently released draft seabird bycatch policy will do nothing to reduce the huge problem of birds being killed by getting caught on fishing gear, Forest & Bird Seabird Advocate Karen Baird says.

“The ministry’s decision to ditch the current National Plan of Action for Seabirds in favour of the ill-conceived seabird policy is a huge disappointment,” she says. “We are now waiting for the Ministry of Fisheries to collate the submissions to their draft seabird policy. We want to see them return to a National Plan of Action for Seabirds that includes measures to reduce seabird bycatch.”

The issue has also caught the attention of international organisations, which have criticised the plan’s lack of specific measures to reduce seabird bycatch. As the signatory of several international agreements protecting seabirds, New Zealand has “an international responsibility to develop a National Plan of Action to reduce seabird bycatch in its fisheries,” says Ben Sullivan, who heads BirdLife International’s Global Seabird Programme.

A report for the Ministry of Fisheries suggests 22,200 to 40,900 seabirds are killed annually in fisheries within New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The risk assessment report estimates 21 of the 64 seabird species assessed are at risk from the level of incidental bycatch.

The most at-risk species is the threatened endemic black petrel, with the average number of potential annual fishing-related fatalities estimated to be nearly 10 times higher than the level of human-induced deaths it can sustain without undermining its continued existence.

The endangered northern royal albatross breeds mostly in the Chathams but also at one of our best-known natural visitor attractions, the colony at Taiaroa Head on Otago Peninsula. The report estimates that 169 to 590 northern royal albatrosses are killed annually by fishing-related activity.

Some gains have been made in deep-sea fishing through mandatory mitigation measures, but mandatory mitigation is not required in inshore fisheries. Observer

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2 1 A wandering albatross drowned on a fishing long line. Photo: Graham Robertson/Australian Antarctic Division 2 The future for the endemic black petrel is threatened by fishing-related deaths. Photo: DOC

coverage is low in inshore fisheries and potentially large numbers of albatrosses, petrels, king shags and spotted shags may be killed.

“Some fishing methods are simply never going to be sustainable and will need to be made illegal. Squid trawling near the Auckland Islands not only directly kills New Zealand sea lions but also competes for their food and that has contributed to pup production halving since 1998,” Baird says. This squid fishery is also harming the white-capped albatross population. Fishing with squid jigs – a type of hooked lure – appears a much more sustainable method of fishing, with low risk to sea lions and seabirds, she adds. n David Brooks

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conservation

news

Forest & Bird defends Mackenzie F

orest & Bird’s work in resource management forums is helping to protect important parts of Canterbury’s Mackenzie Basin from the spread of intensive agriculture.

Staunch defence by Forest & Bird and others has led to the withdrawal of a plan change appeal by Federated Farmers, which tried to have irrigation made a permitted activity throughout the Waitaki district’s outstanding natural landscapes.

The appeal, lodged in September 2010, was withdrawn in June after two mediations, which Forest & Bird attended with planning witness Anna Cameron and landscape architect Di Lucas.

The Environmental Defence Society and Environment Canterbury also opposed the appeal.

Forest & Bird is extremely pleased that the outstanding natural landscapes of the Waitaki district will be protected from intensive irrigation. This means that consent can only be granted after a full assessment of the effects of particular proposals, and only if the proposal satisfies the gateway test for non-complying activities, and meets the purpose of the Resource Management Act. Forest & Bird’s own appeal of the Waitaki District Plan provisions about landscape continues. We are appealing

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the council’s decision to make irrigation a permitted activity throughout the district’s Rural Scenic Zone, which covers much of the Upper Waitaki, including the Lake Ohau outwash plain. This means that once irrigators have their water permits from the regional council, they do not need to seek consent from the district council for the land use aspects of irrigation.

In parts of the Rural Scenic Zone with particular landscape value, Forest & Bird wants the plan to treat irrigation as a discretionary activity, so resource consent must be applied for from the district council. This would mean the land use effects of irrigation, and in particular effects on the landscape, could be assessed.

In a separate appeal, Forest & Bird is trying to improve protection of indigenous vegetation on South Island high country properties that have been freeholded through tenure review.

We have appealed a decision by Waitaki District Council that the Waitaki District Plan’s rules controlling clearance of indigenous vegetation do not apply to properties that have been freeholded through tenure review. The appeals are likely to be heard later this year. n Sally Gepp

DOC to lose key expertise T

he Department of Conservation’s announcement in June that it will shed more than 100 jobs is likely to lead to the loss of key technical and scientific skills. DOC said just over 100 jobs would be cut from its Wellington headquarters and regional offices around the country. The jobs to be cut were expected to be identified about September, and the staff would be laid off towards the end of the year.

“The decision to cut 100 jobs at DOC means we will lose some of the detailed scientific on-the-ground knowledge of our conservation land,” Forest & Bird Conservation Advocate Nicola Vallance said. “These skills are vital to ensure our beautiful wild places are protected and well managed.

“These skills and experience are crucial to saving the endangered species and landscapes that we love and that define New Zealand. DOC cannot afford to lose its core conservation expertise,” she said.

Public land administered by DOC amounts to a third of New Zealand’s land mass and good decision-making about the future of this land is vital if New Zealand is to hold on to the clean, green brand that underpins our key tourism and agricultural industries, Nicola said. This branding is the key to recovering from the economic downturn, rather than looking to short-term and environmentally damaging mining activity.

The decision to cut jobs at DOC contrasted with the government’s decision this year to nearly double the number of people working in the Ministry of Economic Development’s unit aimed at expanding the oil and minerals industries. “New Zealanders showed last year during the battle to save our Schedule 4 protected lands from mining that we love our conservation land and want it protected from mining and other threats,” Nicola said.

A special offer for Forest & Bird readers Wild Encounters Our popular Going Places articles and other nature-themed 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 retails 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

Please send me my copy of Wild Encounters for a total price of $35 (price includes post and packaging and my $10 contribution to help Forest & Bird’s conservation projects).

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Clean, green and endangered 1 14

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Our freshwater fish, birds and insects are paying a high price for our ill-treatment of the rivers and lakes they live in. By David Brooks.

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ew Zealand’s rainfall is twice the global average but our careless attitude to this bounty means freshwater species are disappearing and many lowland rivers are unsafe for swimming. Our freshwater animals are in at least as much danger as our native birds but it has been a case of out of sight, out of mind for our 40 or so native fish species, even though 80 per cent are found nowhere else in the world.

Intensification of agriculture has been the cause of the worst damage but urban and industrial pollution have played a part in damaging our freshwater. Dams and badly designed culverts have blocked the way for migratory species and huge areas of habitat have been lost through the draining of wetlands. Some introduced species compete for food, some eat the young of native animals and others damage their habitat.

Our endemic longfin eel, which has been known to live for up to a century, is in rapid decline because of commercial harvesting, pollution and the blocking of its migratory routes between the ocean and upper catchments of rivers. They need to return to the sea to undertake an extraordinary 5000km final journey to tropical seas near Tonga to breed and die.

Fishermen are prone to exaggeration, yet we know the truth of whitebaiters’ tales of past huge catches dwindling to meagre harvests in recent seasons. The prized whitebait are juveniles of five native species – ïnanga, köaro and three types of kökopu.

Some of our most remarkable native birds need healthy rivers. The whio, or blue duck, lives in the upper catchments of fast-flowing rivers and the loss of habitat along with attacks from introduced predators has seen numbers of this beautiful endemic bird fall to about 2500.

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efending our unique wildlife, plants and landscapes is Forest & Bird’s focus, but there are other compelling reasons for clean, healthy water. In the past, we have taken for granted being able to swim or fish in our favourite rivers or lakes, but many lowland rivers are now unsafe for swimming and we can no longer scoop up a handful of water and drink it without risking our health, says Forest & Bird Conservation Advocate Nicola Vallance.

“We love our rivers and lakes – they have a hold over us – but more and more of them are being denied to us because they aren’t safe,” she says. “We have to act now if our children and grandchildren are going to enjoy them as the magical places we used to treasure.”

Clear blue lakes and rivers are also critical to our 100% Pure-branded tourism industry, which provides nearly 10 per cent of our gross domestic product and one in 10 jobs.

The clean, green image also underpins our agriculturebased exports.

But the intensification of agriculture – and the dairy industry boom especially – is undermining the clean, green image it benefits from. Agricultural intensification is leading to too much water being removed from some rivers in areas such as Canterbury, pasture erosion and too many damaging nutrients – nitrogen and phosphorus in particular from fertilisers and animal waste – leaching back into our water bodies.

The pressure from farmers for more water in Canterbury to allow conversions from dryland pastoral farming to dairying prompted the government to take the draconian step of dismissing the democratically elected Environment Canterbury, the regional council responsible for ensuring water quality in the region. This “coup” against ECan was interpreted by many as further opening the way for development interests at the expense of conservation, recreation and the community.

The flow of sediments into our rivers remains a problem due to runoff created by cow hooves causing pugging on intensively farmed land, erosion in cleared hill country catchments and the harvesting of plantation forests. The growth of our population is putting more pressure on

1 Clear, fresh Wairere Stream flows from Mt Ruapehu to Taranaki Falls.

Photo: Nathan Goshgarian 2 Freshwater is important for many invertebrates, including dragonflies and damselflies, that live beside waterways. Photos: Steve Attwood 3 Numbers of the long-lived longfin eel are in rapid decline because of commercial harvesting, pollution and the blocking of its migratory routes between the ocean and upper catchments of rivers.

Photo: Phillipe Gerbeaux

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urban waterways because of inadequate sewerage and stormwater infrastructure.

Population and economic growth is also creating more demand for energy, and power companies want to dam some of our remaining wild rivers – such as the Mökihinui on the West Coast – rather than looking for less damaging alternative energy sources or promoting energy efficiency.

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4 Kötare, or kingfisher. Photo: Craig McKenzie

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he government-backed Land and Water Forum was asked by the government in 2009 to bring together 58 interested parties including iwi, conservation and recreation groups, farmers and industries to come to a consensus on how to better manage water. Forest & Bird Advocacy Manager Kevin Hackwell was a trustee of the forum and a member of its small group, which did most of the detailed work in drawing up recommendations for the report released in September last year.

“The forum’s report is an important step in trying to find an alternative to the confrontational way water has been managed up to now, which has often seen development and conservation interests engaged in lengthy and expensive court action,” he says.

The Land and Water Forum’s report called for the establishment of clear limits and standards. It also recommended the government adopt – with four relatively minor changes – a National Policy Statement (NPS) on water earlier drawn up by a Board of Inquiry. The government’s revised version of the NPS on water was released in May, as well as announcements on funding for cleaning up historically contaminated waterways and for developing irrigation and water storage.

Forest & Bird and other environmental groups criticised the government’s NPS for diluting some of the Board of Inquiry’s version, especially the key objective that aimed to ensure that at a bare minimum water quality would be maintained in all our waterways.

The government has now asked the Land and Water Forum to continue work on areas such as setting water standards, and establishing criteria for allocating government funds for restoring damaged waterways and setting up new irrigation schemes.

“The lack of a clear focus in the National Policy Statement will make the job of establishing a new water management regime harder but it is still possible with goodwill from all sides that we can grasp this historic opportunity to stop the slide in our water quality,” Kevin Hackwell says.

“If we can establish a system with clear limits and standards, which ensures the conservation and community interests are given their due weight, we can start to have more confidence about the future for our water quality.”

There is an opportunity now for the government to respond to the public demand for better water quality and to ensure a future for our native freshwater fish and habitats.

5 We have taken our freshwater for granted. Photo: Jordan Kappely 6 Black stilt, or kaki, and white-faced heron. Photo: Craig McKenzie 7 Australasian crested grebe. Photo: Craig McKenzie

We love our rivers and lakes – they have a hold over us – but more and more of them are being denied to us because they aren’t safe.

Nicola Vallance 16

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Muddying our waters F

reshwater ecologist Dr Mike Joy issued a passionate call to action to turn around the mounting crisis facing our rivers and lakes at Forest & Bird’s annual conference, which this year focussed on the Freshwater for Life theme.

The Wellington conference in June heard several different perspectives on freshwater from Dr Joy, other academics, Fonterra, the Land and Water Forum and recreation and conservation groups.

Massey University’s Dr Joy has been speaking up about the deterioration of our freshwater for 15 years and he is frustrated and angry the situation keeps getting worse. His presentation was centred on five myths surrounding our environment: n New Zealand is clean and green and 100% Pure n Biodiversity and the environment are looked after by central government n We are 100% Pure compared with the rest of the world n Dairy farming in New Zealand is sustainable n The Resource Management Act protects the environment “The golden goose for our tourism and exports is the 100% Pure branding. Well, I reckon our goose is cooked,” he told the conference.

“We need an inquiry into the true value of the intensification of farming to New Zealand. I think we have been sold a pup. When we lose our clean, green image we don’t have anything else really. We have to wake up and do something now.”

Professor Ken Hughey of Lincoln University told the conference there is almost universal support from New Zealanders for ensuring there are no further significant pollution discharges into our waterways and for ensuring almost all our rivers were safe to swim in. Perception surveys done by Professor Hughey and colleagues over the last decade also showed the number of people who perceived farming to be a major cause of damage to freshwater grew from 20 per cent to 50 per cent between 2000 and 2010.

Fonterra Sustainability Field Team Manager Emma Parsons told the conference the company’s customers were demanding the company deliver on sustainability and she added the company was responding to those demands. The Clean Streams Accord, involving Fonterra, local authorities

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and the agriculture and environment ministries had prodded farmers into better managing their effluent but more commitment was still needed to manage nutrients.

Land and Water Forum chairman Alastair Bisley said the forum found there needed to be limits on water quantities and quality and a better way of allocating it. The governmentbacked forum reported recommendations last year to the government on how to improve water management. “The problems are not a lack of technical solutions but a lack of agreement on which way we should travel to maximise the benefits of water, including the benefits of conservation and recreation as well as economic interests,” he said.

Forest & Bird Advocacy Manager Kevin Hackwell, who has been closely involved in the Land & Water Forum’s work, agreed with Mr Bisley that taking part in a collaborative process such as the forum meant every participant had to give up a little power but in return they expected a more durable solution to emerge.

He added that NGOs such as Forest & Bird are representing the public interest in freshwater issues and are responsible for holding authorities to account, saying “these are our water resources and we demand they are managed better”.

Economic commentator Rod Oram said proposals for 14 major water storage projects to more than double the amount of irrigated land in New Zealand did not make a lot of economic sense and would produce a relatively low rate of return of only 6.4 per cent to the government. The government announced as part of its Fresh Start for Water package in May it would give $35 million to get these projects started and it would invest $400 million in irrigation infrastructure.

New Zealand had to move beyond producing increasing amounts of commodities if it was to secure a strong economic future, Mr Oram said.

The golden goose for our tourism and exports is the 100% Pure branding.

Well, I reckon our goose is cooked.

Dr Mike Joy Forest & Bird

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NATURE OF TOMORROW

cows Our sacred

Parts of Canterbury’s naturally dry Mackenzie Basin are being converted to dairying with the help of pivot irrigators.

In the fourth part of a series about the future of New Zealand conservation, Dr Mike Joy offers a solution to the problems of rapidly declining freshwater quality and the ongoing loss of our native freshwater plants and animals.

T

he crucial first step to a new future for fresh water in New Zealand is confronting the reality of the present – the grim truth that surely busts our clean-green myopic myth. Currently, 35 per cent of all our native plant and animal species have become extinct since humans arrived or are at risk of extinction. This figure includes all of New Zealand’s terrestrial mammals and frogs, 85 per cent of vascular plants and marine invertebrates, 60 per cent of reptile and native freshwater fish species, about 50 per cent of the bird, macro-algae and bryophyte species, 30 per cent of the freshwater invertebrate species and 25 per cent of our marine fish species.

If that isn’t grim enough, bear in mind that these biodiversity declines inherently under-represent reality because the data are inevitably out of date and little effort

is put into monitoring changes. When biodiversity is in decline, by the time the data is collated and the report written and published, the situation is already far worse.

A further dilemma with assessing biodiversity decline is that by putting less money into science (for instance, decimating the Department of Conservation) and research, government can (at least temporarily), make it look as though things are not so bad.

The next reality check is that our 100% Pure brand couldn’t be further from the truth. With regard to our lowlands, 100% Pure England would be a better description. This biological homogenisation has been so comprehensive that now, for example, we have more introduced than native plant species, and about a third of our freshwater fish and birds are now exotic.

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When it comes to ecosystem diversity, the picture is just as gloomy. More than two-thirds of all land ecosystems are classed as threatened and 90 per cent of our wetlands no longer exist.

We are justifiably proud that a third of the country is protected in national parks and reserves but the reality is that these areas exist mostly because this land was never wanted for agriculture or towns. So the protected areas are mostly in alpine or extremely inhospitable areas. By default we protect high-country ecosystems but vital lowland forest and wetland ecosystems are almost completely lost.

Much of New Zealand’s clean, green image is marketed using amazing scenic photo shoots in these alpine areas.

This is great for attracting tourists but, unfortunately, these impressions have fostered a national (and mostly unmerited) smugness about what is happening in the rest of the country, where most people live.

Globally, a pattern is appearing where the damage done to ecosystems on the land shows up first in freshwater. So it is not surprising that in New Zealand the loss of freshwater biodiversity is even more extreme than on land, with about 60 per cent of freshwater fish species as well as our only freshwater crayfish and mussel listed as threatened with extinction.

This high proportion of threatened species is an unambiguous indicator of freshwater deterioration and is mirrored by downward trends from traditional chemical water quality monitoring. Most monitored lowland river sites fail bathing standards and almost all “state of the environment” measures of water quality from lowland lakes and rivers all over the country reveal the health of rivers and lakes is worsening, particularly over the past 20 years. The sole improvement in the past 20 years has been a reduction

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of some industrial inputs. However, massive increases in fertiliser use have meant that the net change is one of decline as these nutrients inevitably end up in rivers and lakes.

When it comes to human health, once again we are unquestionably in denial. Ministry of Health figures show that 18,000-30,000 people contract waterborne diseases annually. Nationally 43 per cent of monitored river sites regularly fail to meet bathing standards and many of these fail because illness-inducing faecal pathogen levels are too high. In many intensively farmed areas nitrogen levels in groundwater exceed safe levels and cadmium (a known human neurotoxin) build-up in soils from phosphate fertiliser is reaching, and exceeding, World Health Organisation acceptable levels.

A

nother myth that perpetuates our inertia on environmental protection is that we are cleaner and greener than other developed countries. Global comparisons are never easy as there are few useful or accepted comparable parameters. However, we can use the proportion of species that are listed as threatened in each country as miner’s canaries to get an ecosystem-level proxy for environmental status. If we look at our freshwater ecosystems we can see how we really compare.

New Zealand, with about 60 per cent of freshwater fish species listed as threatened, is far worse than the global average of about 37 per cent. We are on a par with South Africa but we are worse than Europe, at 42 per cent, and the United States, at 37 per cent, in the figures for freshwater fish threatened.

Lakes are good integrators of all freshwater impacts, and measurements are much less variable than for rivers,

meaning some globally comparable data are available.

The eutrophication (excess nutrient) levels of New Zealand’s lakes clearly show they are significantly worse than Canada’s, have level pegging with Europe’s and are in better shape than those in the United States.

