Forest & Bird Magazine 327 February 2008

FOREST BIRD N u m b e r 3 2 7 • F E B R U A RY 2 0 0 8

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Wilderness Heritage • Common Geckos • Tawharanui • Hakatere Motu Tabu • Swamp Things • Southern Dotterels

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FOREST BIRD

Lake Heron

Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand Inc.

Number 327 • FEBRUARY 2008 www.forestandbird.org.nz

Regulars

Features

Gilbert van Reenen www.cleangreen.co.nz

2 Comment

12 New Zealand’s World Heritage

General Manager: Mike Britton

Save our Water by Dr Peter Maddison

Communications Manager: Michael Szabo

3 Conservation Briefs

Les Molloy and Craig Potton on the call of the wild

Advocacy Manager: Kevin Hackwell

Kakapo set to breed; Kiwi “brain-box”; High country protection; World Wetlands Day 2008; Tonga Island Marine Reserve; In for the krill; Catch cuts “bring bigger profits”; Antarctic penguins on thin ice; Hihi breed; New ministers announced; Blue duck breed at Flora Stream; Matapouri sandspit; New editor; Fiji’s seabird isles de-ratted; Plant of the Year 2008; Operation Ark success; Tuatara breed at Matiu/Somes Island; 4WD vandals decimate rare gull colony.

Services Manager: Julie Watson North Island Field Coordinator: Mark Bellingham South Island Field Coordinator: Chris Todd Central Office: Level 1, 90 Ghuznee St, Wellington.

PO Box 631, Wellington.

Tel: (04) 385-7374, Fax: (04) 385-7373 Email: office@forestandbird.org.nz Web: www.forestandbird.org.nz Auckland Office: PO Box 67 123, Mt Eden, Auckland.

Tel: (09) 631 7142 Fax: (09) 631 7149 Email: m.bellingham@forestandbird.org.nz Christchurch Office: PO Box 2516, Christchurch.

Tel: (03) 366 6317 Fax: (03) 365 0788 Email: c.todd@forestandbird.org.nz KCC Coordinator: Ann Graeme 53 Princess Rd, Tauranga Tel: (07) 576-5593 Fax (07) 576-5109 Email: basilann@nettel.net.nz

30 Going Places Hakatere Conservation Park

by Michael Szabo

34 Itinerant Ecologist Teeming with birds, still by Geoff Park

36 In the Field The secret world of wetlands

by Ann Graeme and Pamela Robinson

38 Conservation News Huge response to Hector’s and Maui’s dolphins plan; New seabird bycatch regulations proposed; Best Fish Guide boost; Be the Change bus tour; New sea lion kill quota; Gowan River protected; Ghost nets and marine debris; Forest & Bird joins Wairau River consent appeals.

16 A Korero of Geckos Tony Jewell and Rod Morris find beauty and rarity among our ancient common geckos

19 Tauwharanui Marine Park to Marine Reserve Tony and Jenny Enderby on why underwater protection works

22 Seabirds of Motu Tabu Suzi and Peter Phillips discover a seabird paradise

25 Where the Swamp Things Are Gordon Ell and Geoff Moon on the trail of New Zealand’s “tiger heron”

28 Fool on the Hill Kathy Ombler visits a Stewart Island success story

In this issue Goat Island Tawharanui Rangitoto Whangamarino

Little Barrier/ Hauturu Island

Togariro National Park

42 Branching Out

Editor: Michael Szabo Deputy Editor: Helen Bain PO Box 631, Wellington.

Tel: (04) 385-7374 Fax: (04) 385-7373 m.szabo@forestandbird.org.nz h.bain@forestandbird.org.nz Designer: Dave Kent Design dave@idiom.co.nz Prepress/Printing: Astra Print Advertising: ADFX PO Box 11-836, Ellerslie 1051.

Vanessa Clegg, Tel: 0275 420 337 Email: vanclegg@xtra.co.nz Karen Condon Tel 0275-420 338 Email: mack.cons@xtra.co.nz w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

Regional gatherings; Maui’s dolphin beach day; Green Schools Awards; Notice of 85th AGM; General Manager’s update; Kapiti Mana Branch restoration projects; Binocular winner; Ellerslie Flower Show stall a winner again; Queen’s Service Medal Awards; Lower Hutt Branch joins the dots; Waihou River plantings; Seaweek 2008.

45 JS Watson Trust Grants Grants have been awarded for the 2007-2008 year

Waikanae Estuary Pauatahanui Tonga Island

Kahurangi National Park

Matiu/Somes Island Wairau River Ashburton River

46 Reviews COVER: Masked or blue-faced booby (Sula dactylatra) watching over a chick on Curtis Island in the Kermadec Islands. The world’s largest species of booby which reaches a length of 85cm and a weight of five kilos. Tropical oceanic wanderers, they specialise in plunge-diving for flying fish. See page 12.

PHOTOGRAPH: ROD MORRIS

Hakatere Conservation Park

Rakiura/Stewart Island Codfish Island Map artwork: Bruce Mahalski

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Comment Save Our Water

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ATER conservation issues and the effects of pollution on native wildlife and habitats were major concerns of delegates at Forest & Bird’s North and South Island meetings held in November.

These and other issues affecting water quality would be better addressed through more integrated water catchment management. In some quarters this simply means planting trees and claiming carbon credits. But the term includes the recognition of the importance of plants in intercepting rainfall, aiding water absorption via the roots, and affecting humidity through leaf transpiration.

It also relates to the wider water cycle issues of soil water and run-off and thus to the whole subject of soil maintenance and reducing erosion.

Integrated catchment management has beneficial effects on the maintenance of water tables and aquifers, streams and rivers, and the final discharge through estuaries and the coastal area. It has to do with the whole freshwater ecology – the plants and animals, including humans – and their interactions throughout the catchment area.

The large-scale take of water for various industries, notably dairying, can have serious effects on the environment. There is particular concern about increasing demand for water from South Island dairy conversions, compounded by the ongoing proposals for more hydroelectric development.

What chances have our specialised braided river birds such as wrybill, pied oystercatcher and black-fronted tern, against these juggernauts of “progress”?

Ah! But we are told “we are only proposing

lowering the river by a few centimetres” – but this simply means so that the predators (cats and stoats) don’t even need to get their feet wet to have an easy feed!

Forest & Bird has cautioned against further loss of wetland habitats over the years. Now it is time to say enough is enough and to insist on the vital importance of wetlands in catchment management and water management in general.

The loss of forest cover and “drainage of the land” has resulted in soil erosion, rapid run-off, large-scale siltation of our streams and rivers, flooding of lowland areas and massive build-up of sediment in estuaries and coastal areas.

It is time to campaign not only for “minimum flows” but for the restoration of our wetlands and waterways. This is what Forest & Bird branches in the Manawatu area are campaigning for to save and restore the mighty Manawatu River!

Advocating for solutions such as riparian planting has long been on Forest & Bird’s agenda. Now we must also promote the concept of restoring stream and lake ecosystems to bring back healthy populations of wetland plants, insects, fish and birds.

Doing so may also mean restoring fish passage up- or down-stream.

Congratulations to the Native Freshwater Fish Society and particularly to Dean Andre, Chairman of South Auckland Branch, for championing these issues, and also to the Upper Hutt Branch for the Hulls Creek restoration work.

The loss of urban streams from pollution or containment in pipes has been an ongoing and often little-noticed consequence of rapid urbanisation and development. Fighting for the remaining streams and wetlands and making these attractive and “safe” for wildlife are yet further battles. Stormwater retention

ponds can become good wildlife habitat, but all too often they become silt-laden ponds, blighted by toxic algal blooms and dangerous to wildlife and people.

Finally, don’t forget the impact of all the silt and nutrient washing into marine environments. This, combined with increasing coastal development, puts pressure on those special coastal environments – from estuaries to mudflats and salt marshes.

Some specialised plants and animals are gone or going. Birds that nest on and feed near our shores, like little blue penguins, are losing out. Internationally there are concerns about those migratory species that depend on coastal mudflats here in New Zealand and throughout their East Asian-Australasian migratory flyway.

These birds are losing habitat all along the way – from increased predator activity and climate change affecting their Arctic tundra breeding sites – to the loss of large areas of mudflat in Asia and Australasia through intensive development.

So please consider how you can help with the many and varied projects that will form part of Forest & Bird’s conservation campaigns this year. Thank you.

National President Dr Peter Maddison

Annual Appeal

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HE annual appeal letter to members was delayed before the Christmas holiday to allow time for a Sustain promotion letter to be sent. The response to the Sustain letter has been encouraging so far and the annual appeal letter was due to be sent at the end of January.

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. Anand Satyanand, Governor-General of New Zealand NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Dr Peter Maddison DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Dr Barry Wards NATIONAL TREASURER: Stephen McPhail EXECUTIVE COUNCILLORS: Rob Brown, Anne Fenn, Mark Fort, Dr Philip Hart, Donald Kerr, Janet Ledingham, Suzi Phillips, Craig Potton, Dr Gerry McSweeney, Associate Professor Liz Slooten.

DISTINGUISHED LIFE MEMBERS: Dr Bill Ballantine MBE, Stan Butcher QSM, Ken Catt QSM, Audrey Eagle CNZM, Dr Alan Edmonds, Gordon Ell ONZM, Dr Philip Hart, Hon. Sandra Lee-Vercoe QSO JP, Stewart Gray, Les Henderson, Joan Leckie QSM, Prof. Alan Mark DCNZM CBE, Dr Gerry McSweeney QSO, Geoff Moon OBE, Prof. John Morton QSO, Margaret Peace QSM, Guy Salmon, Lesley Shand MNZM, Gordon Stephenson CNZM, David Underwood.

Forest & Bird incorporating Conservation News is published every February, May, August and November by the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society Inc. The Society's objectives are to preserve and protect the indigenous flora and fauna and natural features and landscapes of New Zealand for their intrinsic worth and for the benefit of all people. Forest & Bird is a member of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the New Zealand Partner of BirdLife International. The opinions of contributors to Forest & Bird are not necessarily those of the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society, nor its editor. Forest & Bird is printed on Novatech, an elemental chlorine-free (ECF) paper which is made from wood fibre sourced from sustainably managed forests. * Registered at PO Headquarters, Wellington, as a magazine. ISSN 0015-7384. © Copyright. All rights reserved.

2 FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

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conservationbriefs

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HE Department of Conservation (DOC) is preparing to trial artificial insemination this kakapo breeding season in a bid to help boost numbers and increase genetic diversity within the species’ small population.

The sound of booming male kakapo this summer will herald the start of the breeding season on Codfish Island/Whenua Hou, an island sanctuary located three kilometres off the coast of Stewart Island.

Following matings in February and March, it is hoped that the females will nest in late summer, giving DOC staff their first opportunity to trial artificial insemination techniques to improve egg fertility and genetic variation.

The Kakapo Recovery Programme, which is a partnership between DOC, Forest & Bird and Rio Tinto Alcan (formerly Comalco), is optimistic about this breeding

season because of the presence of rimu fruit and the return of the Spanish avian artificial insemination expert, Dr Juan Blanco, both of which are seen as being pivotal for the continued survival of the critically endangered kakapo.

DOC hopes to use sperm from Richard Henry, a kakapo discovered in Fiordland, and at a later stage his two male offspring, to increase the genetic diversity of the population with Fiordland kakapo genes.

Dominant male kakapo have more success attracting female kakapo, resulting in an overrepresentation of some males’ genes in the population.

Artificial insemination will provide greater control over the gene pool. Female kakapo that copulate more than once have a higher fertility rate, and by introducing the technique employed by Dr Blanco, the programme can ensure females mate more than once, and manage which sperm fertilises an egg.

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Michael Szabo

Kakapo set to breed

Innovative conservation techniques are helping to save the kakapo, the world’s heaviest parrot species.

FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

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conservationbriefs

Rod Morrs

Mahinapua wetland, Westland

Kiwi “brain-box” above their weight

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IWI have relatively large brains similar to “smarter” birds that have retained the power of flight, whereas extinct moa species had significantly smaller brains, like other flightless birds such as ostrich and emu.

Research conducted at The University of Auckland examined the brain size of several species of flightless “old birds” (Palaeognaths), including North Island brown kiwi, Stewart Island tokoeka, African ostrich, Australian emu, South American tinamou and extinct New Zealand moa.

Using MRI imaging of kiwi brains and CT scans of moa

High country lakeside land protected

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OREST & Bird has welcomed a comprehensive list issued by the Government of high country lakeside properties to be protected from inappropriate development.

In November Land Information Minister David Parker identified 65 lakeside properties in the South Island where tenure review should not proceed because the properties have highly significant values that should be protected.

Thirty-eight of the properties had already begun tenure review, but this would cease in almost all cases, the minister said. However, some lakeside properties might still be considered for tenure review if a leaseholder met conditions, including lakeside land being retained by the Crown, or restrictions on future development.

Under tenure review, holders

of pastoral leases receive freehold parts of former leasehold land in exchange for other parts going into the conservation estate.

Forest & Bird Advocacy Manager Kevin Hackwell said the announcement of the list meant there would not be a repeat of iconic lakeside property being privatized and then threatened with development, as happened at Richmond.

He said Forest & Bird was disappointed there was no equivalent list for properties with important biodiversity and landscape values.

“However, we are pleased with the clear signal it sends: that unless values can be adequately protected through tenure review, the properties will remain as pastoral leases.”

Helen Bain

4 FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

Rod Morrs

North Island brown kiwi

skulls to estimate, and direct measurement, where complete specimens existed, the size of these bird species’ brains was calculated relative to their body weights.

The results, published in the journal “Brain, Behaviour and Evolution” (Issue 71, 2008), show that kiwi have a similar brain-body ratio to “new birds” (Neognaths), whereas other Palaeognaths, including moa, had a smaller than expected brain compared to body weight.

“In fact the size of the kiwi cerebral hemisphere compared to total brain size is rivalled only by a handful of ‘smart’ birds, such as songbirds and parrots, despite a lack of any known advanced behavioural abilities in kiwi,” says Dr Fabiana Kubke of the Department of Anatomy.

World Wetlands Day 2008

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ORLD Wetlands Day is held every year on 2 February to celebrate the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, which was signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971 to coordinate international efforts to conserve wetlands.

New Zealand is a signatory of the Convention, but has just six Ramsar listed wetlands of international importance. This number would be much higher if all our important wetlands were properly recognised and protected. For example, Kaipara Harbour, which is an important site for migratory wading birds, and various South Island braided river systems like the Wairau and Rakaia Rivers, which are important for rare endemic species including wrybill, black-fronted tern and black-billed gull.

In addition to their importance as habitat for these native species, this year’s celebrations highlighted the direct, positive effects on human health of maintaining healthy wetlands under the theme of Healthy Wetlands, Healthy People – as well as the direct negative effects of mismanaging them, which can result in the impairment of human health and, in some circumstances, loss of life.

All over the world wetlands are important for human health in protecting human habitation from weather extremes, and providing food, clean water and certain pharmaceutical products – so the destruction of

wetlands can also bring about a decline of these valuable healthgiving services.

Maintaining wetlands, rather than draining them or cutting down the native plants found in them to make way for development, provides a buffer zone of protection against some of the serious storms, floods, droughts and erosion which New Zealand has experienced in recent years. With climate change these weather extremes are likely to become even more frequent – and the protection provided by wetlands even more important.

Although wetlands are one of New Zealand’s most important habitats and provide these important health benefits, they have almost been wiped out in the last 200 years. Fewer than 10% of our wetlands remain and their destruction continues.

Once wetlands are gone they can be difficult – but not impossible – to restore to their former state. The Pauatahanui wetland, north of Wellington, had been drained and was used as farmland and a go-kart track 20 years ago.

Today, thanks to the efforts of Forest & Bird and others, it has been restored to a wonderful wetland which supports a wealth of native plant and bird life including royal spoonbills and bar-tailed godwits. It is living proof that we can restore health to wetlands – and people.

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conservationbriefs Tonga Island Marine Reserve, Abel Tasman National Park

conservationbriefs

research confirms what was already suspected in terms of agapanthus and ivy, but that the invasive capabilities of phoenix palm comes as an unwelcome wake-up call.

‘When we started looking, we found phoenix palms everywhere: half-grown palms that had self-sown into mangrove wetlands, young plants growing in thick kikuyu grass on the edges of farm Conservancy marine specialist paddocks, even seedlings Andrew Baxter said the results growingthe alongside nikau showed marinenative ecosystem palm seedlings in bush,’ was continuing todense recover Jack Craw says. inside the reserve.

‘These plants are being spread “The trends emerging into some of our give us confidencemost thatremote the and vulnerable habitats by birds, Tonga Island Marine Reserve ecosystem is gradually wind and water.

All three species returning to a significant more natural are becoming weeds state now that fishing and in natural areas.’ taking marine life are no Jack of Craw is urging developers longer allowed there.” and gardeners to consider Helen Bain replacing agapanthus, phoenix

Tonga Island Marine Reserve flourishing 15 years on

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palm and English ivy with noninvasive alternatives.

Undesirable agapanthus includes all large agapanthus types. They were found to invade a range of habitat types, including roadside drains, low scrub, regenerating bush, forest margins, pasture, coastal and beachfront vegetation, sand dunes, coastal cliffs, rocky inland cliffs, exposed coastal areas, pastoral streams and gardens, where they are very common, both planted and naturalised.

NDUSTRIAL fishing They are capable of forming companies are preparing monocultures thatofexclude todense increase exploitation all other species: one cliffwhich Antarctic krill, a species infestation at Piha was found forms the base of marine foodto cover an area of over a thousand webs and which is the main food formetres. most Antarctic seabirds square such as ARC penguins and marine The suggested people mammals such as whales. looking for non-invasive Super trawlers are beingcould alternatives to agapanthus developed with plans try clivia (which has a to similar take over tonnes foliage to700,000 agapanthus and of a krill per year unveiled at the range of attractive, large, October 2007 Commission for colourful flowers), native the Conservation of Anrarctic rengarenga (widely available Marine Living Resources with foliage similar (CCAMLR) meetingtoin agapanthus and sprays of small Hobart, Australia. white flowers in summer), native For some years the annual coastal grasses such as around pingao or commercial catch was spinifex (great for stabilising coastal dunes and helping conserve endangered native pingao), native toetoe grasses ISHERIES would generate and gahnia (good erosion more money than previously control for sunny and shady, thought if depleted stocks were sandy inland sites), or one of the allowed to rebuild, according many varieties of native flax to new research from Australia and the USA published in the journal Science.

Researchers have shown how larger stocks would bring bigger profits for the fishing industry because when fish are more plentiful in the sea it becomes easier and cheaper for fishers to catch them.

The report also notes Australia is to start managing some of its fisheries in this way in 2008.

Fisheries management in many countries – including New Zealand – is based around a theoretical concept known as Maximum Sustainable Yield

In for the krill

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Kim Westerskov

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ew research into three popular garden plants has raised serious concerns about their potential to invade and take over natural ecosystems.

The three species researched by Auckland Regional Council were agapanthus, phoenix palm and English ivy. The study looked at the distances plants could spread unassisted, the range of habitats they were capable of invading, ONITORING of Tonga and what impacts they were Island Marine Reserve having parkland and other off AbelonTasman National Park naturalmarine areas. life is flourishing shows All threethe species found to following ban were on fishing be invasive in a range of there in 1993. ecosystems, spreading Monitoring of the into remote and inaccessible 1835-hectare reserve hasareas. found that many more and Theythere have are significant larger blue codimpacts and crayfish environmental on the inside protected area than naturalthe areas they invade. outside its boundaries.

Jack Craw, biosecurity Department Conservation manager for theofAuckland Nelson/Marlborough Regional Council, says the

Garry Holz/DoC

Popular Plants in Biosecurity Scare

The distinctive Phoenix palm Krill fishing posesisawidely threat to Phoenix canariensis penguins suchand as this Adélie. planted in parks gardens in warmer New Zealand.

Its seeds 100,000 tonnes of krill. are being spread into forest Scientists’ best estimate of the areas around Auckland.

amount of krill in the Southern Ocean halfdry a billion (hardyisfor sites in tonnes. full sun, Conservationists from they also help stabilise sandy or the Antarctic and Southern unstable sites).

Ocean Coalition English Ivy was(ASOC) found are concerned about theof native invading all ‘age classes’ ecological impacts of an forest, pine forests, roadsides, increase in krill fishing effort, forest margins and gardens. particularly by pair trawlers, Bird-spread seedlings are which are banned in part of becoming common many Europe because theiringiant Auckland reserves. nets also catch and kill marine Ivy infestations in regional mammals.

They also fear the parks tended to originate potential impacts on krillfrom past house sites.asInpenguins some cases, predators such mature trees had collapsed when some penguin species are already being hit by vines. global under the weight of ivy warming.

Phoenix palm was found invading a range of habitats, including coastal and dense forest (phoenix is salt tolerant).

Small phoenix palm seedlings (MSY), or the highest catch are virtually indistinguishable which can be taken year after from native nikau seedlings, year without running a stock meaning that the full extent to down. which are Manyphoenix fisheriespalms management authorities that forest claimareas to aim spreading into may for MSY are failing to achieve not be realised for some time. their report says.

The target, robust,the sharp spines can The United Nations calculates cause severe injuries. that 75% of commercial — SIMON ROCHE, Auckland Regional fisheries Council. globally are exploited either up to or beyond their sustainable A popular limits. roadside planting in Whiledistricts, MSY management warm agapanthus is may theand biggest fishsuffers veryyield hardy readily harsh conditions.

It establishes catches, the team that authored a dense of roots and can the reportmatt calculated that gradually take over waste fishers would earn more if they areas. There are several forms kept fish stocks at a higher — the most dangerous for the level, a concept which they have environment are Agapanthus dubbed Maximum Economic praecox and its subspecies Yield (MEY). orientalis and praecox, their

Catch cuts “bring bigger profits”

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hybrids and cultivars.

61 0F O FROE SR TE S&T B&I RBDI R•D F •E BFREUBAR RUYA R2 Y0 028 0 0 5

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Antarctic penguins on thin ice LOBAL warming now threatens the survival of four penguin species which breed in Antarctica.

A new report, “Antarctic Penguins and Climate Change”, published at the UN conference on climate change in Bali in December by WWF, has found that global warming threatens the survival of the emperor, gentoo, chinstrap and Adélie penguins that breed on the Antarctic peninsula.

Melting sea ice means these species are losing Antarctic nesting grounds, while overfishing is making their food increasingly scarce according to the report.

The Antarctic peninsula is warming five times faster that the average rate of global warming and the waters of the Southern Ocean have become warmer as deep as 3000 metres, it also found.

The area of sea ice cover has decreased by 40% over the past 26 years off the west Antarctic

peninsula. This decrease has reduced numbers of krill, the main source of food for chinstrap penguins.

Some chinstrap colonies have been reduced in number by up to two-thirds because less food has made it more difficult for young penguins to survive, the report said.

Gentoo penguin numbers have also shrunk because they are increasingly dependent on krill as their usual food sources have been depleted by overfishing, the report said.

On the north-western coast of the Antarctic peninsula, populations of Adélie penguins have declined by 65% over 25 years.

The emperor penguin, the largest penguin species in the world, has seen some of its colonies halved in the past century as warmer temperatures and stronger winds force them to rear their chicks on increasingly thin ice, the report said.

Kim Westerskov

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Emperor penguins are threatened by global warming.

New Environment and Conservation Ministers

Rod Morris

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Hihi

Hihi hatch at Ark in the Park

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RK in the Park was delighted to announce in December the hatching of the first stitchbird (hihi) chicks on the Auckland mainland in more than a century.

Hihi transferred to the Ark in the Park site in the Waitakere Ranges earlier in 2007 hatched their first chicks in November.

Ark in the Park Project Manager Sandra Jack says volunteers were thrilled with the arrival of the first “Westie chicks”.

“The fact that the first generation of ‘immigrants’ brought to the Waitakere Ranges from Tiritiri Matangi Island is breeding successfully

is a good sign that they have adapted well to their new home and are thriving.”

The 59 mostly juvenile hihi were transferred to Cascade Kauri Park, home of the joint Forest & Bird and Auckland Regional Council community restoration project, following an intensive programme of pest control that means the birds are more likely to survive on the mainland without being preyed on by introduced pests such as possums, rats and stoats.

The transfer was the first time hihi had lived on the Auckland mainland since their populations were wiped out by predators in the late1800s.

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RIME Minister Helen Clark announced the appointment of new Environment and Conservation Ministers in October as part of a Cabinet reshuffle.

The new Environment Minister is Trevor Mallard (right), MP for Wainouiomata, who is also Minister of Broadcasting, Labour, Stateowned Enterprises and Associate Finance Minister.

Steve Chadwick (left), MP for Rotorua, is the new Minister of Conservation, as well as Minister of Women’s Affairs and Associate Health Minister.

Former Conservation

Minister Chris Carter is now Minister of Education and Ethnic Affairs. David Parker, who was Acting Environment Minister, is now Minister of State Services, Energy and Land Information, and Minister Responsible for Climate Change Issues.

Auckland Regional Council Parks and Heritage Committee Chair Sandra Coney says it is wonderful to see hihi chicks appearing in the Ark in the Park so soon.

“It’s great to see the hihi have settled in so well they are reproducing, and it will be a special experience for visitors if they spot one of the fledgling birds. It is especially impressive

as we did not know how these translocated birds would do in an unfenced area.”

“The Ark in the Park continues to go from strength to strength and much of this comes down to the dedication of the volunteers and Forest & Bird members who initiated the project,” she says.

Helen Bain

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Whio pair with ducklings

Blue duck numbers up at Kahurangi and Tongariro

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UMBERS of blue duck (whio) have increased dramatically in Kahurangi National Park, thanks to increased protection under the Department of Conservation’s (DOC) Operation Ark programme.

DOC’s goal at the Wangapeka-Fyfe site is to establish a viable whio population of 50 pairs.

When the programme began on the Rolling River in the Wangapeka Catchment in 2003, just three whio lived on the river; now there are 28.

When the programme was extended to the Fyfe River in 2006, only two pairs of whio were present; now there are 12 whio on the river.

The Operation Ark programme involves trapping to protect nesting females and their young from being preyed on by stoats.

Under Operation Nest Egg, 22 whio ducklings have also been hatched from eggs taken from the wild and hand-reared at Peacock Springs Wildlife Centre in Christchurch before being released back at the

Wangapeka-Fyfe site once they are a few months old.

In the North Island, protection of whio has also been yielding results on the Tongariro River, where DOC staff have been following the progress of seven whio ducklings and their parents, which have been found as new residents near the Blue Pool on the river.

DOC is asking the public to keep an eye out for whio on the river and report any sightings – and to make sure all dogs are kept under control in the area.

Department of Conservation Te Papa Atawhai

conservationbriefs New Forest & Bird editor

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HIS is Michael Szabo’s last issue as editor after four years with Forest & Bird. He has left to work for the Pew Environment Group as Campaign Director of their Ocean Legacy Project in New Zealand.

Helen Bain has been appointed as Forest & Bird’s new Communications Manager and editor of the magazine.

Please direct all editorial correspondence to h.bain@ forestandbird.org.nz Michael can be contacted via mszabo@ pewtrusts.org

Whio breed at Flora Stream again after 10 years

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ONSERVATION group Friends of Flora is thrilled by the first breeding success of blue duck (whio) on the Flora Stream in Kahurangi National Park in more than a decade.

A pair of whio dubbed “Maryann” and “Bill” hatched four ducklings from a clutch of six eggs.

The Department of Conservation (DOC)

Matapouri Sandspit bulldozed

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INGAO habitat at Matapouri Sandspit, which is a known breeding site of New Zealand dotterel, was bulldozed and mangrove forest in the

adjacent estuary cut down by Whangarei District Council last year in a foolhardy attempt to “protect” nearby baches from storms and high tides.

transferred Maryann to the Flora from the adjacent Pearse River in 2006 and she soon teamed up with Bill.

Trapping by Friends of Flora and DOC means introduced

predator levels are low so the four ducklings have a good chance of surviving to adulthood.

Helen Bain

New Zealand dotterel in the bulldozer tracks.

None bred at the sandspit this season.

Wade Doak

Malcolm Pullman

Matapouri Sandspit in Northland after the bulldozers.

8 FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

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conservationbriefs

Fiji seabird isles to be “de-ratted”

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NVASIVE predators such as cats and rats are to be eradicated from some of Fiji’s most important seabird islands, as part of a project undertaken

by BirdLife International’s Fiji programme, with the support of local landowners and funding from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

The Ringgold Isles, a remote archipelago forming an outlier group to Vanua Levu, are mostly uninhabited, and their relative isolation should make them a safe haven for seabirds like the black noddy and redfooted booby.

The first phase of the project, a survey to establish seabird numbers and the presence of invasive predators, was completed by BirdLife staff in August 2007, with local community assistance. The survey provides baseline data which will enable pre- and post-eradication monitoring to be carried out.

“The survey has confirmed that these islands are among Fiji’s most important for seabirds, and once the data has been analysed some islands will also meet criteria for internationally important bird areas (IBAs),” said Vilikesa Masibalavu, who manages BirdLife’s Fiji programme.

“The large seabird populations

The Ringgold Islands are among Fiji’s most important seabird islands.

include many thousands of black and brown noddy, hundreds of brown and red-footed booby, and lesser frigatebird.” Also present were masked booby, black-naped tern and white tern.

Rats were found on seven of the eight islands surveyed. On six islands the rat population was found to be “medium to high”. Cats were also found on one island.