Those who deny freshwater declines in New Zealand have cited a recent report from Yale University that placed New Zealand as second only to Iceland based on freshwater quality. However, further investigation of the detail of this report reveals it is totally flawed. For example, only half the 130-odd countries that were ranked actually had any water quality data available for comparison and the rest were estimated. In addition, there were vast discrepancies in spatial and temporal representation and the time periods compared were inconsistent.

New Zealand was ranked using data from about 80 sites (1 site for every 3000 square kilometres), but there were 11 sites from Australia (1 site/692,000 km2 and all from Victoria), 11 from China (1 site/870,000 km2) and more than 500 from the United States (1 site/18,000 km2). Obviously it is not possible to represent the water quality of a whole country by examining only one tiny portion of it.

Because our upland rivers are less polluted than lowland rivers, and because half the New Zealand sites were selected as pristine control sites upstream of any agricultural or industrial pollution impacts, the comparative picture of New Zealand in the Yale study was completely distorted.

Improving the health of fresh water in New Zealand will require major upgrading of how we monitor the state of flowing waters. The flawed measures we use now are a legacy of a time when freshwater was seen to be of little importance, meaning we measure the wrong things the wrong way because it’s cheap and easy. This has in part allowed the declines to continue virtually unnoticed.

At the heart of this failure is the obviously flawed measurement of flowing water using snapshot sampling rather than continuous monitoring. You don’t have to be a scientist to see the folly of this. The parameters that are measured in snapshots vary hourly, daily and seasonally (especially in degraded systems) so it’s like monitoring traffic flow on the highway by taking a camera snapshot every two months.

The other part of the measurement problem is that major impacts on fresh water in New Zealand are simply not measured and therefore not reported. Examples are the physical alteration of rivers (by straightening and stop-banking) and the build-up of sediment on river and stream beds that smothers fish habitat. The increased sedimentation is from historic forest clearance, ongoing inappropriate land use on steep hill country and a lack of bank protection and riparian vegetation. These impacts are extensive and significant but do not form part of any national monitoring programme.

For the most part, these unmeasured alterations impact on both the freshwater plant and animal life but also have visual and economic impacts. For example, the economic impact on communities of having to continually raise stopbanks to contain rivers and protect infrastructure is clearly unsustainable.

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2 Dairy cows in a Wairarapa stream. Photo: Aalbert Rebergen 3 The banded kökopu is one of the five species in whitebait runs in our rivers each spring. Photo: DOC 4 Blue duck, or whio, number about 2500, and their numbers are declining.

They need clean wild rivers to survive. Photo: David Hallet

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Raupo is found on lake edges and in wetlands. Photo: DOC

T

he causes of decline in New Zealand’s fresh water are common to many countries, and include conversion to agriculture, forestry, horticulture and urbanisation.

But there is one overriding recent impact that has made our decline worse than in most other countries – farming intensification, driven by the dairy boom, during the past two decades.

Over the past two decades, nitrogen fertiliser use in New Zealand has increased more than 700 per cent and the number of cows milked in the South Island has increased sevenfold. In contrast, during this time, many European countries have made major water quality improvements by capping and reducing fertiliser use, after seeing the immense damage intensive farming has done to their waterways. In New Zealand, during that time, dairy farming became a leading export sector by being allowed to increase pollution levels unchecked.

It’s crucial to realise that in New Zealand only dairy shed effluent is controlled by regulation, and the much greater diffuse impacts of intensification are a free for all.

Worse still, much of the production increase has come from growth in unsustainable inputs like imported palm kernel and nitrogen fertiliser made from fossil fuel.

There have been significant gains made in reducing intensive farming impacts, with technology, education and growing environmental awareness among farmers.

Unfortunately, however, the overall state of freshwater continues to decline because the rate of improvement lags far behind the level of intensification. It’s like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic – the improvements make for feel-good headlines that combat any negative publicity but do not address overall declines.

The inescapable fact is that the only way to halt the declines and even contemplate improvement is to stop dairy expansion in New Zealand. Only then would there be a chance that improvements in pollution control might begin to catch up with the rate of degradation.

A precedent has been set for limiting dairy intensification, with the protection of Lake Taupö. A limit of one dairy cow per two hectares has been set in the catchment. This iconic lake is considered worth protecting even though it meant taxpayers spending $81.5 million to pay farmers to reduce stocking levels. Does this mean 22

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we don’t value all our other lakes and rivers? Surely, if it’s good enough for Lake Taupö, it’s good enough for all New Zealand’s freshwater.

Reporting in the media around the value and sustainability of dairying is not impartial since the sheer size and resources of the dairy industry mean its lobbying power is immense. A recent example was the commissioning of the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) to write a report on the economic value of dairying to New Zealand. The report was nothing short of propaganda – it didn’t include or even mention the costs of dairy to the environment and was fraudulently titled “Dairy’s role in sustaining New Zealand”. The only way to make the title honest would be to add the word “economic” or remove “sustaining”.

Of course, individuals and NGOs involved in protecting the environment could never afford to have the NZIER write a report on the costs of dairying to New Zealand to counter the first one. The influence of the dairy industry on government is evidenced by the fact that it has been given free rein to pollute waterways in breach of the aspiration of the Resource Management Act for at least two decades.

Notwithstanding this distortion, the truth is emerging.

The clean-green reality debate that followed the interview with Prime Minister John Key on BBC’s HARDtalk programme has been healthy and has gone some way towards exposing the lack of credibility among deniers.

It has even helped spark the Pure Advantage group of business leaders promoting green economic opportunities, showing that even the business lobby has finally seen the economic imperative of our clean, green image.

Perhaps we need to go through a truth and reconciliation process to end the divisions that exist, ensuring that we all move on to the work required to halt declines and regain our clean, green image. The Land and Water Forum was a good model for the future but it needs more balance. Currently, the make-up is a heavily loaded with exploiters, and more are queuing up to join. All New Zealanders are stakeholders, not just those who make an income from degrading it, and the forum constituency should represent this balance.

Without a doubt, clean and safe freshwater is New Zealand’s most important asset. We must never forget that, and no one should be allowed to degrade it under any circumstances. It is obvious from the huge biodiversity losses that have occurred in such a short time that we have compromised far too much.

It is now imperative that we draw a line in the sand and say no more. No more cows!

With cow numbers capped, the industry would do what it should have done long ago: add value to milk and concentrate on quality rather than unsustainable increases in quantity.

Dr Mike Joy is a freshwater ecologist at Massey University.

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This is the ultimate wilderness voyage, to the heart of New Zealand’s Subantarctic islands: the Snares, Auckland Islands and Campbell Island. Their indigenous flora and fauna are so densely-concentrated that the World Conservation Union has designated them as a world centre of floristic diversity. Sailing here with Ross’s 1840 Antarctic Expedition, Sir Joseph Hooker – botanist and curator of the famous Kew Gardens in England – described “a flora display second to none outside the tropics”.

Expeditions are timed to coincide with this magnificent spectacle, only ever witnessed by a few people due to the remoteness of the islands. Lying south of Invercargill, access is heavilyrestricted to these World Heritage Reserves, with some areas limited to just 50 visitors per year.

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Congratulations to Mr Nicholas Allen, he was the lucky winner of our Forest & Bird Readers Competition and he is looking forward to visiting the Subantarctic Islands with us.

For further information call 0800 262 8873 toll free within NZ or visit heritage-expeditions.com

The force

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Christchurch’s people have suffered loss and hardship since the Earth unleashed a series of violent quakes. Olivia Carville investigates how nature has fared.

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n September 4, 2010, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake tore through the region, sparking unforeseen fault lines to unleash a snake of deadly aftershocks.

The city of Christchurch was brought to its knees. It has been hit with 28 aftershocks of more than magnitude-5 since September. The central business district remains locked behind a cordon, thousands of buildings have been demolished, thousands of homes have been abandoned and 181 people have lost their lives.

The quakes’ greatest impacts on the diverse region’s biodiversity are seen in the waterways. Many Canterbury rivers and streams have been choked in liquefaction and polluted with sewage. Canterbury University Associate Professor and freshwater biologist Jon Harding describes Christchurch waterways as “munted”, and says 60 to 70 per cent of streams in the city have been “massively impacted” by the earthquakes. “I have been working in freshwater ecology for about 20 years and I have never seen streams like this before, not even close,” he says. New Zealand has

plant life along its banks. “It used to be a metre or so deep, now it is completely buried in silt. When I first saw it I just couldn’t believe it.”

He says February’s earthquake would have killed most of the fish in the Angela Stream and he doubts that invertebrates will recolonise there without human intervention. Harding says there is no international data on the effects of earthquakes on stream ecology systems so he has no idea when, or if, the streams will recover. “We are at a new frontier here. Without positive human intervention it could take years and years for these streams to recover.”

The Department of Conservation has mounting concern for several of the region’s threatened native plants and animals. After September’s massive quake, biodiversity ranger Anita Spencer went out on foot around the region to investigate the effects on threatened native plants and animals.

The nationally critical Canterbury mudfish is endemic to Canterbury and is one species that is now vulnerable to predation in the region’s altered waterways.

Mudfish prefer muddy streams with low dissolved oxygen levels or shallow areas that are too harsh for predators such as trout and eel to survive. Spencer says many stream and river water levels have risen significantly after the earthquakes, with some bursting their banks, allowing trout and other predators to invade mudfish habitats. “Populations of mudfish were just hanging on prior to the quake but now they are vulnerable to predation. Some isolated fragments of the mudfish population will probably go extinct,” she says.

of nature 35 indigenous freshwater fish species and 13 are found in Christchurch. Harding fears the streams have been so devastated that some native species now face extinction.

Nearly every time the Earth buckled over a magnitude 5 beneath Canterbury, the riverbeds were blanketed in silt and sediment. The liquefaction came up through the riverbed in much the same way that it seeped from the cracks in roads and flooded the city’s eastern suburbs. But the silt was also flushed into the city’s stormwater system as it was washed away from roads and gardens. Streams were polluted with raw sewage as many of the city’s sewer pipes ruptured. Harding says when sewage flows into a stream it brings a high level of nutrients to the water, some of which can be toxic. The nutrients reduce the level of dissolved oxygen in the water and the fish ultimately suffocate. After February 22, the level of oxygen in the Heathcote River plummeted, causing hundreds of native fish, trout, eels and whitebait to die, he says.

Christchurch City Council says it is too early to identify the areas of the city’s biodiversity that have been affected long term by the quakes, but Harding, who was out sampling Christchurch streams and rivers only days after February’s deadly quake, says his findings are disheartening. Christchurch’s Angela Stream is one of the worst affected. Harding says the latest quakes sent a wave of silt down the stream that also wiped out a quarter of the

3 1 The earthquakes have reduced much of Christchurch Cathedral to rubble.

Photo: David Hallett 2 Liquefaction bubbles up in the Avon-Heathcote Estuary after the June 13 quake. Photo: David Hallett 3 The nationally critical Canterbury mudfish is now vulnerable to predation in the region’s altered waterways. Photo: Anita Spencer

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The endangered ïnanga, Christchurch’s main whitebait species, has been badly affected by the earthquakes. ïnanga usually lay eggs along the banks of the city’s rivers and streams between February and May. All the eggs laid before February 22 would have drowned in silt, and Spencer says some of the best ïnanga spawning sites along Christchurch’s Avon River have been wiped out.

The nationally endangered pygmy button daisy is also suffering in the wake of the quakes. The native plant is found in only three areas around New Zealand, including Christchurch’s Port Hills. It can only survive in certain sites where introduced grass gets trampled. At a daisy site on the Mt Pleasant Bluffs walking track, the earthquakes have caused major rockfalls and landslides, and the council has deemed the walking track unsafe. Spencer says the damage to the area is so extensive it is likely the track will never be reopened so grass will overrun the pygmy button daisy. It faces extinction there.

Cliff collapse and rock falls around Banks Peninsula, Godley Head, Lyttelton Harbour and Quail Island have buried many penguin nesting areas and seal breeding sites.

Spencer, who walked around the Banks Peninsula coastline after the September quake, says she saw squashed whiteflippered penguins and fur seals among the rocks. “Walking around the rocks you could smell dead animals. Although I could only see a few squashed in the boulders, the smell was so strong that there must have been a lot more buried underneath.” She says the number of nationally vulnerable white-flippered penguins killed in the quakes isn’t high enough to further threaten the colony.

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5 Many man-made structures bowed to the Earth’s movement and some of those structures had been built to protect native plants and animals. A $100,000 predatorproof fence at Stony Bay on Banks Peninsula was built to safeguard the seriously endangered sooty shearwater colony but in the February earthquake a large section of the fence fell off the side of the cliff and crashed into the sea below. Stony Bay is one of the last places on the mainland where the birds nest and when 60 metres of the stainless steel fence toppled over the cliff it left the sooty shearwater colony exposed to predation once again. A temporary fence has been erected until it is safe to rebuild a permanent structure. A predator-proof fence protecting white-flippered penguins in Harris Bay also fell victim to the earthquakes, along with nesting boxes that had been built into the rocks.

4 A wave of silt has filled Angela Stream, wiping out fish and plants on its banks. ‘It used to be a metre or so deep, now it is completely buried in silt,’ freshwater biologist Jon Harding says. Photo: Jon Harding 5 The nationally endangered pygmy button daisy is likely to become extinct at its Canterbury site as a result of the quakes. Photo: Anita Spencer 6 A pied shag gets a fish meal in the Avon-Heathcote Estuary. Raw sewage has been pumped into many Christchurch waterways. Photo: David Hallet 7 The predator-proof fence protecting a sooty shearwater colony at Stony Bay on Banks Peninsula was seriously damaged in the February earthquake. Photos: Anita Spencer

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he violent string of earthquakes has also had positive impacts on nature. As Christchurch’s eastern suburbs continue to sink, new wetland areas have formed allowing wetland birds to flourish. Swamped paddocks and flooded sports fields around the city have created temporary homes for gulls, waterfowl and herons.

Christchurch City Council ornithologist Andrew Crossland says the February earthquake hit during the peak season for wetland birds, when more than 50,000 mostly native birds flock to Christchurch waterways and coastal habitats.

A post-quake census in early March 2011 found 9303 birds at the Bromley oxidation ponds, which Crossland says was a record count at the ponds by more than 4000 birds. Permanent wetland habitats have also been created in the aftermath of the quakes and Crossland says the best example is at the mouth of the Waimakariri River where hectares of wetland have formed since September 4.

Many birds, including the endangered Australasian bittern, have benefited.

The full effects of the Canterbury earthquakes will not be known for some time. While the jaded city struggles to get back on its feet and restore a semblance of normality to its weathered community, nature will be left to fend for itself. It could be years before the attention of officials and organisations turns towards the plight of native animals, plants and battered waterways. Until then, let us hope nature has the resilience to survive the wait before big decisions are made, suburbs are abandoned and a city is rebuilt, allowing Christchurch to justifiably reclaim its rightful title of the Garden City.

‘A war zone’ February 22, 2011, was labelled New Zealand’s darkest day by Prime Minister John Key. The eyes of the world turned to Christchurch. In the immediate aftermath of the magnitude 6.3 earthquake, the city was unrecognisable. Dust choked the air, strangers held each other in the streets, bodies lay still beneath the rubble and grown men cried unashamedly.

“You are constantly thinking what might happen.

What might happen to my family? What might happen to me?” says Bruce Coleman, former chair of Forest & Bird’s North Canterbury branch. “It’s hard to explain but nothing is normal. Every time I get in my car it is like I’m driving through a war zone.” Bruce resigned from his position after the earthquake, and says he now has a deeper appreciation for what is truly important in life.

He lives in the seaside suburb of Redcliffs and had the roof ripped off his house in February’s violent quake. “It will be months before it feels like we are back on an even keel, so I thought I would give up Forest & Bird. Right now it’s important to concentrate on the essential things like my family and my own mental health. Everything is different and I don’t have time for extras any more,” he says.

Many New Zealanders have supported Bruce and offered sympathy to Christchurch Forest & Bird staff

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and members, but Bruce says it is hard for people to fully understand how everyday life has changed so dramatically for quake-hit residents. “It’s easy to explain how shocking a magnitude 6.3 earthquake is, but it is hard to describe the constant low-level stress of daily activities here. Work’s not normal, recreation’s not normal, home’s not normal, even doing the shopping is a bit of a mission, and the constant lack of normality is stressful.”

Forest & Bird Canterbury/West Coast Field Officer Jen Miller was in the city centre when the February quake struck. “It is an experience I will never ever forget,” she says. “The only word I can use is ‘surreal’ and I know that’s a cliché but it was beyond anything you could possibly imagine. The panic of people, the smoke, the dust, the sirens … I know with my heart now that life is incredibly random and there is no certainty on anything.”

The four-strong Forest & Bird Christchurch team were displaced after the magnitude 4.9 Boxing Day aftershock left their Hereford St building redstickered. And February’s brutal shake shattered any hope of salvaging archives from the battered building.

“There is a lot of grief in losing the things we lost in our building. The entire archive of the Canterbury/ West Coast area has been lost, and all we can do is start again.” Jen says staff were forced to work from home after Boxing Day, until Forest & Bird members Michael and Annette Hamblett offered the downstairs section of their Merivale home as office space. “It was really stressful working at home alone and we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Hambletts,” she says.

“Overwhelming support” from head office and members nationwide flooded in for the four staff members in the wake of the quake, she says.

And even though each significant aftershock is “unsettling”, the support has given the weary Christchurch team the strength to carry on.

Bruce Coleman, former chair of Forest & Bird’s North Canterbury branch, stood down after the February quake to look after his family and his own mental health. Photo: Olivia Carville

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Towards a greener future

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t is hard to imagine anything positive about the earthquakes that have battered Canterbury for almost a year. They have caused widespread destruction, shattered historical buildings and instilled fear into the hearts of the most stoic Cantabrians. They have stolen homes, suburbs, livelihoods and life. But the first time the unruly Earth twitched and buckled, a fierce loyalty between Cantabrians and their land was forged. And rising from the dust and ash of a broken city is a rare opportunity; a chance to rebuild a better Christchurch.

The Christchurch City Council launched the Share an Idea campaign in May when it urged residents to voice their opinions on the future of the quake-ravaged city. The public were given the opportunity to make submissions to the council on the new city’s aesthetics and to suggest ways to fix problems that plagued the central business district before the quakes. Mayor Bob Parker says the submissions are dominated by common themes, one being “more green space”. Roger Sutton, head of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, says nature and “green space” will be one aspect of many areas under discussion as the rebuild approaches.

Kennedy Graham, Green Party spokesman for the earthquake recovery, says Christchurch faces a “tremendous opportunity”. He says the city has the chance to rebuild urban areas in a way that can complement and respect natural environments. “Never before has a region of a country been challenged in such a far-reaching way. It would be remiss if we don’t replan the city in a way that has the urban design reflecting the natural construct of the land.”

Constructing urban areas and city life around the natural landscape has been “primordial in the history of human settlements,” he said. Pre-Industrial Revolution settlements were largely structured around natural landscapes such as rivers, wetlands and dense bush areas, and Graham says modern society often ignores this historical principle. “For the last 100 years we have concreted over the land as if we are conquering nature; we think we have mastered it. But this is just an illusion. And it has been a lesson we have learnt the hard way in Christchurch, so let us not make the same mistake.” He says areas such as the city’s swamped eastern suburbs should never have been built on and he has mounting concern over government plans to re-impact and rebuild on damaged land in the abandoned red zone.

Canterbury University Associate Professor and freshwater biologist Jon Harding agrees that the eastern suburbs need to be handed back to nature. “We have spent over 100 years manipulating the east and turning our rivers and streams into what we want them to be, and nature has attempted to reset some of that through these quakes,” he says.

Both environmentalists urged the government to listen to the voice of the people calling for more green space. “If we divorce ourselves from nature, it will put us in danger of forgetting we are actually part of the environment – not masters of it,” Graham says.

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Amazing facts about…

BASKET FUNGUS

By Ann Graeme

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ut of the dirt in a dark, dank corner of the garden a bulge appears. It swells into a great grubby egg and then it bursts open and unfolds a crumpled mass of fungal tissue. Jerkily, like a blowup toy, the tissues inflate into a lattice ball of crinkled white tubes.

It is a basket fungus (Ileodictyon cibarium), the fruiting body of a network of fungal threads,

spreading unseen beneath the soil and consuming dead leaves and buried twigs.

Mäori have a much better name for this fungus – tütae kehua, which means ghost poo. The fungus lattice is like a skeleton of bones and inside, like remnants of rotting flesh, is smeared foul-smelling brown slime like poo. It’s good enough to fool a fly into coming and crawling about, getting the poo, which is really fungus spores, all over its feet.

The fly then treads its pooey feet all over the next surface it visits, spreading the fungal spores far and wide.

Tütae kehua was the name most widely used but to some iwi it was tütae whetü – star poo, or even tütae whaitiri – lightning poo. It must have been a rich source of story and debate.

Tütae kehua is a common native fungus but the related golden basket fungus is rare. It grows in Forest & Bird’s Walter Scott Reserve in the Waikato and I have seen it among the spinifex on the sand dunes of Matakana Island, near Tauranga.

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Now, together as we grow beyond 50 stores nationally, we have a combined will to help better New Zealand’s greater environment. It’s why we have developed a partnership with New Zealand’s largest national conservation charitable organisation, Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society of New Zealand.

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Power to the people T

o invigorate the great unpaid workforce of volunteers that tend our forests it takes more than snappy motivational speeches, persistence and stunning organisational skills. You need to be a people person. You need to have the ability to quickly read people’s wants, needs and desires. If you don’t have this, you’re liable to lose them.

“Finding volunteers is the easy part – it’s keeping them that’s the tricky bit,” Ark in the Park manager Maj de Poorter says.

The Waitäkere Ranges Ark in the Park – a joint Forest & Bird and Auckland Council project – is powered by a dedicated volunteer base that clocks up 8000 hours each year. The benevolent commander and chief motivator behind this workforce has been the diminutive, softly spoken Karen Colgan.

Karen began at the Ark in 2003 when it was simply an idea to restore to its former glory a patch of West Auckland regional parkland – a forest once filled with kökako, käkäriki and long-tailed bats. The patch was then rather small (250 hectares) and impenetrable but the workforce were keen, if not a little green.

“At the start there were 20 volunteers who ventured out into the bush riddled with walls of supplejack and kiekie along some rather dodgy navigational lines,” she says.

For the first few years the project operated under the principle of organised chaos until Karen took the reins and began volunteer wrangling. Since then, the project has grown exponentially – the park has increased from 250ha to 2000ha and has a keen unsalaried workforce of 150 people who are the muscle and lifeblood of the park.

The vision for this park is grand – many people hope it will cover the whole 25,000ha of the Waitäkere Ranges – and it will be home to käkä, käkäriki and petrels.

As the park swells in size, it requires more and more people power. Karen decided to hand over the reins to a new paid co-ordinator in March as she realised that her success at recruiting and keeping volunteers had created a volunteer co-ordinator role that was becoming increasingly difficult.

During the past few months this part-time GP has been schooling the new co-ordinator in the art of volunteer management while carrying out many of her regular duties.

Fielding emails, sorting traps, organising sausage sizzles and arranging activities for the students that jet in from

‘A major part of my job was matching up people’s skills and making sure they have a positive experience,’ says retiring Ark in the Park co-ordinator Karen Colgan. Photo: Mandy Herrick

Germany, France, Japan and China are just some of the tasks she carries out during her three-day weeks.

Most volunteers perform pest-busting duties, but Karen has tried to draw on their other skills, whether in photography, mapping, sewing, carpentry or compass.

“A major part of my job was matching up people’s skills and making sure they have a positive experience. One person may be incredibly interested in bugs, whereas another person may be well-versed in GIS (Geographic Information Systems).

“The volunteers are incredible – I often do a lot of last-minute shoulder tapping and I never get turned down. It could be all number of things that I am wanting: emergency sewing, bagging and trap repairs.”

As well as empowering people, Karen has enlisted new recruits, massaged egos and educated bird-monitors about birdsong and the importance of jizz, which is watching for a bird’s characteristics of flight pattern, posture and location.

She has an immaculate filing system, an elephant-like memory and she’s well organised.

As Karen sits at the Ark ranger’s station, the result of her labours is a forest now humming with creatures. Volunteers and students conduct regular surveys to build a creature inventory. The number of kererü has more than doubled, tomtits are thriving and the new North Island robins and kökako are settling in. Karen is looking forward to having more time to enjoy this bird world she’s helped create. n Mandy Herrick

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our people

Forest & Bird’s heroes Five people who have made a big difference to Forest & Bird and to conservation were honoured at the annual conference with Old Blue awards. The awards are named after the Chatham Islands black robin – the last fertile female – that saved her species from extinction in the early 1980s.

Top honour for Eugenie Sage Conservationist Eugenie Sage has been awarded Forest & Bird’s top honour of a Distinguished Life Membership to recognise her long record of unflagging conservation work. Eugenie has made a big difference to conservation and the environment in Canterbury, the South Island and nationwide, both within and outside Forest & Bird. Renowned for her restrained but passionate advocacy and a relentless work schedule, she has played a key role in many environmental campaigns.

“Eugenie is a phenomenally good advocate, she’s very personable, as well as having an incredibly sharp mind and an amazing work ethic,” said Forest & Bird Advocacy Manager Kevin Hackwell. “She is insightful and fearless, and she represented Forest & Bird so well at the Environment Court, public meetings and on the Biosecurity Ministerial Advisory Committee.”

She was influential in campaigns to end the logging of native forests on the West Coast, improving protection for the South Island high country and West Coast wetlands.

From 2007 to 2010, she was a regional councillor at Environment Canterbury until the councillors were controversially dismissed by the government and replaced by commissioners.

She was also a member of the Canterbury Water Management Strategy (CWMS) steering group and is currently a member of CWMS regional and zone committees. Between 2006 and 2010 she served on the West Coast Marine Protection Forum and the Biosecurity Ministerial Advisory Committee.

Eugenie worked as Forest & Bird’s Canterbury/West Coast Field Officer and later as South Island Field Coordinator from 1993 until 2007.

Members recall how she would often be found in her office late in the evening or at the weekend. She was always eager to provide information, encouragement and advice to members and continues to do so today.

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Jon Wenham Jon Wenham was honoured for his work in the Waikato region and received a special presentation for his leadership of the project to rebuild Forest & Bird’s Ruapehu lodge after the 2008 fire. Jon has been a stalwart of the Waikato branch since the 1980s and a committee member for more than 15 years. He joined the national Executive in 2008 and after the Ruapehu lodge burned down the same year, he devoted himself to overseeing the design and construction of a far superior replacement, which was completed last year.

“Jon has been a pillar of strength for the local branch. If there is something to be done he will do it,” Waikato branch chair Philip Hart said. Jon has worked hard to clean up Raglan Harbour, as well as on the Kaimai-Mamaku project, and has organised promotional and display material for the branch for many years.

Forest & Bird General Manager Mike Britton made the special presentation to Jon, paying tribute to his dedication to successfully seeing the lodge project through. “He oversaw the details of the design and construction and the end result is a great building which owes a tremendous debt to Jon’s enthusiasm and the sacrifices he made in his own life and work,” Mike said.

Andy Dennis Andy Dennis has a way with words and a deep well of knowledge that have made a major contribution to conservation in the top half of the South Island. The Nelson-based conservationist, writer and guide has worked hard to protect special places in the Nelson region and the West Coast, and his writing has done much to educate people about these natural treasures.

Andy’s expertise and advocacy was critical to the successful establishment of Kahurangi National Park in 1996 and the Horoirangi Marine Reserve near Nelson in 2006, and his vast natural history and recreational knowledge has been at the heart of his books and numerous submissions.

“More than anyone else, he kept going for more than a decade on trying to get the Horoirangi Marine Reserve.

I don’t think we would have got there without the constant nagging from Andy over a decade,” said Craig Potton, Andy’s long-time friend and a Forest & Bird Executive member.

rapid decline of native fish and other life in our rivers and lakes caused by excessive water extraction, the building of dams, and pollution from runoff and discharges into our waterways.

Alex Kettles

introduced predators. Their nests are just scrapes in the sand above the high tide mark and they have no defence against vehicles driven on beaches and other human disturbances.

Lower Hutt’s Alex Kettles has been working for more than two decades on the restoration of Matiu/Somes Island in the middle of Wellington Harbour.

His award is fitting in the year that the Lower Hutt Forest & Bird branch project on Matiu/Somes Island celebrated its 30th anniversary and a book, A New Cloak for Matiu, was published to mark the occasion.

Mike Joy

He described Andy as “one of the great submission writers” who, as a former law lecturer. was always on top of the legal ramifications of any proposal and could make his work “almost a work of literature”.

John Groom John Groom’s dedication to protecting the endangered New Zealand dotterel sees him monitoring birds, controlling pests and putting up signs at six sites over a 25km stretch of Bay of Plenty coastline every dotterel breeding season.

“John’s dedication really stands out; he is incredibly dedicated to dotterels.

He has made a big difference to the birds, he has a high rate of success with the nests he looks after,” said Eastern Bay of Plenty former branch secretary Sue Greenwood. “The experience he has built up over the years – he knows the birds so well and can interpret their behaviour.”

John shares his knowledge widely at schools and other groups and with people unwittingly threatening the rare birds on beaches. There are only about 1700 New Zealand dotterels left because they are very vulnerable to

Freshwater ecologist Mike Joy has been in the headlines in recent months but his efforts to research our freshwater ecosystems and educate the public about the dangers facing them stretch back 15 years.

Mike was earlier this year cited by the BBC in an interview with Prime Minister John Key that highlighted the difference between New Zealand’s 100% Pure tourism branding and the reality of declining water quality. As well as his research work as senior lecturer in ecology and environmental science at Massey University in Palmerston North, he is a passionate advocate in the public arena for our freshwater ecosystems.

“A lot of scientific papers are only read by other scientists. Where Mike differs from many other scientists is that he presents his work in a way the public understands,” said Ines Stager, the convenor of Forest & Bird’s Executive awards committee.

Mike has played an important role in making New Zealanders aware of the

Alex was first involved in the project as a planter, then in the rat eradication programme in 1988-89. In 2002, he took over leading and organising the working parties on the island and has given regular talks to community groups about the work to restore the native plant and animal life on Matiu/Somes.

“Alex has fantastic administrative skills, in the way he was able to organise volunteers for the project,” said Stan Butcher, one of the original volunteers involved in the project. His enthusiasm for the project extended to keeping photographic and video records.

The planting of around 110,000 trees over 30 years has transformed the mostly pasture covered island to an increasingly lush environment offering a home for rare species including giant wëtä, tuatara, käkäriki and North Island robins.

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our people

North Shore win for Tuff project N

orth Shore branch’s project to restore the native plants and wildlife at a volcanic cone next to the northern motorway in Auckland has been awarded the Golden Spade planting award.

The Tuff Crater Restoration Project in Northcote on Auckland’s North Shore is passed by many thousands of commuters every day. Forest & Bird volunteers have been clearing weeds and planting in the reserve area known as the Millennium Forest since 2000 and in 2009 work started on the daunting task of clearing an area around the crater choked with weeds and replanting natives.

In the past year, more than 3000 native trees and other plants have been planted by volunteers from Forest & Bird and the local community at the reserve. About 100 people attended a community planting day in June.

The Golden Spade award was presented to Forest & Bird North Shore branch representatives Richard Hursthouse, the driving force behind the project, Anne Denny and Claire Stevens at the annual conference in Wellington.

Richard, the branch chairman, says the project relies heavily on the support of the local community and funders.

“With a project like this, we are totally reliant on funding, and you have to have the support from a decent group of volunteers, and we have been able to attract good support from local residents,” he says.

The reserve of nearly 31 hectares has been broken up into eight management areas to be restored over an

initial 10-year timeline. The project involves removing vast numbers of weeds, controlling pests and replanting with eco-sourced native vegetation.

The reserve is also part of the Auckland North-West Wildlink, a partnership between Forest & Bird and local and central government agencies to develop a chain of safe habitats and bird corridors from the Hauraki Gulf islands and Whangaparaoa in the east through to the Waitakere Ranges in the west.

From left, Claire Stevens, Richard Hursthouse and Anne Denny with the Golden Spade award.

Bat protectors winning Pestbusters A

project aimed at protecting a rare population of longtailed bats at Pelorus Bridge at the top of the South Island has been awarded this year’s Pestbuster award. The Te Hoiere Bat Recovery Project at Pelorus Bridge Scenic Reserve on the main road between Blenheim and Nelson caught 610 pests – including possums, rats and stoats – between the start of the project in November last year and the end of May. Predators have been decimating populations of bats – our only native mammal – and the status of the South Island long-tailed bat is “nationally critical”.

The bat population at Pelorus Bridge can be more easily viewed than most. They are sometimes seen at dusk flying along the river and later in the evening they can be seen hunting on the wing for moths and other flying insects around the bridge’s street lights.

The Pestbuster award was presented to Nelson-Tasman branch member Julie McLintock, the leader of the pest control programme, at Forest & Bird’s annual conference.

Forest & Bird Top of the South Field Officer Debs Martin provided the spark for the project after seeing a bat flying at dusk at Pelorus Bridge in 2005. Julie McLintock has been involved in the project from the beginning, working with bat scientist Brian Lloyd to research the population at Pelorus Bridge and she now heads the team of 14 people clearing and maintaining the trap lines at the reserve.

“Bats are our only terrestrial mammal in New Zealand.

People used to see them much more often and many people don’t realise the rate they are disappearing,” she said. “It’s alarming how few are left, so I hope we can build the numbers up.”

The project has been supported by Lottery Environment and Heritage, the Stout Trust and the Department of Conservation.

Julie McLintock checks a trap at Pelorus Bridge Scenic Reserve.

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Andrew Cutler at Executive helm A

ndrew Cutler took over the helm of Forest & Bird at the annual conference in June as Barry Wards stepped down as president after two years. Andrew had been Deputy President for a year after joining the Executive in 2009. He led the development of Forest & Bird’s Strategic Plan, a project completed for this year’s annual conference.

Andrew thanked Barry for his great record of service as president, and gratitude was also expressed to former past president Peter Maddison, who stood down from the Executive after 13 years. Peter, who was awarded a Distinguished Life Membership in 2009, has been involved in branch affairs for more than three decades and his ongoing work includes the Kaimai-Mamaku project in the Bay of Plenty.

The new President said he was optimistic about Forest & Bird’s direction. “Membership of the organisation is growing and there is determination among the 50 branches and nearly 70,000 supporters to reverse the decline of our natural environment,” he said. “We are also determined to take a more active role advocating for a sustainable economy and society, and meaningful action on climate change. There has never been a more important time for Forest & Bird to be a strong voice for New Zealand’s natural heritage.”

The new Deputy President is Dunedin-based Mark Hanger, who joined the Executive last year. Graham Bellamy continues as National Treasurer, along with other members Ines Stager, Lindsey Britton, Jon Wenham, Mark Hanger, Craig Potton and Alan Hemmings. Barry remains on the Executive as Immediate Past President.

Former Manawatu branch chair Brent Barrett is the only new face on the Executive this year. Brent is a co-founder of Reel Earth, an international film festival with an environment focus based in Palmerston North. He believes Forest & Bird should continue to work to broaden the numbers and diversity of its support base and to meet evolving environmental challenges. He sees climate change, oceans and freshwater as three particularly important areas of focus.

Ash from a Chilean volcanic eruption stopped Executive member Alan Hemmings flying from Australia to New Zealand for the Wellington conference from June 24-26.

The ash cloud also kept at home speakers from around New Zealand who had planned to take part in the Freshwater for Life-themed conference. Economic commentator Rod Oram gave his presentation and joined in the discussion about economic perspectives on freshwater from his Auckland home via Skype internet calling and projection on to a large screen at the conference hall.

The Strategic Plan for Forest & Bird’s long-term direction was released at the annual conference. The final document reflects a year of consultation with members and staff through many meetings and a widely circulated discussion paper.

Forest & Bird’s conservation goals highlighted in the Strategic Plan are: n We will expand our advocacy for the protection of nature beyond protected areas on land and at sea. n We will continue to defend public protected areas where much of New Zealand’s unique biodiversity exists. n We will promote conservation in urban areas where most New Zealanders live and work. n We will explain the impact of climate change on New Zealand biodiversity and promote climate change mitigation and adaptation measures that will benefit conservation. n We will support and advocate for an ecologically sustainable economy in which the environment underpins economic activity.

Forest & Bird Executive members, at back from left, Lindsey Britton, Jon Wenham, Craig Potton and Ines Stager. At front, Brent Barrett, Mark Hanger, Andrew Cutler, Barry Wards and Graham Bellamy. Absent: Alan Hemmings.

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our people

Great southern man Forest & Bird this year appointed three outstanding conservationists as our Conservation Ambassadors – Craig Potton, Dr Gerry McSweeney and Sir Alan Mark. David Brooks profiles Sir Alan, who was a leader in the Save Manapouri campaign and has been a long-time advocate for the South Island high country.

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orn and bred in Dunedin and most at home in the tussock-filled high country, the bearded and plain-spoken Sir Alan Mark fulfils many of the qualities traditionally associated with a “southern man”. But his influence has extended far beyond the south, with his ground-breaking research into tussock grassland ecology and sustainable management of the high country, an important role in the national campaign to stop the raising of Lake Manapouri, and a host of leadership and advisory roles in national and international forums.

The Otago University Emeritus Professor of Botany has been appointed by the government to advise on everything from high country protection, national parks, forests, wetlands and gorse control. But he has never been afraid to confront a government over a conservation cause he believes in.

Summing up his approach is the last image he showed in his presentation on a recent Royal Society of New Zealand lecture tour to mark his award last year of the Charles Fleming Award for Environmental Achievement. “If you’re going to be an ecologist you’ve got to stir things up a little,” the caption on the image read.

The Royal Society said Sir Alan was regarded as New Zealand’s leading environmental scientist and conservationist. He started researching high country ecology and tussock grasslands on his return to Otago after gaining his PhD in the United States at Duke University in 1958. The high country remains his first love and he is keeping a particularly close eye on the tenure review process for high country pastoral leases and attempts to protect the iconic Mackenzie Basin tussock country from encroaching irrigation and other development.