“Rats eat bird eggs and chicks, whereas cats can quickly decimate an entire seabird colony, particularly those that nest on the ground,” said Vilikesa Masibalavu. “The information collected from the survey will be used to determine if these introduced

predators can be eradicated, which in addition to technical considerations requires the full support of the islands’ owners and communities, and the ability to prevent future reinvasion.”

Local communities and landowners have already pledged their support for rat eradication, planning and discussions are now going on to establish how the eradication is to be carried out, and what restrictions on access, crab harvesting and other activities may need to be imposed until it is complete.

The “operational plan” is expected to be finalised in early 2008. “Eradication will occur sometime between May and

August; the exact timing is dependent on many things, and ultimately comes down to the weather,” said Steve Cranwell of BirdLife Pacific.

The Tui Laucala (chief or king of Laucula), whose jurisdiction includes the Ringgold Isles, said that the isles are the ancestral lands of his people, and home to ancient villages and burial grounds of great importance.

“As guardians of the land, it is our responsibility to protect these islands. With the support of BirdLife International this is an opportunity for us to ensure the islands’ birds and other natural resources will be there for our ‘ira na gone’ (our children and their children).”

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FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

9

Naomi Lorimer

Rod Morris

conservationbriefs

Willowherb is Plant of the Year 2007

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Network President Professor Ian Spellerberg says the top ten has now changed, with previous winners such as Pohutukawa and Cook’s scurvy grass nowhere to be seen.

This year’s 10 most favourite plants included tawari, nikau palm, northern rata, kakabeak, coral broom, Poor Knights lily and the water brome.

Over 100 species were voted for out of a flora of 2360 species.

Susan Keall

HE white-flowered willowherb, found in riverbeds and gravelly coastal areas, has won the New Zealand Plant Conservation Network’s annual Plant of the Year poll.

With a day of voting still to run in December it appeared that the poll would be won by the Chatham Island forget-menot (Myosotidium hortensia) or New Zealand’s bamboo rush, but the willowhearb pipped them both at the post.

Willowherb

Ngake and Whataitai

Tuatara breed at Matiu/Somes Island

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UATARA on Matiu/Somes Island in Wellington Harbour are breeding, with two hatchlings emerging from eggs found on the island.

The tuatara, hatched from eggs found on the island in May, were reared in captivity at Victoria University and were returned to the island sanctuary in November. They are the first known offspring of 54 Brothers Island tuatara transferred to Matiu/Somes nine years ago.

The tuatara hatchlings have been named after the

two taniwha of Wellington Harbour, Ngake and Whataitai.

Work by Forest & Bird volunteers continues to greatly enhance the environment for the tuatara and a range of other native species reintroduced to Matiu/Somes island.

Last winter Forest & Bird members planted out 2450 plants at 10 sites on the island and another 1200 plants are being grown for planting out next year. More than two decades after the Forest & Bird Lower Hutt Branch began restoration work on Matiu/ Somes, native vegetation cover is now well advanced over much of the once barren island.

Helen Bain

10 FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

Operation Ark success four years on

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PERATION Ark has been successful in protecting some of New Zealand’s most threatened species, according to Conservation Minister Chris Carter.

Chris Carter, who has since become Education Minister, said that Operation Ark, launched four years ago to halt the dramatic decline of key native species in South Island beech forests, had been highly successful.

The project aimed to bring the orange-fronted parakeet (kakariki) back from the brink of extinction, and to strengthen key populations of blue duck (whio), yellowhead (mohua) and long and short-tailed bats (pekapeka).

Operation Ark pioneered the aerial use of 1080 specifically targeting rats, in tandem with intensive ground-based trapping of rats and stoats,

Orange-crowned parakeet

at key sites containing one or more of the target species. The project particularly targeted the increased numbers of predators that followed “mast years” of heavy seeding in beech forests.

Among its successes have been the three-fold increase recorded in blue duck numbers in protected areas, increased mohua call counts in the Landsborough Valley, increased numbers of short-tailed bats in the Eglinton Valley and stablisation of populations of critically endangered orangefronted parakeets.

However, the minister said many challenges still lay ahead.

“While we can feel proud of what we have achieved over the past four years, the challenge to fully protect our most vulnerable native species over much larger areas remains.”

Helen Bain

Fishing in a marine reserve brings a hefty fine

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NORTH Shore man has been convicted after pleading guilty to illegally fishing in the Goat Island Marine Reserve near Leigh.

Dennis Erskine was fined $1500 and his fishing gear was forfeited for fishing within the reserve and catching six snapper in March 2006.

Department of Conservation investigator Richard Bray said the fine reflected the seriousness of the offence.

“Marine reserves preserve all marine life in their natural state and taking fish alters this natural balance. No amount of

fines can bring those fish back but they can act as a deterrent.”

Goat Island Marine Reserve was established in 1975 and is one of New Zealand’s most popular, visited by up to 300,000 people a year.

While most visitors observe restrictions on taking marine life, there have been 15 prosecutions in the last nine years for illegally taking marine life from the reserve. Under the Marine Reserves Act people can be fined up to $10,000 or jailed for up to three months for illegally taking marine life.

Helen Bain w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

Edith Smith

conservationbriefs

Department of Conservation/Te Papa Atawhai

Dead adult gull and chick

4WD vandals decimate endangered gull colony

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BLACK-BILLED gull colony on the Ashburton River has been decimated by 4WD vandals driving through the endangered gulls’ nesting grounds on the river bed.

Forest & Bird Ashburton Branch Chairwoman Edith Smith visited the river in late November and found over 100 dead adult gulls and many starving chicks there after receiving a call from a concerned member.

To her horror she discovered the endangered gulls and their

Edith Smith

New Zealand’s black-billed gull is the most threatened species of seagull in the world.

The Ashburton River black-billed gull colony that was decimated by 4WD vandals – tyre tracks are visible in the foreground.

chicks had been deliberately killed.

“There were tracks everywhere made where a 4WD vehicle had driven right through the colony and backwards and forwards over the nests,” says Edith Smith.

The dead birds had either been run over or hit as they struggled to take off.

“It was particularly pitiful to see the injured adult birds which had made their way back to

their nests, covered up their live chicks, and then died,” she said.

A Department of Conservation officer returned to the site with Edith Smith to assess the impact of the 4WD vehicle and found the birds’ injuries were consistent with vehicle strike.

Not only was the incident an act of cruelty, but it was also a criminal offence.

The black-billed gull or Buller’s gull is unique to

New Zealand. The species is already in serious decline and classified as Endangered on the IUCN (World Conservation Union) Red List of Species Threatened with Extinction.

This is the same threat status as the yellow-eyed penguin, blue duck and Hector’s dolphin.

Because black-billed gulls are protected under the Wildlife Act, Ashburton police are investigating the incident.

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FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

11

Craig Potton

New Zealand’s Wilderness Heritage

Sunrise touching the eastern slopes of Mt Ngauruhoe (2291 m) in Tongariro National Park. In the distance is Mt Ruapehu (2797 m).

A landmark book written by Les Molloy with photographs

by Craig Potton celebrating our natural landscapes and indigenous flora and fauna was published in November.

In the opening section they consider “What is Wilderness?”

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Craig Potton

HE word ‘wilderness’ must be one of the most misunderstood in the English language. Most dictionaries define it in historically negative and anthropocentric terms – a fearful desert or barren place, uncultivated and uninhabited, a wasteland, or a garden grown wild.

Positive concepts of wilderness as a place to experience spiritual, emotional and physical re-creation really only began to be expressed in the early 19th century.

The romantic poets William Wordsworth

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The Kermadec nikau palm (Rhopalostylis baueri var. cheesmanii) is a predominant feature of the forests of Raoul Island. The Kermadec nikau is one of 23 plants endemic to the Kermadec Islands. w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

Craig Potton

Northern rata (Metrosideris robusta) flowering in Golden Bay. Never far from the coast, northern rata will tend to dominate the forests on alluvial plains in the north-west corner of the South Island.

Looking into the fiord of Breaksea Sound, with the Gilbert Islands in the foreground. Close by Breaksea Island and a number of small islands have been designated a ‘special area’ within Fiordland National Park. w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

Craig Potton

and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were inspired by the wild beauty of the Lake District, and called for a return to natural environments as the Industrial Revolution laid waste to much of the English countryside.

But it was mainly New World explorers, writers, poets and philosophers who popularised the term, especially those voicing their concern as America’s primeval forests, prairies, and mountains were explored and opened up for settlement.

Henry David Thoreau felt that ‘In wildness is the preservation of the world’, while Ralph Emerson believed that ‘In the woods we return to reason and faith.’ The preservation of America’s diminishing wilderness heritage became an allconsuming quest for generations of its visionary leaders – like President Theodore Roosevelt; John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club; Aldo Leopold, Robert Marshall, and Gifford Pinchot, foresters of both preservationist and conservationist persuasion; and historians and educators like Roderick Nash.

Just as the young American nation gave

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Craig Potton

An intricate mosaic of wetlands, forested dunes and glaciated knolls is a striking visual feature of the Haast coastal plain. This view eastwards across the largest of the Tawharekiri Lakes shows pakihi vegetation rising to dense podocarp forest.

Rod Morris

The Chatham Island forget-me-not (Myosotidium hortensia) is the most impressive of the island’s megaherbs.

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the world the notion of national parks, the idea of legally protecting large areas of wilderness also had its origin in North America and culminated in the passing of its Wilderness Act in 1964. New Zealand’s concept of an individual wilderness experience and places called ‘wilderness areas’ largely stems from this American model.

Indeed, it was exposure to the writings of Aldo Leopold and other wilderness advocates during a 1939 visit that stimulated Lance McCaskill to bring the idea of wilderness areas back to New Zealand national park circles. As a result, New Zealand’s vision of wilderness experience is similar to that of America’s – that wilderness is primarily a natural resource capable of being experienced first hand only through wilderness recreation.

Of course, wilderness has intrinsic values which need no justification by way of human utility; likewise, it has enormous biodiversity and ecosystem values which defy being quantified in economic terms. But ultimately wilderness has to be experienced on its own terms, not locked away from humans as some type of scientific preserve. As Aldo Leopold concluded, ‘Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wilderness travel.’

There is a wonderfully rich wilderness

literature recording the feelings and experiences of those who have felt the urge to seek out wilderness. Their reasons vary, but most seem to involve personal growth through experiencing: • Solitude: that precious commodity so difficult to find in our frenetic urban society where we are constantly bombarded with noise and consumerism. Occasionally mankind needs ‘to be confronted with an alien, untamed world to be reminded that he is caretaker, not creator, of his universe.’

• Freedom: by travelling at will, simply, on nature’s terms, and having the freedom to make mistakes – and pay the price. Again, this sentiment has been eloquently expressed by Aldo Leopold: “Wilderness can give rewards and penalties for wise and foolish acts… against which civilization has built a thousand buffers.”

• Romance: by standing on the threshold of unknown land, or venturing in the footsteps of pioneer explorers who left graphic diaries of their wilderness journeys – like William Colenso in the Ruahine Ranges, Charles Heaphy and Thomas Brunner in the Buller/West Coast region, Alphonse Barrington in the Olivine Country, and many others. w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

Rod Morris

The Antipodes parakeet (Cyanoramphus unicolor) is endemic to the subantarctic Antipodes Islands, where its main habitat is the tall, dense tussocks and sedges. It is the largest of New Zealand’s parakeet species and nests in underground burrows.

• Challenge: by testing that deep human urge to gamble and probe the limits of our endurance. Admittedly, challenge is not unique to wilderness recreation, but wilderness survival does require the ability to handle major uncertainties such as unpredictable weather, route-finding, and difficult terrain. Overcoming the challenge of travelling through a hazardous natural environment can develop self-reliance and powerful bonds of friendship through shared skills and teamwork.

The large spotted black grouper (Epinephelus daemelii) can live for over 100 years, and is one of many marine species protected out to 12 nautical miles in the Kermadec Islands Marine Reserve.

New Zealand’s Wilderness Heritage is available to members at a 10% discount ($79.99 plus $5 p+p).

For every copy purchased by a member, the publisher will also make a donation to Forest & Bird. Please send your name and address and a cheque payable to: Forest & Bird World Heritage Book Offer, Forest & Bird, PO Box 631, Wellington or buy it online from: www.forestandbird.org.nz

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Malcolm Francis

In the words of Sir Edmund Hillary: “Nature needs time for growing and sleeping, free from automobile fumes and massive tractors, away from the cacophony of snowmobiles and trail bikes. There are plenty of tamed wonders for all to goggle at through vehicle windows – we must also retain our wilderness areas where nature can develop in its own calm way and where only those humans who are prepared to walk and sweat a little qualify to go.”

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Seen here feeding in kumarahou at night, the graceful Matapia gecko is a member of the ‘common gecko’ family. Found only at the northern tip of the North Island, Matapia geckos were probably once inhabitants of kauri forests.

With that habitat almost gone from the Far North, the few known populations of these geckos persist in kanuka shrublands, creviced clay banks and island herbfields.

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Rod Morris

A korero of geckos

Tony Jewell finds beauty and rarity among New Zealand’s ancient ‘common geckos’.

Photographs by Rod Morris.

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Tony Jewell

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certainly separate species. The larger of these they called a “maxi-mac”, and the smaller a “mini-mac”. Soon, these two terms were being applied informally to larger and smaller ‘common geckos’ all over the country.

In 1997 Dr Rod Hitchmough handed in a thesis that shook our understanding of the ‘common gecko’ to its very foundations.

Extensive collections from throughout the country, analysed for genetic and morphological diversity, showed that even the most liberal of previous definitions for the ‘common gecko’ were seriously inadequate. No less than 11 species had been identified from within the 1980s ‘common gecko’, and a further four within H. pacificus. Hitchmough’s subsequent research has revealed another two from the H. pacificus group. So the recent discovery of the pygmy gecko brings us to a total of 18 species that, in 1955, would all have been classified as one. Moreover, these species are now attributable to at least

Godzilla meets Mothra: Different species of ‘common gecko’ have responded to nature’s pressures in different ways. Pygmy geckos responded by becoming so small that their predators cannot follow them into the narrow crevices where they live. But in the process they have limited the range of their own potential prey. The owlet moths relished by other ‘common geckos’ are well and truly off the pygmy’s menu.

three separate genera. All up, it is a potent lesson about how we should never take the common and ordinary for granted.

It was Rod Hitchmough’s groundbreaking study that turned my own attention back to the ‘common gecko’. Contrary to a rather unfortunate but popular belief, these new species are not mere geographical varieties of one With some adults measuring just 38 mm in body length, the pygmy gecko of the Rangitata Gorge is the smallest of all New Zealand lizard species.

It has many potential predators to look out for, including large ground spiders which can prey on juvenile pygmy geckos.

Rod Morris

PYGMY gecko (mokomoko) has many potential enemies to look out for such as birds, skinks, centipedes and spiders. Being tiny, pygmies can survive by climbing into gaps so small that their predators cannot follow. These little creatures represent one extreme of adaptive radiation within the New Zealand gecko fauna, and are the most recently discovered member of the ‘common gecko’ group.