A long-time member of Forest & Bird’s Dunedin branch, he was on the national Executive from 1978 to 1997 and served as president from 1986 to 1990. His service was recognised with a distinguished life membership in 1991.

The successful Lake Manapouri campaign to stop the raising of the lake through the 1960s and into the early 1970s was a galvanising moment for New Zealand’s emerging conservation movement. Sir Alan’s research showed raising the lake would destroy rare plants on the lake shore and his evidence became an important part of the campaign. But as he likes to point out, his initial studies of both Manapouri and Te Anau lakes were done at the request of the government.

“With Manapouri, I got there by invitation, not by

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storming in out of the blue. It was a pretty torrid debate. The punches weren’t being pulled, it was the survival of the fittest. It thickened my hide to deal with some of the high country issues later on.”

During his time leading Forest & Bird, he became involved in the successful campaign to create the Sir Alan Mark on Mt Burns in Fiordland.

Te Wähipounamu – South West New Zealand World Heritage Area.

The change in public awareness of and support for conservation and the management of natural resources since the Manapouri campaign is one of the most satisfying changes he has seen. “The most recent reflection of that is the march against mining on Schedule 4 conservation land last year. I would think that scared the pants off the government to see that level of reaction.”

Unsurprisingly, he believes good science should be at the heart of conservation decision-making. Too often the public debate gets confused by contradictory messages, a good part of it based on bad science. “Climate change is a classic example, where some scientist will come up with an opposing view, and you can usually trace their funding from industry or some organisation that has an opposing view and interest, and wants a scientist to promote it.

“The media doesn’t seem to be investigating the credibility of their scientific information sources. If someone puts up a view supporting sound science, the media feels it has to find someone with a contrary view for balance. That creates confusion and makes it almost impossible to get the public onside.”

His scientific and conservation work has been recognised with civil honours and many awards from his peers and fellow outdoor enthusiasts over the years. He plans to continue adding his influential voice to some of the important conservation issues for some time to come yet, helping to ensure development interests don’t have it all their own way.

Craig Potton and Dr Gerry McSweeney will be profiled in the next editions of Forest & Bird.

Kaumätua with marine vision

Fundraiser to lead team

Eta (Puke) Haika (1937-2011)

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orest & Bird’s marine conservation staff have been privileged to work for the past four years with kaumätua Puke Haika to get protection for a large marine area at Mimiwhangata, north of Whängärei.

Puke had witnessed the waves of depletion and overfishing from commercial fishing in the 1960s and 70s, then ongoing recreational overfishing along his coast.

Puke dived at Mimiwhangata for 60 years and his detailed knowledge of marine life there was unsurpassed. He worked closely with marine scientists, applying his personal and traditional knowledge to this special marine area.

In April, Puke was part of a delegation from Te Uri o Hikihiki, Te Whänau Whero and Forest & Bird to Conservation Minister Kate Wilkinson to outline the Mimiwhangata rähui tapu proposal. We felt we had made significant progress, so the news after the meeting that Puke was unwell came as a shock. But he continued battling for Mimiwhangata and his other community projects.

Puke passed away in Whängärei on June 8. His leadership, strength and love of nature will be something we will always treasure.

In the week before his death, Puke called his family together to pass on his mantle. Forest & Bird looks forward to continuing Puke’s work on the Mimiwhangata rähui tapu with his brother Hepi and other members of his whänau. n Mark Bellingham

ebecca Scelly joined Forest & Bird in June as Fundraising Manager. Rebecca has been a professional fundraiser for the past eight years in New Zealand and Australia, where she has worked in the museum, elderly care, social service and disability service sectors.

Rebecca’s love of New Zealand conservation was fostered through her family’s involvement in projects in her native Nelson, and she is thrilled to be working for Forest & Bird.

Rebecca will continue to build Forest & Bird’s fundraising programmes for our national and local conservation projects and gain income through new streams.

If you have any questions or would like to be a part of fundraising for Forest & Bird, please contact Rebecca at 04 801 2212 or r.scelly@ forestandbird.org.nz

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Forest & Bird

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Tipping point

for Firth of Thames

Farm nutrients and silt are filling the Firth of Thames and putting at risk the feeding grounds for thousands of migrating birds. By David Brooks.

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very year in spring up to 10,000 exhausted and famished bar-tailed godwits arrive at Miranda on the Firth of Thames after a non-stop 11,000 km flight from Alaska. Some conservationists fear the godwits and thousands of other migrant Arctic shorebirds may turn up one year and find there is nothing to eat.

They worry that increasing intensification of agriculture – especially dairying – on the Hauraki Plains could lead to algal blooms or diseases that could decimate the birds’

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food supply of worms, shellfish and crabs. These feed the up to 40,000 birds that gather at any one time at the tidal flats, one of the three most important sites for shorebirds in New Zealand.

The focus of attention is on the Waihou and Piako rivers which empty into the southern end of the Firth of Thames after flowing across the Hauraki Plains, where they become heavily laden with nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients.

The Waikato Regional Council, which this year changed

1

WILSON’S BAY •

FIRTH OF THAMES THAMES MIRANDA • PIAKO RIVER •

•

WAIHOU RIVER

Conservation Manager Mark Bellingham says. “We could have a situation where they arrive skinny and hungry and all the little worms and everything in the tidal flats are dead due to an algal bloom.”

Bill Brownell, a marine biologist based at Kaiaua on the Firth of Thames, says the gaps in knowledge about the impact of the high nutrient load and sedimentation on benthic (seafloor) life mean that the supply of vital food organisms necessary to sustain the waders could decrease abruptly with little or no warning. “There could be some quite disruptive things going on there, that we don’t know enough about yet, that could culminate in widespread oxygen depletion, further suffocation from blanketing sediments or a disease epidemic that wipes out large populations of benthic species, especially if the added risk posed by cage fish farming is introduced into the equation,” he says.

As well as the internationally important wetland at Miranda, the firth is an important nursery area for snapper, kahawai, pilchards, eels, flounders, stingrays and four species of sharks. It has also been recorded as a feeding ground for 11 species of whales and dolphins.

its name from Environment Waikato to reflect a more active development focus, estimates about 70 per cent of nitrogen and nearly half the phosphorus in the rivers comes from so-called diffuse agricultural sources – mostly cow effluent and fertilisers.

Scientists at the regional council say the amount of nutrients in the river has remained relatively stable over the last decade and argue there is no apparent risk in the near future of an algal bloom or other environmental disaster caused by nutrients in the firth.

But others argue action is needed to curb future growth of nutrients entering the Firth of Thames from the rivers, as well as a likely expansion of aquaculture. “If algal blooms are going to happen, then they are going to happen in spring because that’s when the bulk of the farm fertiliser goes on and that’s when the bulk of the waders arrive in Miranda from the Arctic,” Forest & Bird North Island

2 1 A flock of pied oystercatchers on a Miranda shell bank and stream. Photo: Rob Suisted/naturespic.com 2 Godwits and pied stilts feeding at Miranda. Algal blooms in the Firth of Thames could slash numbers of the worms, shellfish and crabs the birds fatten up on. Photo: David Brooks

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I think our biggest concern now is the nutrients from the farms 3 The Hauraki Plains today are unrecognisable from 1769 when Captain James Cook took a boat up the Waihou River, admiring the towering kahikatea growing to the river’s edge. The kahikatea forest was cut down from the late 19th century, and in the early 1900s draining of the vast majority of the swampy plains began, turning them into one of the most productive farming areas in the country.

Draining the swamps and deforestation ensured most of the silt from the Hauraki catchments flowed down the Waihou and Piako rivers straight into the firth. Silt has since accumulated on the seabed and on the shoreline, leading to the expansion over the last 50 years of mangroves on the southern shore to form a strip nearly a kilometre wide.

Keith Woodley of the Miranda Naturalists’ Trust, which owns the Miranda Shorebird Centre, says the mangroves are expanding into areas previously used by the wading birds for roosting. “We also strongly suspect the mangrove expansion is reducing the net area for birds to forage in. We do have trends of some species which are down – wrybill, bar-tailed godwit, red knot. Numbers for those species are trending downwards, it’s gradual, and we suspect habitat loss is the likely reason for that.”

But he concedes that a century after the clearing of the Hauraki Plains forests, the “horse has well and truly bolted” for the silt and its impact on the firth. “I think our biggest concern now is the nutrients from the farms. It’s a pretty intense farming area and we think the biggest threat in the future is the threat to the benthic life in the mudflats.”

But Waikato Regional Council water scientist Bill Vant says the increases in so-called diffuse discharges of nitrogen and phosphorus into the Waihou and Piako rivers have been largely offset by falls in improved treatment of industrial and urban point discharges, including those from sewage and 40

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dairy factories. “By and large, the swings are balancing the roundabouts and the loads to the Hauraki Gulf in the last 20 years have remained pretty much constant.”

During 2000–09, the amount of nitrogen carried by the rivers increased at a rate of about one per cent a year, according to a report prepared by Vant in June. The amount of phosphorus decreased at a rate of about five per cent a year, due mainly to lower discharges from point sources such as sewerage works and a dairy factory. The Waihou River carried 50 to 60 per cent of the total amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus, and the Piako and its tributary, the Waitoa, each carried about 20 per cent.

But Vant adds that land use intensification is continuing and many of the gains from improving sewage and industrial waste treatment have already been made, so there is unlikely to be as much of an offsetting effect in the future.

His report suggests there is little likelihood of an algal bloom in the short term because of the dilution of the nitrogen and phosphorus by the seawater in the firth and because the overall level of algae in the firth is not high.

But he admits more work will need to be done on the dynamics of algal growth in the firth to calculate the impact of growing nutrient flows into the firth in the future. “My assessment on the water quality we have done for the southern Firth of Thames suggests to me right now there is no immediate grounds for concern about the water quality,” he says.

“But we shouldn’t be complacent. If we were to have problem blooms in our waters, the southern Firth of Thames is the sort of place we would get them, as are our estuaries.”

Peter Singleton, who is responsible for strategic planning for land, soil and the coasts at the Waikato

Regional Council, says the council is doing work on the circulation of currents in the firth to better understand the impact of nutrients and the likely expansion of aquaculture.

There are now also moves towards joining other authorities in the wider region through the Hauraki Gulf Forum to create a spatial plan for the gulf that would identify the resources and key habitats in the firth and wider gulf to improve future planning, he says.

But Forest & Bird’s Mark Bellingham says there is no sign yet the government or regional council are prepared to seriously tackle the non-point nutrient discharges from agriculture. “Will we sacrifice one of New Zealand’s premier wading bird sites for government and farmer inaction?”

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Fish farming latest threat Government moves to encourage the expansion of aquaculture could lead to further disruption of the ecological balance in the Firth of Thames. The Aquaculture Legislation Amendment Bill (No 3) will loosen the rules for marine farming and allow for finfish farming in the Firth of Thames and other areas.

An area in the north of the firth at Wilson’s Bay is already used for shellfish farming but this type of aquaculture has a much lower impact on the sea environment than finfish. Finfish need artificial feed, whereas shellfish consume naturally occurring plankton, and finfish produce large amounts of faeces, which – with unconsumed food – increase the nutrients in the water.

“Finfish farming is the main concern but I am also concerned if shellfish farming is expanded too much, the plankton will be drawn down and depleted, and we are already seeing signs of that,” says marine biologist Bill Brownell, who is based at Kaiaua near Miranda on the Firth of Thames. “In that case, all the natural organisms get a smaller share of a diminishing pie.”

Forest & Bird North Island Conservation Manager Mark Bellingham says finfish farming may add a small amount of nutrients relative to the nitrogen and phosphorus flowing into the firth from the region’s rivers, but that may be enough to make a crucial difference.

“It may be sufficient to tip the firth over the edge [into an algal bloom]. It’s not going to happen where the fish aquaculture is in the northern firth but those nutrients will be swept down the firth where they are going to meet a huge amount of nutrients coming out of the Waihou and Piako rivers from dairy farming on the Hauraki Plains.

“The consequences will be felt on the Miranda bird flats as the nutrient plume keeps moving around the firth in a counterclockwise direction.”

3 Piako River becomes heavily laden with nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients as it flows through the Hauraki Plains, before emptying into the Firth of Thames. Photo: David Brooks 4 Bar-tailed godwits, or küaka, fly more than 11,000 kilometres non-stop from Alaska to New Zealand every spring. Photo: David Hallett

Mecca for shorebirds

The Firth of Thames is ranked one of New Zealand’s three most important areas for shorebirds. In 1990 Forest & Bird nominated the Miranda coast as an internationally important wetland under the Ramsar Convention, and the firth annually hosts up to 40,000 wading birds at its summer peak.

The site between Kaiaua and Thames is made up of 8500 hectares of intertidal feeding grounds, including shallow estuarine water and mudflats, shell banks, grass flats and mangrove forest, salt marsh and swamp.

A total of more than 60 shorebird species have been recorded at the site and the average number of birds found there at any one time is 25,000.

Among the most famous inhabitants at Miranda are the bar-tailed godwits, or küaka, that arrive in spring after a non-stop flight of more than 11,000 kilometres from Alaska. Up to 10,000 godwits spend the southern summer at Miranda, about 10 per cent of the godwits found in New Zealand. Other Arctic waders that migrate to Miranda include the red knot, with up to 6000 arriving every spring; the tiny red-necked stint, which is smaller than a bellbird; and several rare visitors.

Miranda is also important for many local wader species, such as wrybills and pied oystercatchers, both of which spend the summer breeding season on South Island rivers. There are only about 5000 wrybills – the only bird in the world with a beak that bends sideways – and 40 per cent of them spend the winter months at Miranda.

Endemic species that breed at Miranda include the New Zealand dotterel, the variable oystercatcher and the black-billed gull. The mangrove forests and saltmarshes around the southern firth have good populations of banded rails, fernbirds, bitterns and crakes.

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Last chance

to grow

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A Wellington gardener is nurturing threatened native plants in her backyard.

By Marina Skinner.

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or Robyn Smith, pottering in her Porirua property is about more than creating a beautiful gardenscape or growing her own vegetables. Robyn gardens to give endangered native plants a better chance at survival.

She is fostering the native plants found naturally in her seaside suburb of Tïtahi Bay, and lending a hand to some plants close to extinction in the wild in other parts of New Zealand. “Conservation needs all the help it can get,” she says. And Robyn is adamant that cultivating rare native plants is not just for experts like her. “Anyone with gardening skills can do this. Common sense and good observational skills are what you need.”

Robyn describes herself as self-taught, after long experience at Percy’s Reserve and Otari-Wilton’s Bush in Wellington. Apart from doing some ecology papers, Robyn has mainly learnt through her work, and is now a biodiversity advisor for Greater Wellington Regional Council, helping community groups with restoration projects.

Robyn and her partner, Brian Warburton, bought their property north of Wellington 11 years ago. When they moved in, the steep frontyard was carpeted in kikuyu grass,

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with a hedge of large karo and a couple of karaka trees the only hints of natural Kiwiana. Today, clumps of the grass endure but they are dwindling as the native trees take over.

Cabbage trees now dominate the bank, with nïkau palms popping up among the toetoe and Carex secta sedges.

She points out a rare Cook Strait mähoe and a whau – a small, frost-tender tree with the lightest wood in the world, and from which Mäori made floats for fishing nets.

Robyn and Bryan have diverted their stormwater to a damp patch of the frontyard that’s now a small wetland.

Robyn has planted it with Carex, mingimingi, toetoe and ongaonga, or tree nettle. The effort of collecting seed from the plants she found in a nearby rural area will be rewarded with the admiral butterflies she hopes will be attracted to lay their eggs on their stinging leaves.

As the natives have grown up, the geckos and skinks, insects and birds have arrived. Huntaway Nico makes them at home by keeping neighbouring cats away. “We get kererü visiting the area now – we didn’t used to get them.

And there are heaps of tüï around, and lots of silvereyes and fantails and the occasional visit from bellbirds,” Robyn

BACKYARD conservation

says. “We have kingfishers too – though they eat the lizards,” she observes. Robyn praises the pest control in the Porirua area, including a nearby reserve, and jointly funded

by Porirua City Council and Greater Wellington Regional Council. She credits this work with helping to increase numbers of native birds.

Near the driveway, Libertias, a locally extinct species but grown from seed from a wild population in Horowhenua, edge a series of steps, and native jasmine (Parsonsia heterophylla) clambers up a retaining wall. Trained along a fence is a Tecomanthe speciosa, the vine from the Three Kings Islands off Northland that’s ranked nationally critical.

Rare natives are beside the house – a local hebe, Hebe elliptica, with big white flowers, and Euphorbia glauca.

Outside the garage, Robyn has created a water garden in shallow plastic feeding troughs designed for calves.

The troughs have been placed in ditches, filled with a little soil and topped up with water. Robyn has planted in them Azolla, a floating water fern, and native rushes Eleocharis and Baumea. A Leptinella ground cover is spilling over the edges of the troughs from the gravel surrounding them.

Like most gardens, the business end is out the back.

Robyn’s potting table is covered with seed trays, and a nursery of seedlings waits for a chance to be planted in her garden or in restoration areas around the region, including nearby Whitireia Park. A small plot of herbs and native spinach for stir fries is the closest Robyn gets to a kitchen garden.

And like any classic Kiwi quarter-acre paradise, there’s a lawn, only this is a biodiverse lawn, with a native broom as a specimen tree in pride of place. There’s not a blade of grass and no need to mow – just an occasional trim with a weedeater, avoiding the lizards that lounge on it. The lawn is largely native groundcovers Leptinella, Dichondra and Pratia – “with a cute white flower”, says Robyn. She is gradually extending her biodiverse lawn, first spraying an area to get rid of weeds, then planting clumps of groundcover she raises from seed in trays.

Outside the back door, a veil of netting shields pots of slowly growing sand pimelea (Pimelea villosa) from blackbirds poking around for worms. Beside them are pots of mingimingi swathed in fine red netting that protects precious mistletoe seeds from the blackbirds’ beaks. Robyn scrapes patches of mingimingi bark, presses in mistletoe 2

seeds, then waits for them to germinate and send roots into the host plant. If all goes to plan, Robyn will plant the mingimingi and mistletoe out. This is more delicate plant midwifery, and it doesn’t always work. “It’s just helping nature along,” Robyn says.

Unspectacular green tufts growing in water-filled plastic saucers are the rarest plants Robyn nurtures in her garden.

Delicate Crassula peduncularis is ranked nationally critical, which makes it as rare as our kakapö. Another tiny-leafed groundcover in a saucer is Leptinella maniototo, which regionally used to grow at Lake Wairarapa but is now thought extinct there. The plants were found on reclaimed land at nearby Paremata, and the mystery is how they got there.

Robyn is also growing another groundcover, pygmy button daisy (Leptinella nana). This tiny-leafed groundcover is ranked nationally endangered. “It grows in the Rai Valley, on the Port Hills, in Whitireia Park [in Porirua] – and in my backyard,” she laughs. She has worked for the past seven years on establishing it in new sites in Whitiriea to extend its range, with some success.