When I was a child the “‘common gecko’” was the only species I was able to find. I yearned to find some of New Zealand’s more interesting varieties, such as the vivid-green Naultinus geckos, the yellow- or red-blotched forest geckos, the rare and handsome black-eyed gecko, and Stewart Island’s gaudy harlequin gecko. In contrast, the ‘common geckos’ were small and drab, they lived uninteresting lives in ordinary places, and the various books and articles always confirmed them to be, for want of a better word, boring!

Now, having spent many years working with the brightest, boldest and rarest geckos New Zealand has to offer, an odd thing is happening. I find myself drawn irresistibly back to the ‘common gecko’.

And now, older and wiser, I can see that they are a far cry from the drab and uninspiring little animal that I had been conditioned to think of them as.

The story of the “‘common gecko’” goes back to 1955, at the time of the first major revision of the New Zealand lizard fauna. Charles McCann recognized just three species of brown-coloured gecko (genus Hoplodactylus), the forest gecko (H. granulatus) with its glossy orange mouth lining, the giant Duvaucel’s gecko (H. duvauceli), and, inclusive of population of small grey or brown gecko with a pink mouth, the ‘common gecko’ (H. pacificus).

In 1977, Joan Robb and Rod Rowlands divided this ‘common gecko’ into two species, resurrecting H. maculatus from the history books and, in 1981, Robb also spun off two populations (H. chrysosireticus and H. stephensi) that had until then been treated as forms of the ‘common gecko’. From this point onwards the term “‘common gecko’” became restricted to just H. maculatus, the most widespread of all these species.

At about the same time, Tony Whitaker and colleagues noticed that H. maculatus, as it was now being defined, occurred in two distinctive forms that were almost

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Rod Morris

Pacific gecko – feeding at night on Poor Knights lily (Xeronema) nectar, Poor Knights Islands.

animal, for they routinely co-exist. This is the benchmark proof of true species separation. And Hitchmough’s study has provided just the platform that was needed from which to start out with a fresh new look at the ‘common gecko’. For among these myriad species, a closer inspection has revealed a whole swathe of fascinating ecologies, physiologies and behaviours.

For example, in 1994, Dr Alison Cree of Otago University found that korero geckos in eastern Otago underwent a significant reduction in reproductive output with increasing altitude. Rather than let the energy-starved highlands of Otago limit their distribution, the geckos can switch from an annual to a biennial reproductive mode as need be. Dr Mandy Tocher of the Department of Conservation (DOC) has

Rod Morris

At the opposite end of the size spectrum to the tiny pygmy gecko, the Three Kings gecko is a comparatively large animal that can grow to over 10 centimetres in length and which has only a few natural enemies, including giant centipedes. These geckos will leap off rock bluffs or dive into water to escape predation as one did when the author approached it. The gecko leaped into a nearby stream and crawled inside a submerged hollow stick to hide.

to dissipate, and listen to korero geckos from different crevices ‘talk’ to each other.

In the evening these same geckos undergo found that Southern Alps geckos living in elaborate signaling behaviours – vocal, the mountains inland of Christchurch have mouth-gaping and foot-waving – as they developed a distinctly improved ability exit their retreats. Then each moves off to remain active in cool temperatures to a separate location and, subdued by when compared with their lowland the rapidly cooling night air, sits almost relatives, demonstrating another type of motionless all night. physiological adaptation.

Video cameras can be used to examine A well-known aspect of ‘common gecko’ the behaviour of wild ‘common geckos’. behaviour is the willingness of many In 2006, as part of a study for DOC, species to live in mass groups. Adult males Jane Marshall and I used infrared video are highly territorial with one another cameras to observe korero geckos at and will fight to the death if need be. But Macraes Flat in eastern Otago. This they will allow any number of females to is when I really learnt about how occupy their retreat site, and the male who extraordinarily inactive ‘common geckos’ secures the largest and most ideal retreat could be on a cool night, with some may attract dozens, even hundreds of korero geckos sitting out in the open yet females to that lair. The adults allow the hardly moving a foot from dusk to dawn. juveniles to live with them, which saves the youngsters from the dangerous task of In 2007 natural history film-making students Julia Kelbling and Jinty McTavish wandering though unfamiliar territory in search of their own retreat site. Only when spent long hours at night with captive Kawarau geckos from Central Otago, the young males reach sexual maturity collecting footage of all sorts of interesting does the adult male evict them. behaviours, especially at dusk when the It is standard dogma that because lizards first emerged. In this way they ‘common geckos’ remain out of sight by discovered the mysterious foot-waving day, they must also be inactive by day – and mouth-gaping behaviours mentioned again, a theme of a gecko doing nothing above, and also caught on film for the of interest. Yet careful observation by first time a live birth and the associated field workers and keepers suggests that behaviours of both mother and babies. the activity of ‘common geckos’ is more Other aspects of ‘common gecko’ strongly correlated with temperature than behaviour and physiology will be much light cycle. A research team led by Kelly harder to study. In the Mount Cook Hare of Victoria University found that matua geckos from Wellington underwent area, for example, Southern Alps geckos range upwards to at least 1800-metres no change in metabolic function between in altitude. At these elevations this small night and day. Further, captive and field reptile must endure a bewilderingly harsh observations show that under the right circumstances, some species become more temperature regime. Much of the time the geckos are trapped in their retreat active by day than they are at night.

Within their secluded daytime retreats, sites, physically unable to move due to the intense cold. They wait for the brief ‘common geckos’ will engage in a range periods of warmth in summer when they of activities, including mating, territorial can emerge, feed and breed. If an insight posturing and opportunistic feeding, in could be gained into the lives of these a far more vigorous manner than the high-alpine lizards the results would cooler night-time temperatures could undoubtedly add a new chapter to our ever allow. It is a surreal experience to understanding of ‘common geckos’. lie among the tussocks between rock As for the pygmy gecko, which co-exists outcrops, just as the afternoon heat begins with the Southern Alps gecko in the lower alpine zone of the Rangitata Gorge in the new Hakatere Conservation Park, observations so far suggest that it uses its small size to avoid its larger cousin.

But being such a little animal, typically inhabiting fine-grained scree that cannot be easily searched, much of its nature remains a mystery, underlining yet again that there is much to be learned about the fascinating and ever surprising ‘common geckos’ of New Zealand.

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Tony Jewell is a herpetologist. Together with Rod Morris he is compiling a guide to the reptiles and amphibians of New Zealand. w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

Tony & Jenny Enderby

Tony & Jenny Enderby

Tony and Jenny Enderby find out why marine protection works to restore fish populations.

Tawharanui – Marine Park to Marine Reserve

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boundaries, regional council coastal plans and fisheries regulations.

Tawharanui Marine Park was created by the Auckland Regional Authority (ARA), predecessor of the Auckland Regional Council (ARC), in 1981. The reason it was established was to protect marine life on part of the coast alongside Tawharanui Regional Park after a public access road was created.

One of the first to explore Tawharanui’s underwater world was marine biologist Dr Roger Grace. He snorkelled the reefs around Flat Rock in the early 1970s and then later scuba dived there, mapping local underwater habitats. In those days both red and packhorse crayfish were often seen although the packhorse weren’t recorded after the early 1980s.

Roger Grace began formal survey monitoring work in 1977 for the ARA, prior to the creation of the marine park.

His surveys revealed smaller spiny rock lobsters or red crayfish, as they are known,

A pair of clown nudibranchs mating in the marine park.

Tony & Jenny Enderby

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N the northern side of the Tawharanui Regional Park, little more than an hour north of Auckland, is an area of coast that has been protected for over 25 years. Known as Tawharanui Marine Park, the only real difference to a marine reserve is that it has been administered by the Auckland Regional Council and the Ministry of Fisheries.

A change from marine park status to marine reserve status is now underway.

Once public submissions have been answered the application will move on to the Director-General of Conservation and then the Minister of Conservation.

Changing the marine park to a marine reserve makes good sense because of the length of time the area of coast has already been protected. It will also sort out the confusion that exists over the words “marine park”, as Tawharanui Marine Park is in the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park. The latter has no marine protection other than the existing marine reserves within its

Looking east along the Tawharanui Peninsula.

FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

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Tony & Jenny Enderby

Tony & Jenny Enderby

Yellow finger sponge

Tony & Jenny Enderby

A pair of gem nudibranchs.

Tony & Jenny Enderby

Snapperface. A friendly snapper hovers in front of us.

Small eagle ray moving above the kelp.

Kirstie Knowles

Pink maomao resting on the bottom.

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at Tawharanui than at Mimiwhangata, north of Whangarei, another proposed marine park he was surveying. Partial protection was proposed for both parks with some recreational fishing and collecting allowed.

At the time, it was thought limited fishing and collecting had no effect on the marine life. Despite this, Tawharanui Marine Park was designated a no-take protected area while Mimiwhangata Marine Park received only partial protection from fishing.

Since then, although there have been some gaps between the surveys, red crayfish numbers have increased at Tawharanui while they have fallen at Mimiwhangata.

By 2004-2005, when the last surveys were completed, the largest number of red crayfish was recorded within Tawharanui Marine Park. At Mimiwhangata virtually no red crayfish were recorded within the marine park’s boundaries, and were similar to numbers recorded along the adjacent unprotected coast.

Those surveys concurred with anecdotal evidence of red crayfish numbers at Tawharanui. On some dives in the marine park in 2005 we saw dozens of large red crayfish amongst the sandstone reefs just offshore, although no packhorse crayfish.

Recently we dived not far from the main beach at Tawharanui, descending to 10 metres below the surface. While exploring the low rocky reefs we again saw large numbers of red crayfish crammed into every available space.

Some also wandered out in the open amongst the kelp holdfasts. Although we didn’t see as many as in 2005 they were still prolific.

It is now unusual to see red crayfish in such large numbers on the north Auckland coast outside the Goat Island Marine Reserve, and even rarer to see them in the open during daylight.

Around the deeper reefs, we witnessed more of the benefits of marine protection with almost every crack home to a few red crayfish from tiny prawn-sized critters to some over three kilos. The Ecklonia kelp swayed around, hiding them from view but exposed other marine life resident beneath its fronds. Sea anemones, yellow and orange golf ball sponges, grey finger sponges, colourful nudibranchs and a variety of sea shells were just part of the marine life there.

During our dive we were accompanied by blue cod, porae and John dory. Schools of sweep and blue maomao swirled around us and nearer the bottom were replaced

by Jack mackerel. For several minutes hundreds of thousands of these fish, sometimes known as yellowtail, swam past us towards an unknown destination over the sand flats. Several snapper followed at w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

Tony & Jenny Enderby

the edge of the school, perhaps looking for a sick or slower fish to eat.

The snapper schools, although not as large or numerous as at Goat Island, are still encouraging. Because of minimal fisheries surveillance and enforcement, there is still some poaching of the fish stocks within the park. Increased surveillance by the Department of Conservation under marine reserve regulations should eliminate this and snapper numbers will increase further.

Tawharanui Peninsula has a series of sandy beaches bordered by steep hills and rocky reefs, typical of the Northland coast.

Depending on the sea conditions visitor activities vary. When the long oceanic swells of late summer break on the beach, surfers dominate the water. On calmer days swimmers and snorkellers enjoy the marine life around the reefs. There is plenty for them to see as snapper, kahawai and trevally have moved in and established close to shore.

The regional park has camping facilities which are almost on the beach and because of its popularity bookings are needed, especially over the busy summer season.

Schools use the camping ground as an outdoor activity base and focus on the abundant marine life. Some also snorkel the rocky reefs on days when the swell allows.

Larger fish, not often seen in shallow water, are beginning to reappear. Small schools of silver drummer feed over the kelp forests at the eastern end of the marine park and giant boarfish feed in the sand around the reefs off the main beach.

Areas known as kina barrens where overgrazing turned them into barren rock, have begun to be replaced by beds of kelp.

The increase in the predators of kina such as crayfish and snapper are responsible for this change. Outside the boundaries, rocky areas between low tide and six metres depth are still dominated by kina.

A goatfish swimming above the ecklonia kelp

Without doubt the breeding stock of crayfish and snapper within the protected areas at Tawharanui and Goat Island contribute to the catches of fishers and divers outside the protected areas.

Proposed boundary changes include ensuring that Cigar Reef, a popular fishing spot, is outside the boundary. In addition it allows everyone to see a couple of small pieces of coastline return to what the entire coast was once like.

Currently the boundaries are marked with large orange and white triangles.

Floats, marking crayfish pots of commercial fishermen based at Leigh, dot the outer boundaries.

In spite of the narrow, unsealed access road to the regional park, visitor numbers have increased to around 160,000 annually. Tawharanui Regional Park is now a mainland island where introduced predators have been removed and a predator-proof fence established. Already the benefits are being felt with the return of bellbirds (korimako) to the area and the

reintroduction of kiwi, North Island robin (toutouwai) and whitehead (popokatea).

Tracks through the regional park give amazing views out over the northern Hauraki Gulf. On a clear day the Coromandel Peninsula, Little and Great Barrier islands and the Hen and Chicken Island group are all clearly visible.

Marine wildlife commonly seen in the area includes pods of common and bottlenose dolphins, Bryde’s whales and huge workups of Australasian gannets and other seabirds.

What makes Tawharanui’s proposed marine reserve very different is the total protection it has had for over 25 years.

Having a marine reserve next to the regional park makes sense, as Tawharanui is one of New Zealand’s special places where all New Zealanders can, and are encouraged to, visit.

Tony and Jenny Enderby are photo journalists who live at Leigh on the Rodney Coast of the Hauraki Gulf.

Tony & Jenny Enderby

A school of jack mackerel above the kelp.

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Seabirds of Motu Tabu Christmas Island or Kiritimati in the Pacific Island nation of Kiribati has the highest species diversity and total seabird numbers of any oceanic island in the world, with up to six million present during the peak of the breeding season.

Words by Suzi Phillips. Photographs by Pete Phillips.

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ROM a distance it looks like it’s raining seabirds as you approach Motu Tabu on the water. Then as you get closer to this tiny 3.5-hectare islet in the main lagoon at Christmas Island, you can pick out the many different species of tern, noddy, booby, frigatebird, petrel and shearwater as they fly over the atoll.

Delicate white terns swirl around overhead and fly in close as you walk across the motu, keeping a watchful eye on human intruders.

White terns and black noddies are the most abundant seabirds on the wing you’ll see here, but as you watch them you have to look carefully to avoid stepping on the thousands of ground-nesting seabirds also present at the peak of the breeding season.

Seabird numbers here are monitored

by Kiribati Wildlife Conservation Unit rangers who have noticed a steady decline in several species in recent years, including phoenix petrels which have declined from about 20,000-25,000 in the 1980s. The threatened Polynesian storm-petrel is also believed to have experienced a similar decline in numbers.

Polynesian rats (kimoa) have been living on Kiritimati’s main island for about 100 years, spreading more recently to some of the smaller lagoon islets. These rats are mainly a threat to smaller seabirds, but the arrival of the larger black rats means there is a newer and potentially more devastating menace now.

Recent monitoring has shown that there are no rats on either Motu Tabu or the other main seabird islet, called Cook

Black noddy perched in tree.

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White tern in flight

Island. This has prompted the authorities to put into effect plans to remove these invasive pests from other islets of the Kiritimati atoll.

Motu Tabu is a low-lying coral atoll of white sand and shell with varied vegetation including portulaca, scaevola, sesuvium, lepturus grass and salt bush. Christmas Island was formerly used by the British military as an atmospheric nuclear test site in the 1950s. The highest point is 13 metres above sea level with most of the rest of the atoll very low-lying, making it vulnerable to coastal inundation and sea level rise.

It is one of the largest breeding refuges for the phoenix petrel, a medium-sized dark petrel with a distinctive white throat and underparts, and fast swooping flight.

These petrels have a long breeding season with eggs, chicks, fledglings and juveniles seen here in September, in nests that are often just a scrape among shells, partly hidden under low vegetation. They forage offshore where they surface feed on squid, small fish and crustaceans.

The Polynesian storm-petrel, which also nests on Motu Tabu in burrows of lepturus grass or sesuvium, is a globally threatened species classified as Vulnerable on the IUCN (World Conservation Union) Red List of Species Threatened with Extinction.

Some of its largest colonies are found on Kiritimati.

Like many other storm petrel species it forages offshore, flying just above the surface w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

Peter Philips Peter Philips

Female great frigatebird

The endemic Christmas shearwater

Peter Philips

Peter Philips

of the water and dipping into the sea to feed on squid, crustaceans and small fish.

Introduced rats and cats have reduced many of its breeding colonies in other parts of Polynesia, so much so that Kiritimati is now one of the last strongholds for this species.

Competing for breeding space with these and other seabirds is the Christmas shearwater or te tinebu. This mediumsized dark shearwater has a distinctive rounded tail and breeds in burrows or under vegetation. They are common around Kiritimati, where they are usually seen foraging offshore in flocks for fish and squid. Like many of the other seabirds that breed here, the biggest threats to their survival are introduced rats, cats and pigs, poaching and destruction of nests.

Sooty terns are abundant on Motu Tabu and other parts of Kiritimati such as Cook Island where thousands nest on the ground in dense colonies. Breeding numbers at Kiritimati have declined from about 25 million in the 1960s to 2-3 million now, with predation by rats and cats and poaching of eggs the main threats.

Sooty terns forage offshore on surface fish by dipping and plunge-diving, and at night they take deep-sea fish that rise to the surface.

The larger red-tailed tropicbirds – amokura to the Maori – are more abundant breeders on Kiritimati with many nesting under vegetation on Motu Tabu. They still occur in good numbers and are widespread throughout the Pacific, despite the threat of predation from rats, cats and pigs, and poaching by humans. They also forage offshore, plunge-diving for fish and squid.

A few white-tailed tropicbirds also inhabit Motu Tabu, but unlike the redtailed tropicbirds, they always nest in a tree or at a cliff-site away from the ground.

Three booby species nest on Motu Tabu: masked, brown and red-footed. The redfooted is the only booby species that nests off the ground, usually in a rough nest of sticks in low saltbush.

Greater and lesser frigatebird species are present on Motu Tabu, both of which nest in low bushes on a large nest of sticks.

Blue-grey noddy or grey ternlet Brown noddies resting

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The largest population of phoenix petrel, an endangered species, breed at Motu Tabu.

The male greater frigatebirds construct a nest and attempt to attract passing flying females by sitting in the nest and inflating their large red throat sac in a distinctive courtship display.

In addition to the seabirds, several species of reptile occur here including green turtles, morning and stump-toed

geckos, and snake-eyed skinks. The invertebrate species include coconut crab, ghost crab, land crab and land hermit crab.

Illegal poaching by local inhabitants is a significant threat to seabirds on Kiritimati as the human population increases with people relocated from other areas of Kiribati such as Tarawa.

Kiritimati in Kiribati

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HRISTMAS Island or Kiritimati (pronounced kritimati) is part of the Pacific Island nation of Kiribati (pronounced kiri-bas), located in the central Pacific Ocean. Kiribati comprises 33 atolls dispersed over 3.5 million square kilometres straddling the equator and located close to the International Date Line.

Kiritimati is one of the Line Islands, a group of eight atolls and one reef, located about 3300-kilometres east of the capital, Tarawa, in the Gilbert Island group.

At 642 square kilometres, Kiritimati has the greatest land area of any coral atoll in the world and is a globally important habitat for seabirds. Despite recent declines in local seabird populations, it still has the highest species diversity and total

24 FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

About 5000 people live on Kiritimati.

The poaching of eggs, chicks and adult seabirds has increased as people look for other natural food sources besides fish.

Kiribati Wildlife Conservation Unit rangers are involved in protecting many of the islets from poachers.

Recent reports of poaching include finds of the remains of many tropicbirds, boobies, frigatebirds, petrels, shearwaters and noddies on various islets. Poachers armed with machetes have also been caught in the act taking adult birds, as well as eggs and chicks.

For those interested in visiting Kiritimati, there is a field guide in development by the Kiribati Wildlife Conservation Unit which is based in Kiritimati. It can be reached via airline flights between Fiji and Hawaii.

Suzi Phillips chairs Forest & Bird’s Kaipara Branch and is a member of the national executive. Pete Phillips, her husband, is a keen photographer.

The lagoon at Cooke Island, Kiritimati.

seabird population of any oceanic island in the world.

Up to six million seabirds can be present on Kiritimati during the peak of the breeding season, including several million pairs of sooty terns.

The atoll comprises a large, flat island, with a shallow tidal lagoon opening to the north-west. At the eastern end of the lagoon are many smaller, land-locked lakes. The total lagoon area covers around 160 square kilometres.

A narrow reef platform extends up to 120 metres from the shoreline around the whole island.

Eighteen species of seabird breed here, including the largest global population of two endangered species, phoenix petrel and Polynesian storm-petrel.

w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

Naturalist-photographer Geoff Moon has spent much of his life capturing stunning images of New Zealand’s rarest and most secretive wetland birds such as bitterns and crakes. The protection of our remaining wetlands is more vital than ever, he tells Gordon Ell. Photographs by Geoff Moon.

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EOFF Moon has spent three days setting up a birdwatching “hide” to photograph birds in a swamp near Motuoapa on Lake Taupo. So far his narrow angle of view through the lens of his camera has produced an Australasian harrier (kahu) swooping on the water taking — he thinks — tadpoles from the surface.

Then comes the Australasian bittern (matuku), out of shot, but to his left and about to “boom”.

To this time, no one has photographed this phenomenon, excepting possibly an old black-and-white movie film of the Eurasian bittern on the English Norfolk Broads. w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

The bird is not much more than a metre away but the New Zealand naturalist can’t take its photograph because it is beside his hiding place. The camera hole only faces forward, besides any attempt to shift the camera would be detected by the bird.

Instead, very cautiously, he opens a minute peephole in the side of his tiny tent and sees the bird practically eye-to-eye.

Its resemblance to a heavily built heron defines its place in the order of birds. The brown and cream streaked body usually disguises the bittern among the vertical leaves of raupo much as a tiger’s stripes camouflage it in an Indian rainforest. This bird, however, stands in a small clearing in the raupo just out of reach of the photographer’s lens.

Suddenly it lowers its head. The photographer can hear it inhaling a great lungsful. Then it raises its head to the vertical, its body puffed up, and expels the air. The noise is like the sound of blowing across the open neck of a big bottle. ‘Booom’. In quick succession the bird dips and inhales again, then again booms forth.

Four times.

The frustrated photographer has at least observed this defining pattern of the bittern’s behaviour. From right alongside it doesn’t sound as loud as expected, but it obviously carries well. The distant sound

Geoff Moon

Where the swamp things are Members of the heron family, bitterns may stand motionless for 10 minutes, poised over a wetland pool, before capturing their live food. Eels are a frequent food, as are other small fish, freshwater crayfish, frogs, tadpoles and aquatic insects.

of a bittern booming is often the only clue to their presence in wetlands and damp country.

“The boom is very much like the sound made by the kakapo ground parrot,” according to Geoff Moon.

In both completely unrelated species, males establish territory and initiate mating behaviour by booming. While the boom of the kakapo is now restricted to remote offshore sanctuaries, the boom of the bittern can still be heard about many swamps on the mainland, particularly from the North to Manawatu and Wairarapa, and in Westland.

“I think there are more bittern than people think,” says Geoff Moon. “People simply don’t see them.” Besides their secretive behaviour bitterns feed mainly at dawn and dusk, and also at night.

They’ll stand still or crouch, neck stretched forward over the water for up to 10 minutes, before suddenly pouncing on their prey. They feed on small fish, eels, tadpoles, frogs, freshwater crayfish and aquatic insects.

FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

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Geoff Moon

The cryptic plumage of the bittern allows it to practically disappear when it “freezes” among its raupo habitat. Its cream and buff feathers turn to the vertical, as it lifts its neck and head, so it merges with the background of similarly coloured reeds. This is why some bittern species overseas are known as “tiger herons”.

“Bitterns are not easy birds to get close to,” says Geoff Moon, who uses a canvas hide, slowly moving it forward over several days, to approach the birds.

He tells of using a colleague’s scrimsided hide once when the sun was low behind him. The moment he moved inside, the bittern saw his silhouette through the scrim and froze in its alarm position, neck and head stretched up so streaks of feathers on its body resembled the vertical raupo leaves behind it.

Geoff Moon got particularly interested in the bird during the 1950s when he was photographing on glass plates in black and white. An Englishman whom he remembers as Mr Galey phoned him up from Atiamuri to say he’d found a nesting bittern on the edge of the river and built a hide to watch it: would Geoff like to photograph it?

Thus began a season of Saturdays when the busy veterinarian left his home in Warkworth in lower Northland just after four in the morning and drove through the dawn to the south Waikato, some 300 kilometres away.

Each week Mr Galey found more nests 26 FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

and set up new hides for him till he was studying five families of the bird.

Galey had studied Eurasian bitterns in the English Norfolk Broads before coming to New Zealand to help build what is now the Atiamuri hydroelectric dam on the Waikato River. The river ran slowly then, below the looming bulk of Pohatu.

“It was an amazing wetland along the river with a wealth of wetland birds, including ducks, New Zealand dabchicks, rails and crakes. Now it lies deep underwater as a storage lake for Whakamaru,” says Geoff Moon. “There’s still breeding habitat along its shores but not the wilderness of the old days.”

The product of these trips are the elegant black-and-white pictures of bittern and some movie footage which Geoff Moon gathered while making scientific observations of these birds.

“They’re solitary creatures. The female makes the nest — usually a flat platform in the raupo about 300mm above the water — and also sits on the eggs. The eggs are laid at intervals of one or two days and take about 25 days to hatch.”

“During that time, she even has to leave

the nest to get her own food. The male has not been seen to do anything to help.”

“Then of course she has to feed the chicks and she usually has four to feed.”

“That can go on to some degree for a further seven weeks before they can fly.

Often the youngest dies and only two or three survive to fledge.”

“The female bittern gathers food for the nestlings and herself, first disgorging her last catch close to the nest so she can eat it later. The chicks are then fed on the nest in descending order of age, the eldest receiving the least-digested food while the youngest eats the most digested food.”

‘When the female leaves the nest her eggs, and chicks, are at great risk of predation. A major predator is the harrier hawk which cruises low over the reed beds looking for unguarded nests. Rats are another wetland predator, and possibly stoats though I’ve never seen them do this.”

After about a fortnight the young bitterns start to wander about the reed beds close to the nest, though the mother still contributes the predigested diet.

One of the problems bitterns have is the slime which spreads from the bodies of their favourite food, eels. These are not just elvers but eels up to round 30 or 40 centimetres in length. Sometimes bird and eel struggle for several minutes till the bittern can turn its prey headfirst into its gullet and swallow the still-wriggling eel down its long neck.

Writhing to escape the beak of the bird, eels often tangle round its neck clotting the feathers with slime. To get rid of the mess, bitterns adopt the same tactic as other members of the heron family. From their lower chest they take powder down, rubbing head and neck against the soft feathers which crumble into a grey powder.

This is wiped into the slimy mess and the feathers groomed. This preening can sometimes take hours.

“While bitterns are susceptible to swamp drainage, I think there are more of them than estimated nationally,” says Geoff Moon. “For example, the excellent new Bird Atlas of New Zealand does record the bittern occurring around Lake Taupo but does not record it nesting. In fact, it lives in several of the swamps around the lake.

“The reason it’s not in the Atlas is that no one has made a sufficiently scientific record from that area. Such scientific recording demands a count of nests to prove a breeding population.”

“You can still hear the birds in swamps, w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

Geoff Moon

An early colour photograph of a bittern chick and egg in a nest on salt marsh. Bitterns lay eggs at one or two-day intervals, so the age of an average clutch of four may vary by several days.

Geoff Moon

Gordon Ell is a former national president of Forest & Bird (1990-93) and author of more than 30 books about New Zealand’s natural and historic heritage.

A female bittern feeding her young in among the raupo. The eldest is fed first, the most pre-digested food going later to the youngest chick. This early picture was taken on slow colour film at 1/25th of a second, blurring the chicks slightly as they struggled for their turn.

w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

the bittern is a lot less common than the fernbird (matata), which is heard rather than seen among the rushes and scrub, they are nevertheless present in quite small wetlands as well as the classic swamps of Waikato, Northland and the West Coast of the South Island.

Their unseen presence makes the protection of our remaining wetlands even more vital. Not only look out for it, frozen in the foliage. Listen and you may hear the male’s boom as its stakes out its secret territory.

Geoff Moon’s fascination with the life of the bittern began in the 1950s when his bird photography involved using black-andwhite glass plates. By the time he completed his life cycle of the bird he was using a 35mm camera, sometimes with a two-times extender on his 800 mm lens. Now digital cameras make extreme close ups much easier – Geoff Moon still uses slide film.

The globally threatened Australasian bittern occurs in New Zealand, southern Australia and New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands, according to the Field Guide to the Birds of New Zealand by Barrie Heather and Hugh Robertson (Viking). It is classified as Vulnerable on the IUCN (World Conservation Union) Red List of Species Threatened with Extinction.

Rod Morris

particularly around the southern shores in the extensive reed beds about Tokaanu.

There’s simply not enough field recording of the birds here, and in many other parts of New Zealand, to be sure of its breeding distribution and numbers.”

In fact, bittern have a widespread distribution through New Zealand, particularly in raupo swamps and rushes.

Coastal dune lakes of the western North Island are a favoured place as is Westland.

Bitterns can even tolerate brackish water though they keep away from the saltwater.

What they need is dense cover where they can hide and hunt on the edges of water.

“Bittern can also appear in wet paddocks where there is a little shelter and suitable food.” Perhaps a spring-fed creek or wet patch occurs in a paddock with sufficient cover for the birds to feed safely.