An orange milk crate holds one-litre cardboard containers of Gardner’s tree daisy (Olearia gardneri) seedlings, which have tiny, widely spaced leaves. A few of the nationally critical-ranked shrubs survive in the wild in the Rangitïkei and eastern Wairarapa. Rural Wainuioru School in the eastern Wairarapa has adopted the plant, and Robyn germinates the seed, pricks out the seedlings and gives the young plants to the school children to grow on. The plants are later planted in a QEII-covenanted property. Fonterra supports the project with its milk cartons and crates.

Robyn points to information on the DOC and Landcare Research websites to help beginners learn about growing the plants found only in New Zealand. “Doing your own native planting is easy,” she insists.

1 Native plants have taken over the kikuyu grass that 11 years ago was Robyn Smith’s front garden. Photos: Marina Skinner 2 Robyn Smith with Nico, who enforces biodiversity by chasing away neighbourhood cats from the lizards and birds.

3 A biodiverse lawn of native groundcovers is a home to skinks and geckos.

4 Seedlings of endangered Gardner’s tree daisy (Olearia gardneri) will go to Wainuioru School for growing on.

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DIY

Cultivating native plants 1 2

Contact your regional council or local Department of Conservation office for information about growing the native plants found in your area. If your Forest & Bird branch has a plant nursery, join the volunteers to learn more about raising local plants.

If you want to grow threatened species, contact your local DOC office. You may need to show that you have some nursery experience.

conservation

Green fingers Once your native seeds have germinated in seed trays, they need pots to grow a strong root system.

Pricking out sand pimelea (Pimelea villosa) seedlings:

❶ Ensure the seedlings are

2

watered well the day before pricking them out.

❷ Dig under the seedling

with a dibber or pencil, disturbing the roots as little as possible.

❸ Lift out the seedling by the

leaves. Don’t press the stem as you may destroy the cells which transport nutrients and fluid through the plant

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Collect seeds from plants in your local wild areas or reserves to foster these particular ecosystems. The plants growing locally are adapted to the conditions and are more likely to do well. Always ask permission from landowners or councils first. You will need a permit to collect seed from DOC land. The DOC website has a calendar showing the best times to collect seeds for many native plants.

See www.doc.govt.nz Some native seeds are tricky to germinate.

Trial and error and persistence are the ways to success. Start with the easy species such as flax or toetoe.

Dig up or spray your grass and create a biodiverse lawn using native groundcovers. It never needs mowing and it will attract native lizards, butterflies and insects.

Grow native mistletoe by collecting seeds and pressing them into scraped sections of bark of a young host tree. Cover the seed with fine netting. Once they’ve germinated and sent roots into the host, plant the host tree.

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❹ Use your finger to make a hole in the moist potting mix in your pot.

❺ Put the seedling in the hole and press the soil gently around the seedling and water.

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❻ Ready to grow. ❼ Keep a careful eye out for slugs and snails as your seedlings can disappear overnight.

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rangatahi our future

From traps to apps F

iordland College is making a big contribution to conservation work in Te Anau. Year 12 students Philip Crouchley, Ryan Peychers, Sam Dainty and Jackson Larrivee have been building traps to help get rid of pests on the Kepler Peninsula, and are designing an award-winning mobile phone application with an environmental aim.

The students embarked on their project in their economics class as part of the Lion Foundation Young Enterprise Scheme, and are proving that there’s money to be made in conservation. They set up a company – AppTrap – and won a contract to build the traps, which has funded their work on developing the mobile phone application.

The college is involved in Kids Restore the Kepler project – a project in Fiordland National Park on the shores of Lake Te Anau that is protecting native birds such as kiwi, käkä, käkäriki and weka from stoats, rats and possums.

Through this project, the students gained a contract with the Department of Conservation to build 410 stoat traps, which they complete in their own time after school.

Ryan says they have adapted the traps to stop kea setting off the traps by poking sticks in through the holes to get the bait. The money they earn from the traps will be the seed capital to create and launch their mobile phone application.

Philip says he enjoys taking a larger role in restoring birdlife to Te Anau because it means tourists get to see the native birds. “Without the environment, Te Anau wouldn’t be what it is,” he says.

When discussing their AppTrap mobile phone application project, the students’ passion and excitement

shows in their voices. The technology will allow tourists to get information about Te Anau through their cellphones.

Philip, the communications director for AppTrap, says: “Tourists are our target market. The mobile phone application is designed to provide tourists with information about Te Anau.” This is an environmentally friendly way of promoting Te Anau, and will include restaurant and accommodation information as well as basic weather and walking track updates.

Ryan, the team’s marketing director, says the idea is to “reduce waste from the advertising and marketing that being a tourist town generates. This way less paper is wasted and tourists can easily find information about our town and its attractions.”

Thinking about the environment is an important part of the students’ business because they believe it is part of being responsible for future generations.

The four students won three of the six awards at the Young Enterprise 2011 mid-year awards run by the Southland Chamber of Commerce. The team scooped prizes for Southland’s most environmentally friendly product or service, the highest growth potential award and the best oral presentation award.

The students believe their mobile phone application will bring Te Anau one step closer to a cleaner, greener environment while working to promote tourism. They are dedicated to improving the environment they love. n Michelle Te Ohaere From left, Philip Crouchley, Jackson Larrivee and Ryan Peychers with one of their kea-proof traps they are making for the Department of Conservation.

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Mine –

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An Australian mining company wants to strip Denniston Plateau on the West Coast for its coal. Debs Martin reveals the rare plants and animals that would lose their home on this strange and craggy landscape if a mine got the go-ahead.

– or ours?

S

tockton and Denniston plateaus on the South Island’s north-western corner are hot spots for unusual plants and animals, with geology straight out of Middle Earth. Several distinctive native creatures are found here, from great spotted kiwi, or roroa, to a special type of giant land snail, green geckos, flatworms and ground wëtä. This is the only part of the world in which they are found.

Both plateaus rise abruptly from the sea and are part of the Buller coal measures – thick layers of coal topped by quartzose sandstone. The unusual geology has created what is ranked as a nationally outstanding coal measure ecosystem. It includes sandstone erosion pavement, which is rare and is recognised as a national priority for protection.

With rainfall of up to six metres a year, the plateaus are an infertile environment, and minerals washed from the hardened rocks create acidic streams. Large areas of quartzose sandstone are exposed as the rain wears thin soils away. Weathering gradually erodes the rock pavements, creating tors, overhanging bluffs and cracks.

A complex mosaic of ecosystems has sprung up because of the geology and rain-lashed climate. The narrow crevices in the pavement are opportunities for “bonsai” gardens of southern rata, the nationally threatened Chionochloa juncea tussock and Dracophyllum densum. Where thin soils cover the sandstone pavements, stunted forests include mänuka and yellow silver pinepigmy pine hybrids. In the sheltered rock-hewn stream gullies with deeper soils emerge taller forests, dominated by mountain beech and scattered with mountain cedar and pink pine. On top of the sandstone pavements are extensive wetlands, including a pakihi wetland of 1138 hectares on the Denniston Plateau. More uncommon are Chionochloa rubra tussock wetlands.

These complex ecosystems are home to several distinctive and iconic species. Great spotted kiwi stalk the plateau at night and Powelliphanta patrickensis giant land

2

snails are endemic to the coal measures. Fernbirds can be seen in the extensive pakihi heaths, with occasional käkä flying overhead. Freshwater crayfish, or köura, are found in streams, and there are many small species, such as green geckos, flatworms and ground wëtä. Many plateau residents are yet to be discovered and several species have yet to be named. Early studies of the diet of the carnivorous P. patrickensis snails revealed an array of earthworms, of which eight are expected to be new to science.

The Denniston Plateau and extensive areas surrounding the coal measures are held as public conservation land.

In 1987, the Department of Conservation prepared a Protected Natural Areas Report to identify areas recommended for protection (RAPs) across both plateaus.

At the outset, the surveys were politically compromised by excluding those with known coal reserves, though some boundaries do overlap. In the past 20 years, little protection has followed, and all three RAPs have now been totally destroyed by mining or seriously compromised by other activities, for instance putting in water pipelines.

Meanwhile, our knowledge of the Powelliphanta species has grown enormously and we have a greater understanding of the complexity of the ecosystem on top of the coal measures.

1 Denniston Plateau is made up of thick layers of coal topped by quartzose sandstone. In places the thin soil has been washed away to leave sandstone erosion pavement, which is rare and is recognised as a national priority for protection. Photo: Craig Potton 2 Carnivorous Powelliphanta patrickensis giant land snails are found only on the Denniston Plateau. Photo: Alan Liefting 3 The plateau is home to great spotted kiwi, or roroa. Photo: Rod Morris

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DENNISTON WESTPORT

MT AUGUSTUS •

HAPPY VALLEY

DENNISTON

TOP OF INCLINE

UPPER WAIMANGAROA VALLEY

DENNISTON PLATEAU

AREA PROPOSED FOR PROTECTION PUBLIC CONSERVATION LAND UNALLOCATED CROWN LAND STOCKTON MINE

•

0

1

2 km

MT ROCHFORT

What Forest & Bird wants Forest & Bird proposes an extensive reserve to protect the outstanding landscapes of the Denniston and Stockton plateaus, the historically rare ecosystems, the complex mosaic of plant associations and the habitats of rare, common and yet-to-be discovered species.

Forest & Bird proposed the new 5900-hectare reserve at a meeting of the West Coast Tai Poutini Conservation Board in Hokitika in mid-July. We aim to ensure this area is included in Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act, to protect it from being mined in the future.

The Denniston Reserve proposal would incorporate publicly owned land on the Denniston Plateau, the upper Waimangaroa Gorge, the southern Stockton Plateau, and the Mt William Range. It would exclude active mine sites and the small town of Denniston.

To become an active Denniston reserve supporter, see www.forestandbird.org.nz/denniston

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Climate change fast track After 10 years of public advocacy and legal wrangles, Solid Energy gained consents for open-cast mining in Happy Valley, in the Upper Waimangaroa Valley, between the Stockton and Denniston plateaus. The state-owned miner also received permission to mine the summit of Mt Augustus, placing the Powelliphanta augusta giant land snail on a slide to extinction as attempts to move them continue to fail.

Now the public conservation land on the nearby Denniston Plateau is at the centre of another open-cast coal mine controversy. This time, Australian-owned Bathurst Resources Ltd has set up a subsidiary, Buller Coal Ltd, and bought the mining licences for the entire Denniston Plateau. The initial application is for a “small” coal mine extracting one million tonnes of coal a year (Stockton extracts two million tonnes a year), yet the company has also applied for the infrastructure that will enable it to extract all the coal reserves on the Denniston Plateau and beyond.

The first mine is the thin edge – 6.1 million tonnes of coal, with another 67 million tonnes identified for further consents, though the company prospectus says up to 125167 million tonnes may be recoverable – with production increasing to four million tonnes annually.

With climate change the biggest threat facing biodiversity across the planet, the development of a coal mine on the Denniston Plateau is an affront to international evidence urging coal mines to be phased out, and no new ones to open. In May, climate scientist Dr James Hansen toured New Zealand warning of the consequences of global warming. His message was clear – no new coal mines. The burning of the 73 million tonnes of coal would amount to about 180 million tonnes of carbon dioxide

discharged into the atmosphere; 167 million tonnes of coal equals 420 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Forest & Bird and West Coast groups provided the only environmental opposition to be heard at the resource consent hearing for the Denniston mine in June. A decision either way will probably result in appeals. The Department of Conservation made submissions but was not at the hearing and is more intent on working through any “issues” within the framework of the required access (for the mine) and concession (for the infrastructure) proposals.

Unfortunately, there is no chance for the public to submit on the coal mine, but the concession will be publicly

notified. The department’s protective functions are seriously compromised under current legislation and government strategies promoting the mining of fossil fuels.

In June, Green MP Kevin Hague questioned DOC Director-General Al Morrison at a local government and environment select committee hearing about why DOC was not at the Denniston resource consent hearing. “I suspect this is a consequence of the department being able to afford less advocacy. That’s why the department is not present in the hearing,” the Dominion Post newspaper reported Mr Hague saying. Mr Morrison denied this, and said DOC looked at advocacy matters “case by case”.

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4 Freshwater crayfish, or köura, are found in the plateau’s acidic streams.

Photo: Debs Martin 5 Denniston Plateau, with Mt William in the distance.

6 The Solid Energy mine has destroyed half of Stockton Plateau, including Mt Augustus and virtually all the habitat for the Powelliphanta augusta giant land snail.

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going places

Fire and 1

Mandy Herrick tiptoes around sulphur-encrusted fumaroles as she explores one of Earth’s pressure valves.

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ew Zealand is home to more than 12 active volcanoes slumbering under elaborate forest skirts or snow caps but none are as ash-splutteringly volcanic as White Island.

Stained with yellow sulphur, billowing ash and filled with bubbling craters and rumbling hillsides, this volcano popped its head above water 150,000 years ago in a torrent of steam and toxic gases, and it has never stopped puffing.

Maori named the island Te Puia o Whakaari, or The Dramatic Volcano, and Captain Cook – who failed to notice it was a volcano – gave it the more prosaic moniker of White Island.

As you draw close to the island, it looks neither menacing nor fearsome, so you can see Cook’s folly. It does not have the classic Fuji-like cone and the only thing that

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hints at its true nature is an innocuous soft, fluffy cloud that decorates its upper regions.

As we landed at the bay on the eastern side, I expected the volcano to assault my nostrils with a toxic cocktail of sulphur dioxide and halogen gases. Instead my eyes were clamped open by the scene – an amphitheatre furnished with steaming fumaroles, white-ash cliff faces and great rusting hunks of machinery.

The remains of the flaking sulphur processing plant are a reminder of miners’ failed attempts to extract the sulphur on the island during the 1800s and early 1900s. Once several miners lived on the island but now this scientific reserve’s only inhabitants are patches of ice-plant, a few hardy pohutukawa, grey-faced petrels and 5000 gannets.

The island is wracked by 5-6 tremors a day, bathed in

Champagne swimming

corrosive chemicals and has the potential to blow at any minute so the miners who lived there struggled to eke out a normal existence. Flimsy cotton clothing had to be replaced with wool to prevent a slow undressing and teeth were brushed thrice daily to prevent the workers acquiring a mouth full of black gnashers.

After three mining attempts, eventually the volcano won, evicting the miners from the island in 1914 with a dramatic lahar that buried 10 men. Since then it has shown its fury in a series of eruptions and lahars, each time giving the island a new dressing of rock.

In 2000, an 80-second eruption gave the island a radical makeover, throwing car-sized boulders into the air. And during the 1960s and 1970s, the rocks on the island glowed red-hot with temperatures recorded at 700-800C. As we snaked our way up to one of the more dramatic fumaroles, we observed this living, breathing island, albeit one that alternates from being asthmatic to violently bronchitic. It is in a state of constant flux, with new fumaroles and craters being formed, expanded or retired.

At times the air it exhales is not best inhaled, so as we neared the top of the island gas masks and lollies were issued to all visitors. The lollies help to cut through the acidic steam filling the air.

As we peered into the largest crater lake, the tour guide thrilled the crowd with stories of a failed stunt attempt by Ozzy Osbourne’s son. Perhaps in an effort to outdo his father’s live bat/bird eating antics, Jack came up with the idea of bungy jumping over this bubbling cauldron but was put off when he found that the acid levels were too high.

As we picked our way back through this moonscape, jumping over sulphuric streams and steamholes, it was easy to see why this would be the perfect backdrop for our latest film export, Narnia. The island is obviously re-inventing itself as a tourist destination, a film set and a geological curiosity but so far its most enduring role has been as a mining site, and it may well take up this role again.

All attempts to mine the sulphuric crust for use as a fertiliser have been abandoned, but now miners are looking to harvest another less visible mineral that comes laced in the steam: gold. For now, it is a scientific reserve.

The island is privately owned, and the thousands of visitors each year contribute a fine sum. But this island is unpredictable. One day the owner may possess a great pile of ash.

As you leave Whakatäne’s wharf and bounce towards White Island, it’s worth taking a look seaward because below the surface the Earth’s crust is punctured with many volcanoes like White Island. These submarine sea mounts spew a rich mineral soup, which has given life to unique ecosystems. Next to White Island lies one of New Zealand’s newest marine reserves near Volkner Rocks.

Veteran diver and author Wade Doak once swam around these waters and enjoyed a hot bath at 20 fathoms by unzipping his suit as he passed over the thermal vents. Some people have even described the scuba diving as like swimming in champagne.

The waters are home to kingfish, firebrick starfish, stingrays, maomao, dolphins and whales such as orca, Bryde’s whales, humpbacks, minkes, pilot and sperm whales.

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WHITE ISLAND

BAY OF PLENTY

• WHAKATANE

Getting there Where:

White Island is 49km from Whakatäne, an 80-minute boat ride.

Tours:

Day trips are $185 for adults. Lunch and safety gear is provided.

More information: www.whiteisland.co.nz

2 1 White Island’s chemically coloured crater lake and active vent. Photo: Rob Suisted/www.naturespic.com 2 A sulphur-encrusted fumarole. Photo: Rob Suisted/www.naturespic.com 3 Five kilometres north-west of White Island is the diving mecca of Te Paepae o Aotea, or Volkner Rocks, which is home to rare invertebrates such as firebrick starfish. This one is spawning. Photo: Alison Perkins 4 Gas masks are needed to cope with the volcanic fumes in parts of the island. Photo: Mandy Herrick

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Enviro poll With the general election on November 26 fast approaching, Forest & Bird asked all the main political parties to answer six questions about their vision for conservation and the environment. The Labour, National and Green parties responded.

From left, Labour’s Ruth Dyson, Green Party co-leader Russel Norman and National’s Nicky Wagner at the political forum at Forest & Bird’s Freshwater for Life conference in June. Wellington writer and actor Pinky Agnew, right, adjudicated. Photo: Marina Skinner

1 What is your party’s vision for New Zealand’s natural environment in 2020 and what policies would your party implement to make this vision a reality?

We love Aotearoa and we want to protect it.

Our kids have a birthright to swim in clean rivers, fish in the sea and walk in pristine forests. Our environment policy protects our natural heritage from those who only want short-term profit from exploiting our finite resources, such as industrial agribusiness and open-cast mining.

Real prosperity means clean rivers and air, rich biodiversity, protected marine areas and a GE-free New Zealand.

By 2020, the Green Party would like to see our native flora and fauna thriving, and all our threatened species recovering. In addition to protecting the wild places we have left, we aim to restore nature to the lowland areas where most of us live. We envision a day when our rivers will be once more full of birds and fish, and safe for our kids to swim in.

To achieve our vision, we have a plan for a smart, green economy that delivers prosperity and protects the environment.

Sir Paul Callaghan, the New Zealander of the Year 2011, said in a recent presentation to the StrategyNZ: Mapping our Future workshop: “Long-term vision is something we tend to avoid in New Zealand. But I will argue here that vision is essential to any strategy aimed at enhancing prosperity.”

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Nowhere is the need for vision more obvious and more important than in our environment. We need a clear vision for a genuinely clean, green and clever New Zealand – and we need a government prepared to deliver it. We need to change our mantra, our knowledge, our citizen buy-in and our reality. We need to recognise and act on the fact that our environment is the source of natural capital – CO2 sinks, water supplies, our ecological reserve – and it is what creates the passion that makes us who and what we are.

Our responsibility is to be the guardians who treasure and nurture our water, our rivers, our fish, our trees – the things that make our country what it is and us, as New Zealanders, what we are.

New Zealanders need to have strong leadership from our governments, central and local, and civil society leaders, to drive that change in attitude and culture, behaviour and policies. The policy of economic growth above all, with token, if any, responses to environmental concerns, is a fundamentally flawed frame. Those policies are wrong and must go.

The National Party’s vision for our natural environment is no different for 2020 than it is for any given year. It’s easy to make grand statements about ideals you’ll never actually have to meet. We can’t turn back time and return New Zealand to the relatively untouched haven it was 300 years ago. But we can be smarter about how we protect our environment.

The National Party’s vision is about being smarter. It’s about recognising that our natural resources underpin not only our economy but our national identity. New Zealand’s natural environment is at the core of our quality of life. Sound management is required to ensure it delivers ecosystem services such as quality fresh water and fertile soil, and these in turn underpin New Zealand’s primary production economy. Conservation contributes strongly to tourism – the destinations for both domestic and international visitors are primarily around public conservation lands and waters, and protected species.

Resource use must be based on sustainability and good science is essential to quality environmental decisionmaking.

The biggest threat to our biodiversity is introduced pests. Not only predators like possums, stoats and rats, but also weeds. It isn’t possible to eradicate them from New Zealand now that they’re established – not without some radical advances in technology. So we focus on areas where we can make a difference, like creating predator-proof sanctuaries on offshore islands. Policy-wise, the proposed National Policy on Biodiversity will mean a more consistent approach to biodiversity protection on private land.

Fantail, or pïwakawaka. Photo: Craig McKenzie

2 New Zealand’s unique biodiversity continues to

decline despite a comprehensive Biodiversity Strategy, robust laws and the tireless work of the Department of Conservation and countless volunteers. Why is this in your view, and what specifically would your party do to arrest the decline and restore a vibrant and healthy biodiversity?

To restore our precious biodiversity, we would get the Department of Conservation (DOC) to focus its efforts on biodiversity and heritage protection rather than generating income from conservation land. The National Party’s funding and job cuts have compromised DOC’s ability to protect our unique plants and animals. The Green Party is committed to increasing the funding for DOC, and is considering raising it to 1 per cent of the government’s total budget.

We would also pass legislation that would require the development of active recovery plans for all our threatened species. Currently, only 6 per cent of our threatened species have active recovery plans, whereas in the United States, the figure is 85 per cent. Central to this Bill would be an ecosystems approach, where we protect the habitats of threatened plants and animals, not just the species themselves.

We have a good biodiversity strategy and good work, in theory, in regard to biodiversity issues on private land. But we don’t have the clear vision to generate private landowners’ drive, nor adequate commitment from the government towards the work that the Department of Conservation needs to do. We need strong buy-in, we need to support and fund key areas of intensive management and we need to adequately fund pest control so that DOC can lead by example. We should note the recent report from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, in which she talked about land clearance and climate change and their impact on our biodiversity, but she went on to say: “The biggest and most immediate risk lies at the feet of just a few introduced species. Possums, rats and stoats continue to devastate our forests and the creatures that live within them.” She went on to say that we do not have the luxury of time, and that if things continue as they are, our forests will become silent. We cannot let that happen.

As the question indicates, we have in place comprehensive policies, processes and laws aimed at reversing the decline in biodiversity. In fact, New Zealand is recognised as one of the world’s most progressive countries in the area of biodiversity protection and management.

White heron, or kötuku. Photo: Craig McKenzie

3 Our freshwater resources are poorly managed,

wild rivers continue to be dammed and our freshwater biodiversity is in dire straits. What specifically would your party do to protect our water resources for the future?

We believe that our freshwater should be clean so our children can swim and fish in all our rivers, and so our unique freshwater biodiversity can flourish. Water is a mainstay of our economy, and we would protect this precious resource from pollution and ensure that water extraction always leaves enough for the fish and birds.

We would do this by regulating intensive agriculture, particularly industrial dairying. We would introduce a moratorium on agricultural intensification in over-allocated catchments while developing national bottom lines for river flows, lake levels and water quality. We would implement the strong draft of the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management (NPS) that was recommended by the Board of Inquiry – a panel of experts – rather than the weak final version that National adopted. Campaigning for a strong NPS was the focus of Green Party Co-leader Russel Norman’s national Dirty Rivers Rafting Tour this past summer.

We have also campaigned to save the majestic Mokihinui River from an 85-metre dam because we believe there are better ways to generate electricity. We do not need to sacrifice the last of our pristine wild rivers to meet the energy needs of New Zealand.

Water is a common good, owned by us all and belonging to none. It is our most precious resource. Our waterways are a transparent measure of our environment. Their health is at the heart of how we see ourselves, how we promote ourselves to the world and how we earn a premium for our exports. Our birthright of being able to swim safely in our rivers and lakes needs to Forest & Bird

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be restored. There needs to be a water quality measure in the National Policy Statement. We should implement the recommendations of the Land and Water Forum. Everyone wanted them, everyone agreed – then the government wussed out. Our wild rivers need special protection. Our wetlands are a critical part of our ecosystems, but only 10 per cent remain. Their degradation is something that must be reversed. And we should keep the Mackenzie as it is (unless we could restore it to as it was).

Certainly there are challenges with freshwater, which is why the Fresh Start for Fresh Water programme is a major focus for this government, led by Environment Minister Nick Smith. Our water quality is good by international standards but there is little national consistency in how councils manage water quality and allocation. There is a need for clearer direction. What we want to achieve is a framework by which decisions on the use of this major asset are consistent and environmentally sound.

I know Forest & Bird was part of the Land and Water Forum that reported back that limits needed to be set on quantity and quality. This is significant and National agrees.

We’re also committed to investing in assisting councils to clean up the historical degradation of rivers and lakes. Pollution has seriously deteriorated our freshwater biodiversity, so we’re looking to spend over $250 million over the coming years to help address this.

We have tools available, such as marine reserves, that are not being used well. We are still using destructive fishing methods. We have huge pressure on government for oil drilling and development. We are not prepared for an oil spill. The Minister of Energy doesn’t even know who is responsible for responding to an oil spill!

We have similar pressure for ocean-floor mining – for gold deposits off the West Coast, for iron sand off Taranaki – and yet we have no information on which to base decisions. No decisions should be made until we have this information.

National does not agree with the statement that our marine environment is poorly managed. New Zealand is used as an example when it comes to fisheries management and marine protection. We have a proud reputation in this regard. The issues associated with managing the marine environment are significantly more complex than those on terrestrial land and the normal protection mechanisms that we might use on land don’t necessarily operate as effectively in the marine environment as we would hope.

We have 34 marine reserves, not counting those proposed for the sub-Antarctic islands or those likely to be proposed for the West Coast. New Zealand has had a target of 10 per cent marine protection based on areas within the 12-mile territorial sea limit, not the EEZ, and we have always been upfront about that.

National is keen on replicating the forum process that has taken really constructive approaches and made meaningful progress on marine reserves. Community engagement and buy-in is integral to having them established. The response is more positive and constructive, rather than having communities feel something is being pushed on them.

Lionfish. Photo: Alison Perkins

4 Our marine environment is also poorly managed, with

continued depletion and destruction of marine species and ecosystems, and less than 1 per cent of our marine area protected for conservation. What specifically would your party do to protect our marine environment for the future?

A staggering 80 per cent of life on Earth lives in the sea, and we would ensure greater protection for these species by adopting a precautionary approach to marine activities. The sea is an integral part of the commons, and those who use the sea commercially would have to look after it, and would pay to use it.

To maintain the viability of our fisheries in the future, the Green Party would move to an integrated fisheries management system (rather than single species management) and create more marine reserves.

We would also work to eliminate the marine pollution that threatens our children’s birthright to swim, fish and collect kai moana in our seas. We are the only party that is courageous enough to stand up to oil companies: we would put a moratorium on all deep-sea oil exploration until the industry has proven that it can fix leaks and look after the environment.

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Stockton mine on the West Coast.

5 Climate change may be the most significant long-

term threat to biodiversity, our society and our economy, yet New Zealand continues to pursue high-polluting activities like coal and lignite mining, deep-sea oil and intensive dairying. When and how fast should New Zealand transition away from these high-polluting activities, and how would your party support that transition?

We need to transition to a low-carbon economy as soon as possible. To do this, we would put a fair price on all greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, we would put an end to the yearly billion-dollar subsidies that the National government is giving to polluting industries under the current Emissions Trading Scheme.

To reduce our dependence on oil, we would shift transport funding to public transport, walking and cycling.

We would also ban all mining of lignite coal and phase out coal use. Most of our energy needs can be met with

renewable energy generation, and we can develop other industries to support our economy. Our Green New Deal outlines shovel-ready ideas for government investment in the creation of clean, green jobs.

Our climate change policy is about improving the way we live and do business. We can reduce emissions and enhance our quality of life.

National, supported by the Maori Party and Peter Dunne, passed amendments to Labour’s Emissions Trading Scheme that will add billions to the taxpayers’ bill for New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions and let polluters off the hook for their emissions. The amendments are economically, socially and environmentally unsustainable. Agriculture is our largest source of emissions and must be part of the scheme. We need to do more about energy efficiency and ensure that our transport system moves away from fossil-fuelled cars and trucks.

Climate change is a global issue and the burning of fossil fuels is a global issue, not just unique to New Zealand. National’s approach is to reduce net emissions while growing our economy. We’re on the path to moving to a lower-carbon economy with our main tool being the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). In the first two years of the ETS we have seen net emissions reductions and we are on track to meet our Kyoto Protocol commitments by 2012.

New Zealand is prepared to do its fair share in combating global climate change and thus reducing its impact on biodiversity. We are committed to a 2020 and a 2050 target for reduction of its domestic greenhouse gas emissions and we are investing in global research related to carbon capture and storage and agricultural emissions.

The pathway to reducing emissions will be dictated by the development of new technologies that allows economies to develop while feeding the ever-increasing global population.

The future challenge is to increase economic growth while continuing this positive reduction in emissions. That is why we have established the Advisory Group on Green Growth to enable New Zealand to grow our economy while enhancing our clean, green brand. We are keen to help businesses, particularly our export industries, leverage New Zealand’s clean, green brand, and move towards a lowercarbon economy.

Reducing agricultural emissions will be a big challenge as nearly half our emissions come from agriculture, which makes us unique among developed counties. Farming is the backbone of our economy which is why we have established the Global Research Alliance on agricultural greenhouse gases. Its focus is on innovative solutions to help reduce emissions while producing more food for a growing world. It now has more than 30 member countries.

6 New Zealand’s natural capital underpins our

economy, yet many economic activities are causing rapid environmental decline. What is your view on the economic path New Zealand should follow, and what policies are necessary to get us there?

We can have a smart, green economy that delivers prosperity and protects the environment, but we need to change our approach. We need to abandon

Pöhutukawa. Photo: Laura Richards

the notion of “balance”, which in practice means trading off a bit more economic activity against a bit more environmental degradation. Growing GDP by consuming natural capital is a short-term strategy.

Let’s measure the right things; we need genuine social and environmental indicators, not just GDP. Let’s have prices that reflect true costs. Putting a fair price on carbon and for the commercial use of water will help us move to a low-carbon economy and drive the efficient use of water.

Let’s protect our natural capital (and national brand) by introducing strong environmental bottom lines, for example, water quality standards. Our clean, green brand underpins our tourism and agricultural exports.

Let’s embrace the export opportunities provided by the global clean-tech revolution. Let’s keep our energy companies in public ownership, give them a competitive edge by encouraging joint ventures with private clean-tech entrepreneurs, and get them exporting clean technology to the world. And let’s invest in research and development.

These policies will begin the transition to a smart, green economy that delivers real prosperity for everyone.

The economic and social value of our environment needs to be recognised in itself – as a drive in our economy, not as something to be repaired after the mining or dairying or exploitative fishing has taken place. If we want our grandchildren to be woken by the dawn chorus in the back country, to fill their billy from a clean stream, to understand the privilege it is to be part of this magnificent country, then we have to ensure that our conservation and environment policies have strong voices and are well funded – as a must-have and as the drive of our social and economic well-being.

This is certainly a very open-ended question.

National’s policies when it comes to the economy are well established. We inherited an economy already in recession, with the tradeable sector having been in decline for four years. We had seen huge increases in government spending, which were simply unsustainable. This has only been compounded by the Christchurch earthquakes. As a result, National’s focus has been and will remain on getting our books back into surplus. That involves making tough decisions around spending, while setting the framework that will lead to longer-term growth. Absolutely our natural capital underpins our economy. Our economic growth needs to be sustainable – not a short-term blip. So we need to be smarter in how we look to utilise our natural resources so we’re not putting them at risk.

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in the field

Red alert

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At first blush, New Zealand appears a land without the vivid autumnal reds of the northern hemisphere. But Ann Graeme finds splashes of scarlet in our native forests.

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ed is the colour of blood. To mammals like us, red signals excitement, danger and lust. Red attracts birds and lizards too, for they see the same range of colours that we do. The red flowers of pöhutakawa catch the tüï’s eye and lure the lizards. So do the red fruits of karamü, supplejack and strawberries.

But red is less attractive to insects like honeybees.

Indeed, it is scarcely visible. Bees see a different rainbow of colours beginning with ultra-violet (which we cannot see) and excluding red. Blue is their favourite colour, which is why they are attracted to blue clothing.

The heath myrtle of Western Australia has masses of pink and white flowers, each of which dulls to rusty red after a bee has visited and pollinated it. How efficient!

Now the bees’ activity is directed towards flowers awaiting pollination rather than wasted in revisiting fertilised flowers.

I used to wonder about red roses, some so dark bees would be unlikely to notice them. They don’t attract birds or lizards either, so why are they such a rich, velvety red?

Then the simple answer struck me. Red roses are not selected by nature but by people. Most wild rose species are white or cream or tinged with pink, and it is selective breeding that has created the red roses we admire.

Red plays other roles in the world of plants, especially in the northern hemisphere where in autumn the forests of deciduous trees become a riot of red and yellow. This delights the eye, but the show is not for us but for a much more mundane purpose – a housekeeping matter. It is the tree’s response to the coming of winter.

Leaves are green because they contain the green pigments called chlorophyll, essential for capturing the sun’s energy and transforming it by photosynthesis into plant food. That’s all very well in spring and summer but

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as the dark, cold winter approaches, leaves may become a liability. Photosynthesis will slow down or stop and the leaves may be damaged by frost. The energy the plant uses to maintain the leaves may end up being more than the energy the leaves can produce. It may be best to get rid of them, which is what deciduous trees do in autumn.

But first, like a thrifty housewife, the tree saves what it can. From the leaves it trucks out sugar and amino-acids and stores them in the bark of its branches and the outer sapwood of its trunk and roots. The green chlorophyll pigments are broken down and their constituents are taken away and stored, to be recycled into new leaves in the spring. It is at this time that the red pigments called anthocyanins are created. Their powerful antioxidants act like bodyguards, shielding the cells from UV damage and disarming rogue chemicals.

Now the leaf veins fill with corky tissue, shutting down the water supply to the leaf. With its green colour gone, the hidden orange and yellow pigments show through and so do the newly created reds. The coloured leaves flutter to the ground, to decay and add what’s left of their nutrients to the soil.

Red anthocyanins play many roles in the plant world.

Masked in apparently green leaves, they protect the chlorophyll from too much and too strong light, which actually inhibit photosynthesis. They act as a sunscreen protecting the growing shoots from damaging UV light and frost damage. It is anthocyanin that colours young fern fronds pink. Anthocyanins help desert plants resist the stress of drought and their antioxidants repair wounded leaves.

Anthocyanins serve so many purposes that Kevin S Gould of Auckland University calls them “nature’s Swiss Army knife”.

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seful as anthocyanins may be, on land green chlorophyll is still the 3 best colour to capture most of the spectrum of sunlight, which is why the land is carpeted in green plants. Green works well in the surface waters of the sea too, fuelling the carpet of floating plankton, each plant so tiny and so short-lived that they are invisible.

But deeper down as sunlight passes through the water, some of the colours are absorbed, first the red, then orange, then yellow. As the red end of the spectrum diminishes, chlorophyll becomes less effective at capturing light energy. Now it needs the help of other pigments. This is why seaweeds that grow deeper in the sea are brown and red. Their green chlorophyll is masked by these helpful pigments, which capture the energy from blue, green and yellow light waves and transmit it to the chlorophyll to use for photosynthesis.

Nature’s signals do not always have such a rational explanation. It is tempting to think that the colour of the redand-white spotted mushroom called fly agaric is warning us of danger. And poisonous it is – though not as deadly as its innocuous-looking relative, the death cap fungus.

Fly agaric is hallucinogenic too. It is not a fungus to fool with but it is pretty and widely pictured in children’s story books. Elves and pixies are often seated unwisely on redand-white-spotted toadstools!

99.9% green In New Zealand, our native forests don’t blaze with red and yellow and gold. Nearly all native plants are evergreen. We have few deciduous trees and shrubs.

There are several explanations for this.

Our islands are temperate and our winters are not extreme. Dropping leaves is a sacrifice most of our native plants don’t have to make. Those that do – ribbonwoods, lacebarks, tree daisies, köwhai and fuchsia – grow in fertile places, often on valley floors where the frost drains down. They can afford to lose their leaves each autumn because there are enough nutrients in the soil to grow a new crop in the spring, and frost gives them a good reason to drop their leaves and become dormant.

Another explanation may be that many of our broad-leaved plants belong to tropical families whose members are evergreen. This is so for kämahi, rätä, pöhutukawa, quintinia, hïnau, tawa, pigeonwood, mähoe, pukatea, kohekohe and püriri. And our podocarps like rimu and tötara are evergreen, too, so green is the colour of our native forest all year round.

Thanks to botanist Shannel Courtney for his help with this article.

1 Red pigments called anthocyanins are a sunscreen to protect new rätä leaves. Photo: Rob Suisted/naturespic.com 2 Coprosma fruit. Photo: Ann Graeme 3 Red and white fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) look fair enough for a fairy but are poisonous. Photo: Shirley Kerr 4 Tender young fern fronds with red “sunscreen”. Photo: Rod Morris 5 The native fuchsia, or kötukutuku, is one of New Zealand’s few native deciduous plants. Photo: Craig McKenzie

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feedback

Your say on sanctuaries We asked for feedback on the “Both sides of the fence” article by David Brooks about fenced sanctuaries in the May Forest & Bird. And you sent it in spades! We don’t have space to publish every letter or every word but here is an edited version of the many emails and letters we received. Please see our website link on the next page to read all letters in full.

Fencing founder Thank you for your excellent May issue, which raised several crucial issues for conservation. As the person who started the fenced sanctuary concept, I feel I should correct some misconceptions about fences. The Lincoln researcher’s cost accountant approach is fundamentally flawed because it implies that fencing and bait/trap operations offer nearly equal outcomes. This is absolutely not the case.

Fencing achieves biodiversity outcomes (sustainable populations of the most sensitive threatened species and near complete ecosystem restoration over time), which are orders of magnitude over what baiting/trapping can ever achieve and which can match those achieved on offshore islands. The bonus for fences even over islands is that they can make protected areas accessible and can act as a nursery to repopulate large areas of surrounding habitat.