Flax plantings and reeds along a little waterway may attract them.”

Bitterns roost in trees with low trailing branches, such as willows over water. Their heavy-winged heron’s flight can sometimes be seen towards dusk as the birds fly out to feed in wet places. Their flight can be distinguished by observing the shape of the wings. While the flight is like that of a heron, the bittern has wings curved on the leading and trailing edges.

Geoff Moon puts the bittern among other rarely seen birds of the wetlands.

Because they feed at the change of light, and in the depths of the swamp, people simply don’t see them.

The spotless crake and the marsh crake are two other such birds. While

Geoff Moon OBE is the author of many books of photographs and original observations about New Zealand’s bird life.

In 2005, he was elected a Distinguished Life Member of Forest & Bird for his contribution to conservation through photography and related advocacy for the natural environment.

27

Fool on the Hill The storm-swept tops of Stewart Island/Rakiura are the sole breeding grounds of the southern New Zealand dotterel. For years the Department of Conservation (DOC) has been controlling feral cats here after they nearly decimated the entire population, allowing dotterel numbers to increased from 62 to nearly 300.

Kathy Ombler joined DOC Threatened Species Officer Phred Dobbins on a cattrapping expedition there.

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HE flat, open tops are bleak places on Stewart Island/Rakiura. Subalpine bogs and battered shrubs — bent near parallel to the ground by raging gales – stunted manuka and tangled leatherwood clinging to the boggy ground form shadows in the constant cloudy murk and snow that falls, sometimes, even in summer.

You might wonder why on earth a wading bird would fly so high to these forsaken places, never mind nest here and raise chicks. But when you stand on the tops, on a rare cloudless day and look down to the sandy shorelines and estuaries where the dotterels feed, it makes perfect sense. There are few high tide roosts close to the water.

To the east is Paterson Inlet, where the high tide laps directly against dense podocarp forest. Further south, more dense forest meets the waterline of Port Pegasus. In the west, rolling sand dunes behind Mason Bay give way to the vast freshwater wetlands that almost cut Stewart Island in two and where, Phred Dobbins

The Gaelic name for Scotland’s mountain-breeding dotterel is “Fool o’ the tops”, because they were too trusting, and easy to catch. New Zealand’s dotterels have inherited the same name and, on Stewart Island, live in habitat that bears more than a passing resemblance to the tops of the Scottish Cairngorm Mountains.

wryly suggests, roosting birds would need snorkels to survive.

So it is but a short flight, 550 metres straight up, from the feeding grounds to the open tops that provide a most suitable environment for roosting and nesting. Not so bleak after all, until feral cats arrived.

We’ve boated to the head of Paterson Inlet and continued on the evening’s high tide into Freshwater River where we follow a forest-lined tidal channel to Freshwater Hut. We’re ready for an early start next morning to check the traps on Rocky Mountain, one of five above-bushline breeding areas DOC intensively manages, as in encircles with traps and 1080 bait stations during the dotterel breeding season.

As he cuts up bait-size blue cod scraps into cat-tempting morsels for the traps on Rocky Mountain, Phred tells the story behind the dotterels’ recovery.

In the early 1990s scientist John Dowding realised the dotterels were in serious trouble. He studied them on Table Hill, a major breeding ground to the south of Paterson Inlet, and found not only were there just a few birds remaining, but there was also a population imbalance.

Most birds were female, there was just one breeding male in the area, and Dowding established that feral cats were to blame.

The dotterel recovery programme began in 1992 on Table Hill, then the Rocky Mountain, where trapping is successfully protecting southern New Zealand dotterels.

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w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

breeding ground for around half the total population. Bait stations, over 200 in total, were placed at 50 metre intervals around the bush edge surrounding the nesting area, a broad, flat open mountain top of some 300-hectares.

Every two weeks from September to January these were checked and re-baited.

Getting to Table Hill involved nearly a full day of boating and climbing above the bush line, where there’s now a small hut for overnight shelter.

The efforts immediately paid off, says Phred. Dotterels numbers increased and the breeding grounds and season expanded.

“When I started the birds were still mainly on Table Hill, the Tin Range and above Port Pegasus. There used to be quite a punch up for space. Now anywhere there’s a broad mountain top above bush line you’ll find them, they also seem to have spread the breeding season. It’s almost as though they’re taking turns, you’ll only get two to three nesting at the same time.”

“After a few years of working with the dotterels I’ve really come to appreciate wading birds. They are intriguing because they live in such extreme environments.

Look at the distances godwits fly. They’ve got to have character.”

The programme expanded in 1997 when four more areas were tagged for intensive cat-control: Mt Rakeahua, Rocky Mountain and two areas named somewhat ignominiously by their spot heights, 511 and 464. Access to each of these involves at least a one hour dingy ride through Paterson Inlet then a one to two hour climb to the tops.

Extending efforts to more remote breeding areas has been considered but would prove more difficult, logistically, says Phred.

“This is a low budget, long term project.

To be effective long term we need to run it as lean as possible to make it sustainable.

As it is, because we walk everywhere and we can only get in and out on high tide, it takes over a week to do the rounds, and we visit each area once a fortnight.”

The extended breeding season from September to as late as February, depending on the weather, also extends the duration of the cat-control programme. Add it all up and after 14 years that’s a heck of a lot of climbs to the cloudy, wind-ravaged tops Phred and, for just the past few years, his one-man support team have clocked up.

The track to Rocky Mountain, he announces as we set off from Freshwater Hut, goes something like a parabolic curve.

I am warned. Fortunately the pace is slow.

Phred is hunting as he goes; eyes and ears alert for cats or deer. When we do hear a rustle in the crown fern we find no animal w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

Southern New Zealand dotterel visiting the coast to feed.

pest but a big, chubby tokoeka, a Stewart Island brown kiwi, out probing for food mid-morning and oblivious to the human presence nearby.

At this stage of the trapping programme he’s only catching around eight or nine cats each season. “People ask if that’s enough to worry about but it only takes one cat to wipe out several pairs of dotterel.”

When we break out above the bushline there’s a pleasant surprise. The cloud and wind that Phred says are his usual companions up here are absent.

Snow had been forecast for our November trip, but instead we are greeted with calm overcast conditions and stunning views of Paterson Inlet, the Freshwater wetlands, Mason Bay and, to the south, Phred points to Table Hill and the other dotterel nesting areas now guarded by traps and bait stations. Being a touch higher, they are covered in murky cloud, and I thank Phred for selecting Rocky Mountain for this visit.

The other areas, says Phred, have a definitive line between forest and open tops and the perimeter boundaries are lined with bait stations. Rocky Mountain is more complex, with several small clearings hidden between tangled subalpine shrublands and bogs. There’s also a public track to the forest line so traps are used where walkers might venture and bait stations, with their toxic 1080 baits, are placed around the more obscure clearings.

When sitting on the nest, the parents take turns to go down to the estuaries to feed, Dad during the day and Mum at night. Once the chicks are hatched both parents stay with them, feeding on flies, moths, spiders and worms on the tops.

There are usually three eggs so one parent each takes care of one chick and the third goes from one parent to the other, and doesn’t always survive, says Phred.

When he comes across a dotterel nest, he knows exactly what behaviour to expect. “If you get to within 20 or 30 metres the female will run out of the nest, very low to the ground to lead you away. The closer the eggs are to hatching the more frantic she will be.”

“I usually go very quickly to the nest to take a GPS reading, and if it’s within one week of hatching she’ll get really agitated,

dancing around with her wing out, pretending it’s broken and trying to lure me away.”

After hatching, the chicks take around four weeks to fledge and stay with the adults a further two weeks after that.

Phred knows of one current nest on Rocky Mountain and leads me to within 20 metres of a straggly, wind blown manuka bush on the edge of a clearing.

A movement catches my eye as an adult dotterel scurries away across the clearing.

We move a little closer and back she comes, one wing dragged along the ground.

The three speckled eggs I glimpse in the nest beneath the bush are probably getting close to hatching.

We leave “Mummy Dot” to settle and as we continue the trap circuit, Phred spies some soft, broken egg shell on the ground.

He judges that it’s newly hatched, just a day or two ago and has blown out from the nest or been dropped by the adult and he’s pleasantly surprised. He didn’t know there was another nest up here, and it seems likely there’s just been another three little dotterels added to the growing population.

Kathy Ombler is a Wellington-based writer.

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HERE are two subspecies of New Zealand dotterel. The southern New Zealand dotterel is larger, heavier and more boldly coloured than the northern subspecies.

Some authorities suspect the southern birds may turn out to belong to a separate species.

Until the late 1800s, southern New Zealand dotterels were widespread throughout the South Island. As the ravages of introduced cats and mustelids, plus shooting for game and food took their toll, the birds became restricted to Stewart Island, with some wintering across Fouveaux Strait in Southland’s Awarua Bay. In 2006 a census count carried out at winter flock sites in Mason Bay, Port Pegasus and Awarua Bay found 270 birds. The current number is estimated to be nearly 300.

FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

29

Gilbert van Reenan

goingplaces

View over Maori Lakes towards Lake Heron.

Hakatere Conservation Park Michael Szabo visits our largest conservation park in the Hakatere Basin. Comprising scenic views of mountains, lakes and braided rivers, endemic birds, reptiles, insects and alpine flora abound here, all within two hours of Christchurch.

Station in October 2007 to add to the new 60,000-hectare conservation park.

Among the greywacke stones adjacent to the Ashburton River’s braided bed, South Island pied oystercatchers, banded dotterels and New Zealand pipits make their living in and around the smooth pebbles and pin cushion plants that flower white and yellow. The piping call of the oystercatcher rings out over sound of rushing water.

Over across the terraced braids of the river, black-fronted terns seem to float above the water and dip down to hawk insects on forays from the small colony present on a stony island nestled between the main braids.

Gleaming white black-billed gulls circle higher overhead, fending off the larger southern black-backed gulls that breed a little way downstream.

If you crouch down and peer into the miniature world among the mosses, lichens, flowering plants and stones here, you may spy one of the striking black-andwhite wolf spider that live here as it runs for cover.

A couple of kilometres up river over a small bridge, off to the left from the road, you’ll find Maori Lakes, so named because the area is said to have been part of a seasonal trail of mahinga kai or resource

Site description

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Hakatere, below the Clent Hills, is the vast scale of the landscape. The view here takes in a breathtaking 360 degrees of snowcapped peaks and seemingly endless high country vistas.

It is also a landscape rich in animal, plant and insect life, which is another reason the Nature Heritage Fund (Nga Whenua Rahui) purchased Hakatere

Rod Morris

NCLOSED by the Rakaia and Rangitata Rivers and shaped by ancient glaciers, the Hakatere Basin contains a high country world of freshwater lakes, wetlands, braided rivers and tussock-covered terraces.

The first thing you notice as you step out along the Ashburton River, a few kilometres north of the settlement of

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The endemic Rangitata skink is present in the new conservation park. w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

Don Geddes Rod Morris

A small colony of black-fronted terns (tarapiroe) is located between Hakatere and Maori Lakes, on the Ashburton River south branch.

South Island pied oystercatchers (torea) breed in the high country.

Male Australasian shoveller (kuruwhengi) in breeding plumage.

J Kendrick/Department of Conservation/ Te papa Atawhai

gathering, the waters here being well stocked with eels and waterfowl.

A kilometre or so across from the road here you can walk onto a small moraine that overlooks the main lake to take in the impressive view of an outstanding oasis of red tussock and Carex (pükio) wetlands Plant species in the area include the threatened sedge Carex tenuiculmis and one of the largest populations of the threatened native lily Iphigenia novaezelandiae.

Green hooded orchids bloom here on the moraine during spring and early summer, their hoods primed open ready to snap shut on the insects that pollinate them.

You may be lucky enough to hear the deep booming “whamp” of a bittern emanating from the raupo where marsh crake creep through a forest of stems.

Luckier still, you might see one or other of these shy birds as they stalk along the edge of the vegetation.

The piping call of an oystercatcher flying overhead adds to the watery soundscape of Canada geese, black swans, New Zealand scaup, Australasian shoveller and pied stilt.

Ten kilometres further up the valley brings you to Lake Heron, which is what is arguably the scenic jewel in the crown among these picturesque lakes.

This name was given to the lake by the nineteenth century naturalist TH Potts because of the many white herons or kotuku that visited the wetland in his day, though sadly only very rarely now. Local Forest & Bird member and tour guide Warren Jowett comments that you’ll need to be very lucky indeed to see one because he has only seen a single kotuku here in 10 years of regularly visiting the lake.

Lake Heron is a 625-hectare expanse of water fringed by red tussock and Carex wetland. The lake is a nationally significant stronghold of the threatened Australasian crested grebe and New Zealand scaup (papango), with Australasian shoveller, Paradise shelduck and black shag are also present on the lake.

There is a car park on the southern side of the lake which can be reached via a short walk through a controversial stretch of road. A scenic walk from the car park area takes you up over to nearby Mt Sugarloaf which looks out over the lake and is a good place from which to watch for New Zealand falcon (karearea). There are also tramping routes from the car park area that take you up into the Taylor Range to the Clent Hills Saddle and Mt Taylor.

The area adjacent to the southern end of the lake has views out over the lake to the Southern Alps and the surrounding hills and mountains. This makes for a suitable picnic lunch spot. There is also a public toilet by the car park.

w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z 31

“Canterbury” wrybill – the “huia” of the braided river.

Along the southern side of Lake Heron there is a complex of protected kettlehole wetlands where native broom, speargrass and green hooded orchids occur, one of which sits a few metres above the road.

Tawny coloured skinks and orange tussock butterflies also lurk here among the tussocks.

Turf vegetation, a rare habitat type, occurs around the kettleholes. Turf-forming plants that are found here include pygmy clubrush (Isolepis basilaris) and dwarf woodrush (Luzula celata), and the nationally endangered water brome (Amphibromus fluitans). The critically endangered Craspedia ‘Heron’ also occurs in the vicinity.

At the head of the lake, overlooking an extensive area of wetland, is a closed gate where a track runs alongside the lower reaches of the Cameron River. This traverses an area of matagouri adjacent to the wide braided river bed.

Banded dotterels and southern blackbacked gulls are abundant here, and at last count there were 28 very well camouflaged wrybills present during the breeding season.

Green hooded orchid.

Where and when to go

Wrybill are very hard to see among the greywacke stones. What can sometimes give them away is a movement or a glimpse of the dark black band on white breast as they feed alongside or even in the river, as they probe for insect larvae under stones.

Peter Howden of the Forest & Bird Ashburton Branch found one when I visited last year. He called it a “Canterbury wrybill”. With its curved bill he said he likes to think of it as the “huia” of New Zealand’s braided river habitats.

Small day moths with wings that glint iridescent purple-blue flutter around along the edge of the river bed and spotted skinks sometimes bask in the sun.

At the end of my day trip in the area over summer, returning back along the road, I passed one of the small willowedged bays on the western side of Lake Heron. Pausing here I saw five crested grebes in close formation glide into view close to shore.