Even the most intense bait/trap operations will sustain only a very few of the more robust threatened species, and even then their recovery will be slow and they will be constantly at risk from continually invading predators. This intense effort must be maintained forever with bait and trap shyness and worker fatigue inevitable in due course.

Fences do have obvious limitations – capital cost, maintenance, vulnerability to mice and the need to (as with islands) monitor and deal with incursions – but overall they cannot be matched for the sheer magnitude of the outcomes they can provide.

Accusations that sanctuaries take money from other conservation works are well off the mark. None of Karori’s funding would ever have gone to bait/trap operations, and it has attracted millions of dollars worth of new money to the wider conservation cause by raising awareness and converting potential new donors.

I agree there are probably ill-considered projects being attempted around the country that may well have difficulties in future. When I conceived the sanctuary, I imagined there would be perhaps as few as six in New Zealand, that they would be smallish scale (maximum 300-400 hectares), they would be community-public partnerships close to large and supportive populations, and they would have multiple goals and a broad value case. Fencing is by no means the best option in every case.

I can’t speak for other projects but Karori’s fence is immense value for money on a range of counts.

sanctuaries are going to cost more than most mainland trap/ poison operations, though not necessarily more than the creation of sanctuaries on remote islands.

Orokonui Ecosanctuary, a 307-hectare forested haven for wildlife on the outskirts of Dunedin, is the largest forested valley project of its kind in the South Island, protecting an area a quarter larger than Zealandia with a fence close to 9km long.

It opened in October 2009. Thanks to canny southern instincts when it comes to spending money, our project has an asset value of $5.7 million, a surprisingly small sum given the length of fence, the award-winning visitor centre, a workshop, plant and equipment, and an impressive network of walking tracks.

Besides re-introducing several species, Orokonui is fostering a satellite breeding population of the most endangered of all kiwi, Haast tokoeka. Other species are in the pipeline.

Restoration will take many years.

In the long run, we expect conservation gains beyond the fence. We are building an interest in nature conservation in our region through education and public awareness programmes.

Our sanctuary also provides multiple opportunities for hands-on conservation.

Neville Peat, Chairman, Otago Natural History Trust, Dunedin

Iwi relations Fenced sanctuaries are also becoming the vehicle for Maori political ambitions. The Maungatautari case is well documented.

Less well-known is the recent coercion of the Otago Natural History Trust (ONHT), which governs Orokonui Ecosanctuary, by members of local iwi Kati Huirapa Runaka ki Puketeraki to provide as of right a seat on the ONHT board of trustees.

Many people with Maori ancestry consider native biota as a resource, either culinary or commercial, rather than espousing the conservation ethic of intrinsic value. Nothing wrong with that, perhaps, except where it impinges on the operation of fenced sanctuaries, established by local communities of people concerned only for the welfare of native flora and fauna.

The increasing awareness among iwi of the success of such sanctuaries has led to the increasing pressure to use them as a political tool, and this must be resisted.

Ralph Allen, Orokonui Ecosanctuary founder, Dunedin

James R Lynch, Wellington

Karori’s changing focus

Orokonui’s wider gains

My partner and I were early members of the Karori Sanctuary project. Over the last few years we have seen it shift from a largely volunteer base to an organisation with an increasing emphasis on the importance of branding and capture of the Wellington visitor dollar – an inevitable outcome when obtaining private and public sector sponsorships to build a very expensive visitor centre.

I think fenced sanctuaries are a good showcase opportunity.

It is fair enough for Forest & Bird to question the costeffectiveness of predator-fenced sanctuaries, but the article takes a simplistic look at the issue. Like biodiversity itself, nature conservation will always rely on diverse approaches, and inevitably it will benefit from advances in technology. Bearing in mind comparisons can be downright misleading, fenced

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To read all feedback, visit http://tinyurl.com/443xl5k

Who should pay? The users, the local community and, if there is national or international significance in the species, the taxpayer.

Better outcomes from intensive pest control in unfenced areas are likely, particularly as technology and improved adaptive management processes evolve over time.

The more we can come up with low-cost solutions, the more we can export those ideas to other countries. I doubt there will be many, if any, predator-proof fence projects in our Pacific neighbours.

Clive Hellyar, Wellington

Both play a part From the figures quoted in the article, it seems self-evident that mainland islands are far more economic as conservation projects than predator-proof fenced areas. I visit both Zealandia and Boundary Stream mainland island and enjoy both, but it is far easier to see birds at Zealandia than in Boundary Stream, so both have a part to play in educating the public. Fenced sanctuaries need to have an assured source of private funding.

Margaret Gwynn, Napier

Driving Creek a nursery The smaller the area vermin-proof fences enclose, the easier and more practical they are to monitor for any form of damage.

The labour, transport and expertise to maintain such a fence is in geometric rather than arithmetic proportion to its length. So, a 10-kilometre fence could require about 100 times more cost to maintain than a 1km fence, especially if the land is steep.

At Driving Creek Wildlife Sanctuary we have a 500-metre fence enclosing 1.7 hectares. The area is too small to accommodate, for instance, kiwi and other wide territorydemanding birds.

I regard our sanctuary as a nursery in which endangered species can at least be raised and cared for before release into the much larger unfenced but well-trapped and poisonmonitored adjacent areas. Hats off to Maungatautari Sanctuary project. I shudder to think of their maintenance costs. How can we help them?

Barry Brickell, Coromandel

Research stymied During my time on the Forest & Bird Executive, I was a lonely voice, saying that predator fencing was costly and a drain on research to find a solution to eliminate predators from New Zealand. I was well aware that Australia would object to genetic manipulation of possums. By eliminating mustelids by the same method, rats would have a field day.

The financial drain of maintaining these sanctuaries stymies research on a solution. I have been trapping on my property since the 1960s. No end is in sight.

Henk Heinekamp, Stoke

Selective use of fences The fenced sanctuary is one of a large range of conservation techniques. Its use should be very selective, especially with reducing resources for conservation. The fenced sanctuary has become a goal in itself. This has led to much confusion and the misallocation of scarce resources to often low-priority sites and low-conservation goals. The goal has become to build the fence and then figure out what is to be achieved within it. This is a very poor approach to conservation.

To me, a fenced sanctuary has only two valid purposes. The first is to protect one or more species that cannot be protected any other way. The second is to re-create a higher-quality conservation area at a site to show the public what has been lost due to the absence of proper conservation management in most of New Zealand. The education sites would be near the largest population centres and relatively large.

It would be much more effective to use cheaper conservation techniques to show significant gains that could be transferred widely, for instance, more resources for aerial 1080 over large degrading forests. I predict that most fenced sanctuaries will fail due to their costs and a loss of local leadership drivers. Government will not and should not continue to fund them due to their low priority and the massive losses continuing apace in the majority of conservation lands.

Bill Carlin, Auckland

A hybrid approach In an unfenced sanctuary, even with intensive trapping or poisoning, there is a chance a stoat could slip through and do some damage. This is much less likely with a fenced barrier.

This makes them better for protecting high-risk species, and for protecting small, well-defined areas or peninsulas.

However, they are expensive to build and require ongoing maintenance. The money might be better spent on protecting larger areas using traps and poisons. They are not suitable for areas prone to flooding or slips, or for protecting large areas.

There is also the risk of the fence being breached by trees falling on them.

Fenced sanctuaries are not the magic bullet for pest control but they are a useful option, once everything is considered.

They have a place, and let’s learn from them. Maybe for some places a hybrid approach would be better, with a cheaper fence to keep out larger animals and trapping and poisons for the possums, rats, mice and stoats.

Roland Vink, Auckland

All conservation valuable Some fellow Wellington conservationists envy Zealandia’s funding. Conservation is woefully under-resourced in clean, green New Zealand. However, there’s no magic set conservation funding level. Funding is about political and community priorities. Conservation competes against all other draws on rate/taxpayers.

In Wellington City we’ve achieved an enormous amount for conservation in the last 20 years. I was a Karori Sanctuary foundation trustee and I am now a guardian. Living adjacent, I hear kiwi. Käkä and tüï are daily visitors, and we’ve enjoyed käkäriki, ruru and kärearea from our house.

The sanctuary is relatively expensive for a conservation project. The ambition to be self-sustaining is challenging.

However, many other council-supported projects are more expensive per visitor.

The sanctuary delivers conservation, educational, community participation and research benefits. If it didn’t exist, I suspect many of our 400-plus volunteers wouldn’t be involved in conservation. I’m sure little, if any of the council, government, private or philanthropic money invested would have gone into conservation either.

We should celebrate all conservation efforts – whether by DOC, Forest & Bird, volunteer groups, councils or sanctuaries – to save and restore our unique environments for future generations and for their own intrinsic value.

Andy Foster, Wellington City Councillor Forest & Bird

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Steep learning curve in Dunedin F

airy prions once bred at many places on the main islands of New Zealand. Today, the spectacular sandstone cliffs of St Clair, near Dunedin, are possibly the sole remaining mainland breeding site.

Dunedin conservationist Graeme Loh has devoted hundreds of hours and considerable materials to maintaining and enhancing this colony over the past 17 years. Breeding success is now considerable in the small colonies on the cliffs. More recently Graeme, his partner Sue Maturin (Forest & Bird’s Otago/Southland Field Officer) and Forest & Bird Deputy President Mark Hanger (from Forest & Bird’s Dunedin branch) have developed the wider Otago Coast Seabird Restoration Project.

The St Clair cliffs predator fence is the first stage in this project. The fence will allow the prions and sooty shearwaters to move off the cliffs and back on to the cliff tops.

1 Graeme Loh is deeply involved in the fencing project. Photo: Mark Hanger 2 Building a fence atop 65-metre-high cliffs in rip-roaring southerly winds is not for the faint hearted. Photo: Mark Hanger 3 The St Clair prion colony at night. Photo: Keith Payne

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In brief T-shirts for dolphins: Auckland clothing company owner Andrew MacDonald has raised $600 for Forest & Bird’s work protecting Hector’s and Mäui’s dolphins by selling his Wetkiwi T-shirts.

Andrew is passionate about protecting our seas, and especially our critically endangered Maui’s dolphins, which number about 111. Mäui’s are a sub-species of Hector’s dolphins, and are found along parts of the west coast of the North Island. The main threat to them is getting caught in commercial fishing nets.

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3 Dunedin Forest & Bird, with funding assistance from the Dr Marjorie Barclay Trust, is leading the way in this innovative and exciting project along the Otago coast.

The project will provide a safe sanctuary for a variety of New Zealand seabirds close to Dunedin city. It will also encourage species that once bred along the coast, such as Australasian gannets, shy albatrosses and white-faced storm petrels, to once again visit and breed on areas including Lawyers Head, the Otago Peninsula and Long Point in the Catlins.

The project will provide a conservation focus for Forest & Bird’s Dunedin branch activities for several years to come.

The predator-proof fence at St Clair cliffs is now well under way, despite the challenging terrain. Working on slopes of more than 33 degrees atop 65-metre-high cliffs in rip-roaring southerly winds is not for the faint hearted.

A dedicated team of workers has completed the 70 post holes and the fence should be completed once the fence mesh arrives, and the weather improves in spring.

Fortunately a very mild May and June allowed all the groundwork to be completed ahead of schedule. With no vehicle or machine access to the site, all materials have been carried on to the site or dropped by a flying fox set-up.

“My number one concern is the lack of awareness of our oceans – treating them like a bottomless pit – and the exploitation of them through over-fishing, unsafe mining etc,” Andrew says. www.wetkiwi.com Project grants: Forest & Bird’s Waikato branch awards grants in memory of Lilian Valder each year for conservation projects. Each grant is usually $1000-$2000, and can be awarded to individual or group projects.

The closing date for applications is September 30. For more information and application forms, contact Secretary, Waikato branch, Forest & Bird, PO Box 11 092, Hillcrest, Hamilton 3216.

A whole new ball game M

aking clay seed balls and lobbing them with tennis racquets into gorse-filled gullies might sound like child’s play but for the Friends of Maara Roa at Cannons Creek Valley, near Wellington, seed balls are a key part of restoring a forest.

Volunteers have planted thousands of trees at Maara Roa but it’s harder to plant on the precipitous, gorsecovered slopes. When Sylvia Jenkin learned of a seed ball technique being used in Southland, she thought it might work in these tricky areas. Called “human birds”, the idea is to imitate the work birds do in spreading seeds.

Recognising the fun children would have, Friends of Maara Roa invited Wellington Kiwi Conservation Club – junior Forest & Bird – to take part in 2006. Using locally collected seeds, they worked together to make the seed balls and lob them into the difficult-to-reach areas. A few seed balls were held back and left in pots to see what would happen, and the germinating seeds gave the organisers encouragement that this would be an effective way of spreading seeds.

The next step was to source the seeds not just locally but from Maara Roa’s original bush remnant and to get more adult volunteers involved. Last year, a Greater Wellington Regional Council expert came to share knowledge, and a group of adult volunteers began to learn about seed collection.

I joined the group, and we sharpened our observation skills, identifying suitable trees such as mähoe , karamü, kawakawa, hangehange, mingimingi and köhühü, and looking for ripe berries and seed pods. Seed collection days were far enough apart to allow for the ripening times of different species. At home we cleaned, dried and stored them. Then we waited patiently until autumn when it was time to make the seed balls.

A Kiwi Conservation Club leader showed us how to make seed balls. We had all the fun of a pottery morning – without worrying about what our end products looked like – as we mixed the seeds with potting mix and formed them with clay into small balls.

We waited for a sunny, wintry day, when we got to toss our seed balls in to our gorse-covered gullies. Tennis racquets added to the fun and sent the seed balls further.

We avoided the areas where local conservationist Neil Bellingham is monitoring the germination of seeds from seed balls under different conditions.

We will be back for more child’s play and we will look forward to seeing the progress in the monitored area. n Gillian Candler More information about Friends of Maara Roa: www.MaaraRoa.org.nz

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2 1 Making seed balls with potting mix and clay.

2 Hitting the seed balls into Maara Roa’s steep gullies. Photos: Sylvia Jenkin

Seed ball calendar Summer

Autumn

Winter

Collect seeds regularly because different species will fruit at different times.

Clean and dry the seeds

Make the seed balls by mixing seeds with some potting mix, then coating with potters’ clay.

(Check the clay doesn’t have any added chemicals before you purchase it.)

Leave the seed balls to dry.

Throw your seed balls in the selected area.

PHILPROOF PEST CONTROL PRODUCTS WIPEOUT: Possums, Rodents, Mustelids, Rabbits Standard & Mini Philproof Bait Stations & Timms Traps Rodent Bait Stations and Block Baits.

Rodent Snap Traps Fenn Traps (MK4 & 6), Trap Covers – Double or Single Also available: Monitoring Tunnels & Bird Nesting Chambers Phone/Fax 07 859 2943 Mobile 021 270 5896 PO Box 4385, Hamilton 3247 Website: www.philproof.co.nz Email: philproof.feeders@clear.net.nz

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conservation

Parakeets for the park

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teacher on a Royal Society Fellowship is working on a ground-breaking project to release yellow-crowned parakeets, or käkäriki, from captive breeders in Auckland’s Ark in the Park. Unlike many other native birds, käkäriki breed well in captivity, however, they are rarely used for releases into the wild because of concerns over their genetic background.

“There have only been two releases in New Zealand of a captive-bred käkäriki, so this is a pretty unique proposal,” says Royal Society teacher fellow Paul Carter.

“The advantages of sourcing the birds from breeders are manifold – it’s not only more cost effective, it also won’t threaten the wild population. And we believe it can also cut down the risk of genetic problems by sourcing the birds from registered breeders.”

It is hoped a group of these käkäriki will be introduced to the Ark in the Park – a joint Forest & Bird and Auckland Council project – as early as next year.

The first successful release of captive-bred käkäriki was in 2007 to Maud Island in the Marlborough Sounds. Sixty-

eight critically endangered orange-fronted käkäriki from the Isaac Wildlife Trust in Christchurch were released on the island. No käkäriki were living on the island at the time, so there was no chance of hybridisation. The release in the Ark in the Park will be similar because there is no remnant population of käkäriki in the Ark. The only difference will be that the käkäriki will be from local domestic breeders.

As well as working on the käkäriki release, Paul ran the pre-release aviaries for last month’s whitehead release in the Ark, and he has provided additional reporting on rat monitoring. The teacher from Glen Eden Intermediate decided to help Forest & Bird after volunteering at the Ark over the past year. He spent six months as a teacher fellow until July.

Paul had initiated several 2 green projects at his school, such as wëtä hotels and freshwater monitoring, and, after working at Forest & Bird, he has a head full of conservation ideas. “I hope to bring in food tables for over-wintering tüï and kererü, look at tree growth rates and start up a weather station that records the wind speed, rainfall, humidity and temperature of the Glen Eden area.”

The London-born teacher, who has a degree in analytical biochemistry, has a colleague on a Royal Society scholarship in the second half of this year, so he hopes they can collaborate on new projects. n Mandy Herrick 1 A yellow-crowned käkäriki. Photo: Simon Hayward 2 Royal Society teacher fellow Paul Carter has laid the groundwork for a release of yellow-crowned käkäriki in Ark in the Park. Photo: Mandy Herrick

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Möhua safe spot F

orest & Bird member Shaun Collins has come up with a nesting box to protect möhua, or yellowheads, from predators. The Central Otago-Lakes branch member designed the nesting box with a wide roof overhang to stop stoats and rats attacking the nesting birds and their eggs and chicks. Shaun has built six boxes, and Freemasons New Zealand has paid for the materials to build more. The branch is getting help from Mt Aspiring College students and other community volunteers to build the boxes.

Central Otago-Lakes branch chairperson Mark Ayre says the nesting boxes will be used to boost numbers of möhua in Central Otago, and he is looking for suitable locations to put them. The boxes could be useful for other birds, including whiteheads, or pöpokotea, and robins, he says.

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1 1 Shaun Collins and the möhua nesting box he designed.

2 Möhua, or Yellowhead

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Return of the rengarenga F

orest & Bird’s Wairarapa branch is restoring a coastal area of rengarenga lilies – one of just two sites in the region where the plants grow in the wild. On the remote Palliser coast, Wairarapa branch member and QEII Trust representative Trevor Thompson visited the area of Mäori land near Cape Palliser lighthouse with a landowner, Haami Te Whaiti, while monitoring a covenant. The rengarenga plants are at a small escarpment and karaka grove, which is part of an old pa site, Orangikorero. Mäori ate the fleshy roots of rengarenga and probably brought the plants there centuries ago.

Wairarapa Forest & Bird and Ngäti Hinewaka have formed an alliance to protect and enhance the site, with help from Greater Wellington Regional Council, the Department of Conservation, Taratahi agricultural training centre and Norfolk Road Nursery, which is growing other rare and endangered coastal plants.

2 The project originally aimed to protect the rengarenga plants by weeding and fencing them to keep out rabbits and stock. The partners now plan to plant rare coastal plants, create gecko and skink shelters and control pests.

“Wairarapa iwi are natural allies of Forest & Bird, with many shared values and views on the natural world,” Trevor says. “This project gives us a chance to work together to carry out the biggest mass planting of rare coastal plant species yet seen.”