It was a moment of Zen-like tranquility as they dived underwater, one after the other, making a memorable ending to the day.

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Janet Ledingham

Raouli haastii in flower on the Cameron riverbed.

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Warren Jowett/Tussock & Beech Ecotours

Department of Conservation/Te Papa Atawhai

goingplaces

HE settlement of Hakatere is a gateway into the Lake Heron sector of the new Hakatere Conservation Park via the South Branch of the Ashburton River. Hakatere is a two hour drive from Christchuch. Take State Highways 78 and 72 south to Mt Somers and turn inland towards the Ashburton Gorge and Hakatere itself.

At Hakatere turn right towards Maori Lakes and Lake Heron. Stop three kilometres along this mainly unsealed road and park to the side where a short track runs off to the right to the open braids of the Ashburton River below Clent Hills.

You can continue on along this same road to Maori Lakes which is approximately two kilometres from the river stop. Lake Heron is a further ten kilometres along the same road from Maori Lakes.

The road continues on approximately five kilometres from Lake Heron to the Cameron River and ends at the top end of the lake.

4WD vehicles have caused damage to vegetation around Lake Heron, so vehicle owners are asked to remain on marked roads at all times. Nesting birds such as banded dotterels breed in the vicinity of the road and walking tracks in the area so care should be taken not to drive over or trample nests containing eggs or chicks.

Being close to the Southern Alps and the West Coast means the weather in the area can vary from wintery cold blasts bringing snow from the west to sweltering summer heat, so it pays to check the forecast before a visit and to be prepared with suitable clothing and outdoors gear.

The best time to see alpine flowers is through spring and summer. Migratory birds such as wrybill, black-fronted tern, black-billed gull, banded dotterel and South Island pied oystercatcher are only present during the spring and summer w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

breeding season before they migrate to their coastal South and North Island wintering grounds.

Snow remains on the mountains into November and December, but winter and early spring offer the best chance of seeing them clad in white.

Lake Heron is a stronghold of the Australasian crested grebe, seen here displaying.

Don Geddes

Warren Jowett/Tussock & Beech Ecotours

Michael Szabo is Forest & Bird’s Communications Manager and editor of the magazine.

The secretive marsh crake stalks the raupo at wetlands in the new conservation park.

Fact file: Hakatere Conservation Park

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er Rakaia Riv

Janet Ledingham

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car park

Sites nearby The scenic lakes Clearwater, Camp, Emma and Roundabout all lie within the conservation park and are within a five to ten kilometre drive to the west of the settlement at Hakatere. Lakes Emma and Roundabout are both a short walk from the road.

Lakes Clearwater and Camp are right next to the road.

A longer walk which starts a kilometre west of Hakatere itself runs five kilometres south-west towards Lake Emma and continues on four kilometres along the south side of the lake, past a hut, and adjacent to an extensive wetland west of the lake.

The track then rises up Balmacaan Stream to Balmacaan Saddle a further four kilometres where a second hut is located.

The Rangitata skink and pygmy gecko are said to be present in the area, having been seen during summer basking on the rocks.

l Tay

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HE Hakatere Conservation Park was opened in October 2007 by Conservation Minister Chris Carter.

The Department of Conservation website includes information on the Hakatere Wolf spider, Ashburton River.

Conservation Park: http://www.doc.govt.nz/templates/PlaceProfile.aspx?id=45070 The nearby town of Methven offers accommodation options less than one hour from Hakatere itself. The local I-Site can be contacted by phone on 03 302 8955 or via their website at: http://www.methveninfo.co.nz/ Tussock & Beech Ecotours run by Forest & Bird Ashburton Branch member Warren Jowett offer guided trips into the area as well as local accommodation. He can be contacted either by phone on 03 303 0880 or via their website at: http://www.nature.net.nz/

Maori Lakes Lake Clearwater Lake Roundabout

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Hakatere

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Road

FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

33

Itinerant Ecologist – Geoff Park

Teeming with birds, still

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COLOGY, in essence, is about interactivity. The betweenness and inbetweenness of life. It views the life of the world less as a myriad of species than as myriad interacting systems, some fragile, others resilient, but each alive in their own manner. Seemingly chaotic in the process, but measurable and predictable too.

If they’re fortunate, ecologists first learn this not from books or lecturers, but direct from nature, in their criss-crossing of wild landscapes tracking the reach and spread of plants, and in the following of birds through space and season.

In my case, it was in the company of botanists, surveying vegetation and discovering how plants distribute themselves along environmental gradients: fertility, temperature, moisture and so on.

Birds were background noise.

It was an ecological learning curve that soon had me too little in wild forests, and too much in laboratories determining what my leaf and litter sampling revealed of their nutrient budgets.

But it coincided with the 1970s campaigns to stop the government felling the last lowland forests, and the need for new, young ecologists to conjure up the science as to which most needed reserving.

Not least, how native birds behaved in landscapes that still had some lowland

34

forests standing. Were some forest habitats more important than others? And where were they?

In 1974, the Government’s scientific agency, DSIR, located a team of ecologists to the South Island’s West Coast to seek answers. By the time I joined them in a Western Paparoa fingervalley, the Ohikanui, early in 1975, their ornithologists had come up with a way in which different people could measure the relative abundance of bird species in different environments, and do so with statistical accuracy.

Within a year of careful, replicated listening, the “five-minute bird count” was revealing firm evidence that some birds moved vast distances seasonally, and huge disparities in bird abundances in different kinds of forest.

Confirming, with measurement, what so fascinated early European observers of New Zealand birdlife in the years when huge swathes of coastal country were still forestdown-to-the sea: the striking difference, said Dumont D’Urville in 1827, between the hill forests’ “funereal silence” and the flat coastal lowlands “so full of life”.

Coastal lowland environments, with their relative warmth, frost-freeness and fertility, seemed to abound with birds compared to inland, upland environments.

As telemetric tracking of kereru would later show, some flew many miles in search of a meal, often completely vacating inland valleys in winter.

Five-minute bird counting began putting figures on what some ornithologists had suspected all through the twentieth century, but had never ventured to measure. Consequent on New Zealand’s pastoral settlement the century before, “lowland forest areas which had distinctive advantages for some birds not possessed by hill country and mountain forests, disappeared almost completely”.

The result of which, said Robert Falla, was that “birds deprived of lowland forest into which they were accustomed to descend in winter have become extinct or very scarce”.

The Western Paparoas were, by the 1970s, one of the last parts of New Zealand in which something of the forest continuum from the lowlands to the mountains still survived. In winter, the bird-counting revealed, the coastal lowlands – including a basin of ancient woods around the now-infamous Cave Creek which the government’s foresters had begun logging – were busier with birds than any other area in mainland New Zealand.

Only one other place in the country, at that time, revealed greater winter numbers:

to tree, rising in flocks of half a hundred or so, with a whirring of wings …” A nineteenth century New Zealand whose lingering on into the twentieth century I just caught in the memory of one of the last white-pine bushmen – of walking to work beneath trees that moved with kereru.

A quest which, before all that though, had taken me to the offshore island forests in which the highest present-day birdcounts of all had been made. Hitching as botanical support to a Wildlife Service appraisal of Little Barrier Island’s petrel populations, just before the elimination of cats. A tasting, never forgotten, of the New Zealand bush minus mustelids. And rodents, other than kiore.

It was late-November, flax’s flowering finishing and pohutukawa’s just beginning.

From the crack of dawn to dark, a cacophony of birdsong and wing-beating that didn’t let up from when we first heard it from way offshore to when we were revved away from Te Maraeroa’s surf. Bush-fit from the Paparoas, we roamed up into Herekohu’s cloud forest and down along ridges of old kauri survivors of the quick plundering that Hauturu underwent prior to its preserving, into valleys whose forests seemed more tropical than temperate. Only on the driest, boniest ridges did the cacophony diminish.

Hauturu is more than a pre-eminent place in the preserving of New Zealand’s indigenous biodiversity. It was one of the places where it was first mooted – and, eventually, achieved. Which is what, half a lifetime later, had me back there earlier this summer, on the trails of the people who got Little Barrier Island Sanctuary happening.

One, Andreas Reischek, the 1880s collector

Sara McIntyre

the island sanctuary, Little Barrier, Hauturu.

The consequence of seeing my plant ecology assist such avian discoveries was that birds became other than background noise. They began to shape how I read the landscape. Not least kereru, the great disperser of forest trees.

I learned, for example, the profound pleasure of being able to synthesise what I’d learned about trees and their ecology, soil fertility and fecundity, geomorphology and local seasonality, and predict the places in which I’d see kereru. Then hearing the whoop of their wing beats.

The Paparoa evidence begged the question what the forests of warmer, northern coasts must have been like, in bird terms, and what still might survive. The high winter bird-counts of the Punakaiki Coast in particular, with its still-forested limestone country, proved significant in the establishment of Paparoa National Park. In area it is tiny, but its sheer birdiness, relative to the surrounding uplands, was proof that lowland forest was something that no district that still had some should lose.

It ignited a quest as historical as ecological that revealed a land of wild woods and birds underlying the pasture and suburbs of the New Zealand we inhabit. It took me to 1820s ‘Bay of Islands’ river country of “immense trees… extending to the very edge of the water” …of “birds, so numerous at times as to almost darken the air…” through which the artist Augustus Earle was paddled. To a Horowhenua plain still like it in the 1870s: “tall timber to the water’s edge … pigeons … circling and wheeling in the sunshine … literally in thousands, drifting from tree

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of bird-skins, who, curiously, notwithstanding the 150 stitchbirds (hihi) he shot, was behind the original sanctuary proposal by the Auckland Institute.

Another, Henry Wright, whose 1892 visit, and to-the-point report to the Premier advocating Hauturu over Resolution Island, led to it being prised from its Ngati Wai owners, the halting of kauri felling, and a caretaker “whose first care should be the extermination of the cats”.

Henry Wright had a multi-tasker’s vision for Hauturu. As well as precious bird sanctuary, he imagined it becoming “the show place of the North Island, to which steamers from Auckland will ply with excursionists to see not only the last of the native birds, but the remaining specimens of the noble kauri, the nikau palms … still flourishing in all their pristine loveliness, when the primæval forest elsewhere will have long since passed away”.

Fortunately, things didn’t go that way.

Nor did the “experimenting upon the culture of extra-tropical utilitarian plants”, like tea, coffee and teak trees, that Wright proposed for the fertile Te Maraeroa Flat.

Today, in early summer, the Flat is prime kereru habitat. There’s plenty of food in the surrounding puriri, taraire and nikau regrowth, but Hauturu’s kereru obviously prefer the lush meadows of pohuehue, Muehlenbeckia, and calystegia winding their wiry way among English grasses and clover from the old Ngati Wai cow pastures. In which cats no longer lie in wait.

Te Maraeroa Flat at this time of year must carry hundreds and hundreds of kereru. Most of them, for most of the time, out of sight in the high grass, the only clue to their presence being the number looking on from adjacent trees, and dropping down to join in.

Then as we near, just as I’d read about from the-century-before-last, but thought I’d only imagine: “rising in flocks of half a hundred or so, with a whirring of wings”. As they do, the sudden realisation that, while we in “ordinary” New Zealand rarely see the prospect, kereru will, when it can, be the flock bird it is by nature.

Birds able, when they choose, to be on the ground once more. I see it again, high up in the repairing kauri forest after the next day’s rain, watching the saddlebacks I’ve seen coming off second-best to the tui in the quest for pohutukawa nectar, spending most of their time flicking apart freshly-moistened leaf litter. No sense of how lucky they are. All this island re-jigged ecologically for them to live in as they’re evolved to live. As they, and kereru, could again in the stretches of country we’ve been learning to de-cat, de-rat and de-weasel.

Kereru rising, Te Maraeroa Flat meadows, Hauturu, Little Barrier Island FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

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in the field

The secret world of wetlands There is still time to restore New Zealand’s watery world of wetlands, from the mountains to the sea.

Words by Ann Graeme. Illustrations by Pamela Robinson

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EW Zealand has a wealth of wetland habitats from the coast to the high country, which includes mangrove forests, salt marshes, raupo swamps, peat bogs, dune lakes and mountain tarns. They all have one thing in common; they are wet, and their wetness shapes their unique plant and animal communities.

For most plants, wetlands are places to drown their roots in. Roots need water but they need oxygen too. There is little room for air in sodden soil, and what oxygen there is in the water is largely used by soil bacteria. Only specially adapted plants have found ways of breathing in such difficult circumstances.

One strategy is to grow roots up into the air instead of down into the waterlogged soil. Every mangrove tree is surrounded by a sunburst of peg-like breathing roots.

They grow up out of the proper roots which radiate from the tree trunk, just beneath the mud.

In shallow freshwater, swamp maire or maire tawake grows bunched fingers of spiky breathing roots and those of pukatea arch out of the water in hoops. Both it and kahikatea have buttress roots to support them in the yielding mud and to provide extra air space for gases to circulate.

These trees grow in shallow water.

Deeper water is the domain of raupo and rushes like oioi (the golden jointed rush), sea rush, jointed twig-rush and the giant wire rush. Their pipe-like stems are the snorkels for their roots. The stems are either hollow or are packed with spongy cells which allow air to diffuse directly to the roots.

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Breathing is only one of the problems facing plants that grow in wetlands. Getting seedlings to take root in water is another.

The mangrove seed is as big as a broad bean and it germinates on the parent plant. When it falls into the tide, the seedling root is ready and able to anchor the embryo plant and the little shoot is raring to grow where ever the tide casts it up. You often see hundreds of these ‘seeds’ stranded at high tide along northern coastlines.

Rushes and raupo have tiny seeds and only a few manage to germinate and grow.

But when one establishes a beachhead in the wetland, it sends out underground rhizomes so that in no time the pioneer plant becomes a clump and then the clump becomes a forest of waving stems.

Some plants can only live in wetlands.

Not for them the jostle of species that struggle for space in higher, drier, easier conditions. The upside of growing in a wetland is reduced competition – to a considerable extent, the wetland plants have it all to themselves.

Around the margins of the wetlands grow fellow travellers, plants which like it damp but can’t tolerate too much water.

Flax, manuka, cabbage trees, toetoe, Coprosma propinqua and a variety of sedges and grasses favour the wetland margins although they can, and do, grow elsewhere.

Like a picture, they frame the swathe of plants that paddle in deeper water, together creating unique communities which support a myriad of native birds, fish and insects.

Most wetlands are shaped like saucers but the raised peat wetlands are the reverse.

The Kopuatai peat dome and the four domes within the Whangamarino wetland bulge upwards, (though so gradually that

you would scarcely notice). This bulging has come about because the centres of their vast and shallow basins were fed, not by the sediment-rich water flowing off the hills, but by rainwater. Dead vegetation scarcely rots in pure water so it has built up, layer upon layer, year upon year, to form spongy peat. Given time – a long, long time – such peat will become coal.