Two working bees, including Forest & Bird, Kiwi Conservation Club and Ngäti Hinewaka members, have been held to clear the area of spiny boxthorn, put up a fence and begin the planting.

“While this sometimes harsh and difficult coastal area is a challenging environment to work in, it also is the very place that will benefit greatly from some well-targeted conservation effort,” Trevor says.

1 Haami Te Whaiti and the team planting at Palliser Bay in July. Photo: Trevor Thompson

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2 Wairarapa Forest & Bird and Ngati Hinewaka have joined together to restore a patch of wild rengarenga lilies on Palliser coast. Photos: Trevor Thompson

Help for remote island N

elson-Tasman Forest & Bird members spent a busy Easter on D’Urville Island in the Marlborough Sounds helping to weed and put out boxes to check where bats are on the island.

The group chartered a boat from French Pass to Kapowai Bay on the island, and most walked the 28 kilometres to Moawhitu-Greville Harbour, where they stayed with the DOC caretakers and their four daughters.

D’Urville Island is free of possums, feral goats and ship rats, and has several distinct indigenous plant communities, including large areas of stunted ultramafic vegetation, where the chemical make-up of the soil stunts growth.

However, much of the native vegetation was cleared for farmland. At Moawhitu there is a magnificent beach, a lake, several bays and a large area of mature forest. Many Mäori artefacts and stone adzes have been collected from the island’s beaches, and some are still found.

Some of the Forest & Bird team released the flax, känuka, köwhai and other native plants from weeds at the

campsite by the lagoon. Others put out bat-detection boxes, which recorded bat calls on several parts of the island.

DOC welcomes conservation volunteers to D’Urville Island, where the caretaker’s house has bunk rooms.

For more information, see www.doc.govt.nz n Pauline Coy

Weeding at the camp site at Moawhitu.

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pacific

Safe haven

for seabirds

1

Making a Fiji island suitable for nesting black noddies and other birds has been a team effort, Aalbert Rebergen finds.

T

he black noddy must be one of the most beautiful birds on the planet – very dark brown, almost black, with a white cap. It’s a photo negative of the tern from the Arctic and Antarctic. Black noddy fledged chicks look like adults when they leave the nest and skip any juvenile stage.

Safe nesting areas without predators and with suitable vegetation for building nests are a must for small seabirds like black noddies to thrive. The owners of Vatu-i-Ra island, in Fiji, supported by BirdLife Pacific and Nature Fiji, have succeeded in creating a safe haven for seabirds and keeping it this way through an active programme of bird and pest monitoring.

Vatu-i-Ra is one of 14 Important Bird Areas (IBAs) in Fiji and one of only two seabird IBAs. Throughout the world more than 10,000 IBAs have been identified, and in New Zealand several marine IBAs for seabirds have been identified.

On a visit to Vatu-i-Ra by a team of staff from BirdLife Pacific – Forest & Bird is the New Zealand partner of the BirdLife international conservation organisation – we met a small group of the island’s owners, who had arrived the day before to put out rat traps. Polynesian rats were eradicated in 2007 and the rat traps confirmed the island remains rat-free.

As we stepped on to the beach we were surrounded by seabirds – black noddies and impressive frigate birds and two types of boobies.

The two-hectare island is made up of two volcanic rock outcrops connected by an

area of coral sand. The island is forested, though a big chunk of forest recently disappeared during a cyclone, leaving part of the rock outcrop in grasses rather than trees. The dominant tree is Pisonia grandis, which has a canopy of 5-10 metres on the flat land and is more shrubby on the rocks.

Our camp was a little inside the forest, among the black noddy nests. The birds took little notice of the visitors, and it was wonderful to be 10 centimetres from a noddy chick on its tiny nest. It watched us as the island owners welcomed us and we drank the traditional kava.

We broke into small groups and started counting all the birds and nests on the island. Our visit was perfectly timed to count the black noddies because all birds appeared to be nesting and at all stages of breeding. Counting the nests was relatively easy as we moved through the forest, marking each tree after all nests had been counted. Several trees had more than 100 noddy nests in them, and we counted more than 12,000 in all.

Among the black noddies was the occasional nesting red-footed booby (a tropical gannet). Brown noddies and bridled terns nested in the rocky parts on the edge of the island, and the 100-plus lesser frigatebirds were all nonbreeding. The only other birds on the island were brown boobies, black-naped terns, reef herons and a single wandering tattler – a summer visitor from the Arctic.

The work on Vatu-i-Ra is a great example of how international organisations, national NGOs and local communities can work together and make significant achievements for conservation. Vatu-i-Ra could become a template for future conservation projects in the Pacific.

Aalbert Rebergen is Forest & Bird’s Lower North Island Field Officer.

1 Vatu-i-Ra island is a safe nesting area for black noddies because it is free of predators. Photos: Aalbert Rebergen 2 The camp on Vatu-i-Ra was among nesting black noddies.

2

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3 Black noddy chicks have the same colourings as their parents.

3

Member since 200,000,000 BC

Even though we started back in 1923, we’re youngsters compared with the incredible species we help protect.

Forest & Bird works tirelessly to safeguard and restore our islands’ unique wildlife and the environments where they live. We’re an independent not-for-profit organisation, so the more people who join us now, the more we can do in the years ahead. Help give nature a voice. Please join Forest & Bird today.

Call 0800 200 064 or visit www.forestandbird.org.nz

Atlantic puffins, copyright Corbis/All Canada Photo: Rolf Hicker, from Endangered Birds: A survey of planet earth’s changing ecosystems

A New Cloak for Matiu: He Korowai Hou mo Matiu – The restoration of an island ecology

Endangered Birds: A survey of planet earth’s changing ecosystems

By Janet Hector

By Martin Walters in association with BirdLife International

Lower Hutt branch of Forest & Bird, $25 (order at www.forestandbird.org.nz) Reviewed by Marina Skinner

New Holland, $49.99 Reviewed by Karen Baird

Matiu/Somes Island is a modest island in the middle of Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington’s great harbour – yet it’s a landmark that draws the eye from the surrounding shores and hills. A New Cloak for Matiu is also a modest yet significant landmark in an inspiring restoration project that Forest & Bird’s Lower Hutt branch launched 30 years ago and for which all Wellingtonians should be thankful.

The branch commissioned Janet Hector to write the history of the project, and she has interviewed many of the Forest & Bird members – some now in their 80s – who were there at the beginning.

Angela and Ron Freeston looked out on the island from their home on the hills above Petone and saw the potential of planting the scrap of wind-whipped pasture and cliffs. In the early 1980s it was a livestock quarantine station and was almost bare of the forest that once grew there. After Forest & Bird members visited the island and a quarantine officer called for help with planting, the Lower Hutt branch adopted the restoration project. Less rigorous demands were made then, with the Lower Hutt branch in 1981 putting out a call for plants – any native plants would do – in Forest & Bird magazine.

Regular working days began, with volunteers taken to and from the island in a MAF launch. At the peak, more than 4000 plants were put in each year, and by 1998, 100,631 trees had been planted.

Plant nurseries, sheds and equipment were built, weeds were removed and in 1989, after intensive baiting, all rats were evicted. After all the hard work, branch members enjoyed returning native animals that once lived there or that needed an island sanctuary. Tuatara, Cook Strait giant wëtä, Wellington tree wëtä, red-crowned käkäriki and North Island robins all have a home on Matiu/Somes Island thanks to the volunteers.

Hector quietly captures the achievements of a group of people who conjured up a seemingly impossible dream and made it come true through hard work and dedication. Thank you to you all.

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New Zealand is a land of birds and surely there is nowhere else in the world where the linked fate of birds and their diminishing ecosystems is better understood. Globally, birds – as surely as the poor canary in the coal mine – can tell us a great deal about the health of our ecosystems, and Walters takes us on a journey around the world to find the birds most threatened by largely anthropogenic impacts.

Endangered Birds could have ended up too much like a textbook, but the information is instead compelling and relevant. As to be expected from a book associated with BirdLife International, there is a strong conservation message backed up by a plethora of facts and figures. Some of these are scary and reflect a siege taking place in many bird habitats and their associated ecosystems. For example, of the 10,000 or so species of birds thought to exist, one in eight (some 1240) are threatened with extinction. And 190 of those are teetering on the brink.

Is New Zealand’s eighth place on the list of countries holding the most critically endangered species something we should be proud of?

Threats to birds and their habitats are discussed and illustrated with maps and gorgeous photos, and balanced with conservation successes.

A large section is devoted to profiles of the most threatened birds, family by family – a useful reference.

A section about conservation covers where efforts have been focused and where conservation has worked. Four case studies are presented, including our own black robin. Other sections concentrate on conservation of seabirds, forest birds and island species.

My only criticism of this beautifully presented book is the final section, which identifies bird-watching hotspots of the world. It does not include New Zealand. As any self-respecting bird-family collector knows, you need to come to New Zealand to see four endemic families of birds – kiwi, wattlebirds, new world wrens and stitchbird/hihi. And New Zealand – adrift in the Pacific Ocean – has the greatest diversity of seabirds in the world.

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Banks Peninsula Track, Akaroa When you walk during October, November or December there is a wonderful opportunity to observe the activity of the largest mainland colony of little blue penguins. The interpretive talk is one of the highlights of your experience at Pohatu, Flea Bay. Further along the coast you can see the new predator proof fence around the last sooty shearwater colony on the Canterbury mainland.

Phone: Jo Buckingham 027 4250741 Ljhooker.com/57MGEQ LJ Hooker Mangonui 09 4060977 Licensed Real Estate Agent (REAA 2008)

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Send cheque and delivery details to Mercury Pots Plus PO Box 72042 Papakura 2244, Auckland Tel 09 298 0955 Fax 09 298 0950 email: mercurypots@xtra.co.nz

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Forest & Bird

| 67

Parting shot Nathan Goshgarian – a conservation ecologist and nature photographer – photographed this tuatara in Wellington. “After hearing about the tuatara enclosure at Victoria University, which has been incubating tuatara eggs for translocation since the late 1980s, I hoped I’d have the opportunity to get up close to these incredible animals. During one of the morning feedings of freshly caught cicadas, I was able to get my camera – a Nikon D300S and Nikkor 18-55mm VR lens – in close enough to snap a couple of quick pictures of a pair in the midst of the feeding frenzy.

Tuatara are not known for moving all that much, but when cicadas are on the menu, things quickly change.”

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If you have a stunning photo that showcases New Zealand’s special native plants or animals, it could be the next Parting Shot.

Each published Parting Shot photo will receive a GorillaPod and ballhead worth $209 from Camera & Camera. The GorillaPod SLR Zoom is a portable, packable heavy-duty tripod that keeps your camera equipment steady, no matter where you might be. It has flexible, wrappable legs that attach to your camera then wrap around virtually any surface.

Please send a low-res digital file and brief details about your photo to Marina Skinner at m.skinner@forestandbird.org.nz Winners will be asked for higher-resolution files.

branch directory

Upper North Island Central Auckland Branch: Chairperson, Anne Fenn; Secretary, Isabel Still, Tel: (09) 528-3986.

CentralAuckland.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Far North Branch: Chairperson, Vacant; Secretary, Michael Winch, Tel: (09) 401-7401. FarNorth.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Franklin Branch: Chairperson, Keith Gardner; Secretary, Vacant, Tel: (09) 238-9928. Franklin.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Hauraki Islands Branch: Chairperson, Brian Griffiths; Secretary, Vacant, Tel: (09) 372-7662. HaurakiIslands.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Hibiscus Coast Branch: Chairperson, Pauline Smith; Secretary, Katie Lucas, Tel: (09) 427-5186. HibiscusCoast.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Kaipara Branch: Chairperson, Vacant; Secretary, Vacant; Deputy Chairperson, Dave Allen, Tel: (09) 411-8314. Kaipara.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Mercury Bay Branch: Chairperson, Eve McCarthy; Secretary, Gus PickardMacassey, Tel: (07) 866-2463. MercuryBay.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Mid North Branch: Chairperson, Warwick Massey; Secretary, Raewyn Morrison, Tel: (09) 422-9123. MidNorth.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz North Shore Branch: Chairperson, Richard Hursthouse; Secretary, Jocelyn Sanders, Tel: (09) 479-2107. NorthShore.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Northern Branch: Chairperson, Vacant; Secretary, Beverly Woods, Tel: (09) 432-7122. Northern.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz South Auckland Branch: Chairperson, John Oates; Secretary, Lee O’Leary, Tel: (09) 948-3867. SouthAuckland.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Thames-Hauraki Branch: Chairperson, Peter Wood; Secretary, Hazel Genner, Tel: (07) 868-9057. ThamesHauraki.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Upper Coromandel Branch: Chairperson, Tina Morgan; Secretary, Vacant, Tel. (07) 866-6720. UpperCoromandel.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Waitakere Branch: Chairperson, Robert Wolf; Secretary, Jan Edmonds, Tel: (09) 833-6241. Waitakere.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz

Central North Island Eastern Bay of Plenty Branch: Chairperson, Mark Fort; Secretary, Lesley Swindells, Tel: (07) 307-0846. EasternBayofPlenty.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Gisborne Branch: Chairperson, Grant Vincent; Secretary, Wendy McLean, Tel: (06) 868-8236. Gisborne.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Rotorua Branch: Chairperson, Chair rotates among committee members; Secretaries, Margaret Dick, Tel: (07) 357-2024 or Delight Gartlein Tel: (07) 357-2575. Rotorua.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz

Hastings-Havelock North Branch: Chairperson, Ian Noble; Secretary, Jennifer Hartley, Tel: (06) 870-3477.

HastingsHavelockNorth.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Horowhenua Branch: Chairperson, Debbie Waldin; Secretary, Belinda McLean, Tel: (06) 364-5573. Horowhenua.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Kapiti-Mana Branch: Chairperson, John McLachan; Secretary, Judy Driscoll, Tel: (04) 904-2049. KapitiMana.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Lower Hutt Branch: Chairperson, Russell Bell; Secretary, Vacant, Tel: (04) 380-6130. LowerHutt.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Manawatu Branch: Chairperson, Barbara Arnold; Secretary, Nina Mercer, Tel: (06) 355-0496. Manawatu.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Napier Branch: Chairperson, Neil Eagles; Secretary, Barbara McPherson, Tel: (06) 845-0425. Napier.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz North Taranaki Branch: Chairperson, Carolyn Brough; Secretary, Shirley Schofield, Tel: (06) 758-3680. NorthTaranaki.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Rangitikei Branch: Chairperson, Diana Stewart; Secretary, Dot Mattocks, Tel: (06) 327-8790. Rangitikei.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz South Taranaki Branch: Chairperson, Dave Digby; Secretary, Carol Digby, Tel: (06) 765 7482. SouthTaranaki.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Upper Hutt Branch: Chairperson, Barry Wards; Secretary, Fred Fowler, Tel: (04) 569-7187. UpperHutt.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Wairarapa Branch: Chairperson, Geoff Doring; Secretary, Vacant.

Wairarapa.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Wanganui Branch: Chairperson, Esther Williams; Secretary, Vacant.

Wanganui.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Wellington Branch: Chairperson, Peter Hunt; Secretary, Vacant.

Wellington.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz

South Island Ashburton Branch: Chairperson, Edith Smith; Secretary, Val Clemens, Tel: (03) 308-5620. Ashburton.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Central Otago-Lakes Branch: Chairperson, Mark Ayre; Secretary, Denise Bruns, Tel: (03) 443-5462. CentralOtagoLakes.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Dunedin Branch: Chairperson, Janet Ledingham; Secretary, Mark Hanger, Tel: (03) 489-3233. Dunedin.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Golden Bay Branch: Chairperson, Jenny Treloar; Secretary, Jo-Anne Vaughan, Tel: (03) 525-6031. GoldenBay.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz Kaikoura Branch: Chairperson, Ailsa Howard; Secretary, Barry Dunnett, Tel: (03) 319-5086. Kaikoura.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz

South Waikato Branch: Chairperson, Anne Groos; Secretary, Jack Groos, Tel: (07) 886-7456. SouthWaikato.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz

Marlborough Branch: Chairperson, Andrew John; Secretary, Lynda Neame, Tel: (03) 578-2013. Marlborough.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz

Taupo Branch: Chairperson, Vacant; Secretary, Vacant, PO Box 1105, Taupo 3351.

Nelson-Tasman Branch: Chairperson, Craig Potton; Secretary, Gillian Pollock, Tel: (03) 526-6009. NelsonTasman.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz

Tauranga Branch: Chairperson, David Dowrick; Secretary, Vacant, Tel (07) 571-0974. Tauranga.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz

North Canterbury Branch: Chairperson, Bruce Coleman; Secretary, Paul Mosley, Tel: (03) 329-6242. NorthCanterbury.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz

Te Puke Branch: Chairperson Cathy Reid; Secretary, Bev Nairn, Tel: (07) 533-4247. TePuke.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz

South Canterbury Branch: Chairperson, Vacant; Secretary, Margaret McPherson, Tel: (03) 686-1494. SouthCanterbury.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz

Waihi Section: Chairperson, Ian Bradshaw; Secretary, Krishna Buckman, Tel: (07) 863-8455. Waihi.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz

South Otago Branch: Chairperson, Roy Johnstone; Secretary, Jane Young, Tel: (03) 415-8532. SouthOtago.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz

Waikato Branch: Chairperson, Philip Hart; Secretary, Jim Macdiarmid, Tel: (07) 849-3438. Waikato.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz

Southland Branch: Chairperson, Craig Carson; Secretary, Jenny Campbell, Tel: (03) 248-6398. Southland.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz

Lower North Island

West Coast Branch: Chairperson, Kathy Gilbert; Secretary, Jane Marshall, WestCoast.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz

Central Hawkes Bay Branch: Chairperson, Dan Elderkamp; Secretary, Barrie & Judith Bayliss, Tel: (06) 858-8765.

CentralHawkesBay.Branch@forestandbird.org.nz

lodge accommodation

Arethusa Cottage An ideal place from which to explore the Far North. Near Pukenui in wetland 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. 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. Sleeps up to 6 in 1 dble brm, 1 brm and lounge, Lounge has 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, well-equipped kitchen, separate toilet, bathroom, shower, laundry. Pillows, blankets provided. No pets. Ferries 35 minutes from Auckland. Enquiries with stamped addressed envelope to: Robin Griffiths, 125 The Strand, Onetangi, Waiheke Island. Tel: (09) 372-7662.

For branch postal addresses, please see www.forestandbird.org.nz

William Hartree Memorial Lodge, Hawke’s 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 10 people. It has a fully equipped kitchen including stove, refrigerator and microwave plus tile fire, hot showers. Supply your own pillows, 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.

Ruapehu lodge, Tongariro National Park The newly built lodge is 600 metres from Whakapapa Village. It sleeps 32 people – three bunkrooms sleep 4 each, one sleeps 6 and two upstairs sleeping areas sleep 14. Supply your own bedding and food. Bookings and inquiries to Forest & Bird, PO Box 631, Wellington. Tel: (04) 385-7374. Email: office@forestandbird.org.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.

Smoking is banned everywhere on the island, including the house. Forest & Bird members get a 25% discount. 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) 5256031.

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 cottage, the 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

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