In recent times, the same wetness that led to the evolution of wetland communities has led to their destruction.

Wetlands are of gentle contour. Filled with sediment eroded from the hills, they are often very fertile. Compared to the forested hills, wetlands were easy to drain and turn into top class farmland. Throughout the country, drains and stopbanks remind us of vanished salt marshes and swamps. The tracery of man-made canals dissecting the plains of Waikato, Hauraki, Rangitikei, Horowhenua and Southland maintain pasture where once grew endless flax swamp and kahikatea forest. Cattle browse where water birds once waded.

And it’s not only farmland we have made out of wetlands. Towns sprang up, built on the swamps and salt marshes around our ports and river mouths. The city of Christchurch is built on wetlands that once surrounded the Avon River. Now only the Travis wetland remains, long neglected and weed infested but still home to half of Christchurch’s pukeko population along with 30 other native bird species, 600 insect species (of which 83% are endemic) and the endangered Canterbury mudfish. Now the wetland is being restored and North Canterbury Forest & Bird members have planted a new generation of kahikatea which shelter beneath the grey willow which they will one day supplant.

Protected and cared for, Travis wetland is lucky. But even care may not be enough to save a wetland. You can fence the cattle out but you can’t fence the water in, as

Neil Hayes in the Wairarapa is finding out.

Nearby water extraction for dairy farm irrigation threatens to lower the water table and dry out his QEII wetland reserve.

Until quite recently, wetlands have been the Cinderellas of our native ecosystems.

Forests are easier to appreciate. Firm under foot, we can walk and tramp and find adventure amongst tall trees. We can revel in their beauty. But wetlands are different. They are mucky and scrubby and give us wet feet and scratches. You can’t see into them or get into them so easily.

And to some people they’ve been seen as “wasteland” and used as rubbish dumps.

In the last century and a half, the vast majority of New Zealand’s wetlands have been drained or irretrievably modified. Once, wetlands covered nearly 700,000-hectares (ha). Now less than 80,000-ha remain and many wetlands are polluted by run-off from farms and factories, grazed by cattle, invaded by weeds or starved of water by surrounding drains.

The smallest wetlands are most at risk – and most remaining wetlands are small, many less than a hectare in extent.

Wetlands used to be important carbon sinks, and they still are, but their potential has dwindled with every wetland drained. Ironically only the mangroves, expanding and flourishing in response to the warming climate, are increasing their carbon uptake and could provide a new carbon sink – if we let them.

But despite all the stick we have given our wetlands, those that are left keep on working.

They mitigate floods by soaking up heavy

rainfall and settle sediment out of dirty water. They take up nutrients and cleanse water passing through them. They buffer the land from the water, a check for erosion and a filter for sediment. So useful are they that we now recreate wetlands to filter our stormwater and to treat our sewage.

Wetlands are better understood and appreciated, and their loss is slowing these days – though it hasn’t yet stopped. We have so little wetland left, we can’t afford to lose any more. The big wetlands are important but so too are the mosaic of little wetland remnants. Even poor, pugged, weed-infested wetlands could still be restored to health and vitality.

Let us treasure our wet places.

They may be shy, hiding behind impenetrable and scratchy thickets and gumboot-stealing mud, but they are a world in miniature. Enjoy the bold pukeko, watch out for the secretive banded rail (moho pereru) or shy brown teal (pateke) and listen for the elusive fernbird (matata) that calls like a ventriloquist somewhere close by.

Savour the fragrance of mangrove and marsh ribbonwood flowers and step lightly in the yellow carpet of Batchelor’s buttons.

These are unique communities of wetland birds and plants, and they are only found here in New Zealand.

Acknowledgements: The State of New Zealand’s Environment, Ministry for the Environment, 1997.

Wetlands, Gordon Stephenson.

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Conservation

No. 149 FEBRUARY 08

THE huge number of public submissions made on the draft Threat Management Plan for Hector’s and Maui’s dolphins has been blamed for the plan being delayed.

Originally expected by December 2007, the plan was now not expected till March, according to Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton and Conservation Minister Steve Chadwick.

The ministers blamed the delay on the large number of public submissions – 2475 – and the need to take time to carefully consider them.

Jim Anderton also decided not to introduce interim protection measures over summer because he said a number of protection measures were already in place.

However, Forest & Bird Conservation Advocate Kirstie Knowles said the longer the delay in introducing the Threat Management Plan, the longer the endangered dolphins

Black Cat Cruises

Huge response to Hector’s and Maui’s dolphin plan

▲ Hector’s dolphins off Banks Peninsula. remained at risk, particularly from the threat of set nets, which are most widely used by recreational fishers over summer.

“With just 111 Maui’s dolphins remaining, any further deaths will push the species even closer towards extinction. We urge the ministers to act with urgency to put in place effective protection measures that will

ensure that we stop human-induced deaths of Hector’s and Maui’s dolphins before it is too late.”

Forest & Bird has sought a nationwide ban on set nets, which are the most serious threat to the dolphins, and marine mammal sanctuaries to protect Hector’s and Maui’s dolphins in key areas.

THE Government has issued proposed new standards to reduce the number of seabirds killed as bycatch in New Zealand commercial fisheries.

Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton said the best available information suggested that about 5500 birds were killed in trawl and longline fisheries in 2004 – the scientific model used suggests the number could have been as low as 2500 or as high as 7500.

The Minister said albatrosses and petrels were slow breeders and many of their populations could not withstand many extra deaths.

Forest & Bird has called for tougher regulations on bycatch deaths following incidents in which large numbers of seabirds were killed, including when a longline vessel fishing on the Chatham Rise caught 12 critically endangered Chatham albatrosses and 22 Salvin’s albatrosses 38 FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

Tui De Roy

New standards proposed to combat seabird bycatch

▲ Antipodean wandering albatross, displaying, Antipodes Island last September, and over 50 Antipodean wandering albatrosses were caught by a single longline vessel fishing for swordfish off the Kermadec Islands.

The draft standards propose setting a bycatch limit of somewhere between 500 and 2000 birds, and outline proposals for

monitoring this.

However, if the limit is exceeded it will not automatically close the fisheries, but would prompt further action and regulation.

Submissions on the proposed standards closed on February 1 and the final bycatch limit will be set by the minister later this year. w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

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Striped marlin ranks in the red on the new Best Fish Guide and is mainly caught as bycatch in the tuna longline fishery.

Of 75 commercial fisheries in New Zealand: 75 have no management plan 26 are overfished or have seen a substantial decline in stocks 51 cause habitat damage 42 kill significant numbers of seabirds 45 kill a significant number of marine mammals 64 catch too much non-target fish 58 cause adverse ecological effects 44 have never had a stock assessment 13 have had a full stock assessment in the last 10 years (some showed that little was known about the state of the stocks) 8 have had quantitative stock assessments which are more than 10 years old 18 have had only a partial stock assessment in the last 10 years.

What you can do: Request copies of the Best Fish Guide to distribute in your local community – contact Debbie Allison (office@forestandbird.org.nz or 04 385 7374). For more information on the Best Fish Guide go to www.forestandbird.org.nz

Helen Bain

GREENPEACE will be spreading the ecologically sustainable fisheries message with the help of Forest & Bird’s Best Fish Guide.

As part of its campaign to promote ecologically sustainable management of New Zealand’s commercial fisheries, Greenpeace will be distributing the Best Fish Guide to its members and encouraging them to support more ecologically sustainable fisheries.

Forest & Bird branches are distributing the Best Fish Guide wallet card in communities around New Zealand, making it available in schools, supermarkets, cafes, restaurants, fish and chip shops, recreational fishing supply stores, public libraries and community centres.

Copies have also been sent to Forest & Bird members overseas and environment and conservation groups promoting the sustainability message in Europe, North America and Australia.

Forest & Bird Conservation Advocate Kirstie Knowles says previous editions of the Best Fish Guide have been distributed to hundreds of thousands of people in New Zealand and overseas, and it is hoped that the updated version will reach many more.

“The more people that are able to use the Best Fish Guide when they purchase seafood, the more we can do to help make our fisheries more ecologically sustainable. If everyone can do their bit by making the right choices for our oceans when they buy seafood, we can make progress towards truly sustainable fisheries.”

Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton has criticised the Best Fish Guide as “simplistic” but Kirstie Knowles says the facts on New Zealand’s fisheries speak for themselves:

Kim Westerskov

Best Fish Guide gets a boost

▲ The Be the Change bus visits the Forest & Bird office in Wellington.

Be the Change hits the road THE Be the Change bus hit the road with the climate change solutions message over summer, inspiring New Zealanders from Bluff to Northland to do their bit.

Forest & Bird has joined forces with Greenpeace and Oxfam to form the Be the Change campaign to encourage New Zealanders to take action to help stop climate change.

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The campaign website allows people to share their ideas about how everyone can make easy changes in their lives that will contribute to reducing climate change – from switching to energy efficient light bulbs to joining a cycling advocacy group.

An important part of bringing the Be the Change message to the public has been the Be the Change biofuel-powered bus, which has toured the country bringing climate change information and inspiration to communities around New Zealand.

A highlight of the bus tour was a visit to Margaret Mahy’s house in Lyttelton, where the famous author willingly submitted to an “energy audit” of her home to identify where she could further reduce her household energy consumption and carbon footprint.

Forest & Bird General Manager Mike Britton says the Be the Change campaign is a positive way of showing New Zealanders how we can all make a difference through our own everyday actions to help stop climate change.

“Climate change is probably the most critical conservation issue we are facing, and if we want to find solutions to climate change, we all need to act now. It’s no use just waiting for governments around the world to do something about the problem – if we all take responsibility in our own lives, we can have a greater impact.”

You can sign up to Be the Change at: www.bethechange.org.nz FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

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Tim Higham/DoC

Sea lion kill quota still too high

▲ New Zealand sea lion, Snares Island – up to 81 can be killed this year in the southern squid fishery.

FISHERIES Minister Jim Anderton has set the kill quota for New Zealand sea lions in the southern squid fishery at 81 for this season.

This means the fishery, which opened in December, can kill up to 81 of the endangered marine mammals in its trawl nets before the fishery is closed.

The limit of 81 is lower than the 93 limit set for the 2007 fishing season, but Forest & Bird Conservation Advocate Kirstie Knowles says it is still far too high and poses a threat to the declining population of endemic sea lions.

Once common right around New Zealand’s coastline, New Zealand sea lions now breed only at subantarctic Campbell and Auckland Islands and on the Otago Peninsula, and have a total adult breeding population of just 5000 animals.

Forest & Bird has called on the Government to reduce the sea lion kill quota to near zero – a move backed by more than 20,000 people who signed the Save Our Sealions petition in 2006.

The Department of Conservation has put forward draft population and species management plans which aim to guide DOC in its management of New Zealand sea lions over the next 10 years, and outline options for managing the extent of sea lion deaths in fisheries.

Public submissions on the draft plans closed at the end of 2007 and final plans are expected to be introduced later this year.

Gowan protection a win for water conservation AN Environment Court decision in August confirming that the Gowan River should be protected from inappropriate hydroelectric power development is an important win for the river and for New Zealanders.

The Majac Trust sought to vary the Buller Water Conservation Order to allow water diversion and discharges necessary to develop a hydroelectric power development on the Gowan, a tributary of the Buller River.

Forest & Bird, Fish and Game, the Department of Conservation, rafting companies and many individual submitters opposed the original application, which was rejected by a special tribunal in 2006.

The case then went to the Environment Court, where the same groups again opposed the application at hearings in Nelson in early 2007. The Environment Court now made the same decision as the tribunal and recommended against varying the Water Conservation Order.

Forest & Bird lawyer Marion Yoder says the case was significant because it was the first time anyone had applied to vary a Water Conservation Order.

“Forest & Bird is delighted that the Environment Court has agreed with the tribunal, not only for conservation of the Gowan, but because it is a precedent that makes it clear that a Water Conservation Order is not to be taken lightly.”

Water Conservation Orders recognise outstanding characteristics of waterways, including recreational, environmental, cultural and scenic values. Activities which may compromise those values, for example by changing water flows or adversely affecting water quality, are closely scrutinised when protected in this way.

The Gowan is protected under the 2001 Buller Water Conservation Order, which recognises the value of the native eel and introduced trout fishery, blue duck habitat, kayaking and rafting opportunities and the wild and scenic nature of the Buller and its tributaries.

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Carl Safina/Blue Ocean Institute

▲ This albatross chick starved to death after being fed discarded plastic cigarette lighters by its parents after they ate them, mistaking them for food.

DISCARDED fishing nets and plastic debris are killing marine wildlife around the world, so Forest & Bird is urging people not to discard these items at beaches or from boats this summer.

Leaving plastic rubbish such as bottle tops, plastic bags and plastic lighters on beaches can lead to seabirds such as penguins and albatrosses, and marine mammals such as dolphins and seals, eating them and then choking or starving to death.

Discarded plastic packaging straps can cause marine wildlife such as penguins and seals to become entangled and die, and discarded fishing nets and line can also kill marine mammals and seabirds.

“Plastic rubbish left at the beach can remain in the environment for hundreds of years, so it is important for people to take their rubbish home. This includes refraining from dumping rubbish off boats and leaving pieces of fishing net lying around,” says Forest & Bird Advocacy Manager Kevin Hackwell.

The problem is so severe in the North Pacific that there is a swirling mass of over a million kilos of plastic and other debris now covering an area of ocean the size of Australia which lies between the Hawaiian Islands and Alaska, according to researchers with the Algalita Marine Research Foundation.

▲ This young fur seal drowned in this discarded fishing net.

Brent Tandy

Ghost nets and plastic debris killing marine wildlife

Foraging albatrosses can mistake plastic debris items floating on the surface for food items and fill their growing chicks with them.

These include cigarette lighters, toothbrushes, syringes, clothes pegs and small toys. On Midway Island alone 40% of albatross chicks die from swallowing plastic debris which fills their stomachs causing them to starve or choke to death.

Craig Potton

Forest & Bird joins Wairau River consent appeals THE Department of Conservation (DOC) and Fish and Game have both lodged appeals with the Environment Court on resource consents granted to TrustPower by Marlborough District Council-appointed Commissioners to build a hydroelectric power scheme that will cause environmental damage to the Wairau River. Forest & Bird has joined the appeals under section 274 of the Resource Management Act. However, a further hearing on proposed conditions was held on 21 January with a final decision from the Commissioners now due. This has meant that the appeal process has been put on hold while awaiting the final decision from the Commissioners.

DOC has been conducting surveys of breeding birds, particularly black-fronted terns (tarapiroe) on the river over the spring/summer nesting period with the results due to be published shortly.

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FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

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branchingout

Glendowie and Wesley Primary Schools win Green Awards

Helen Bain

T Forest & Bird branch representatives and staff visited the Hakatere Conservation Park during a recent regional meeting.

Regional gatherings hit the high country

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providing an opportunity for branches and staff to meet and discuss a range of conservation campaigns and issues.

The meetings included official council meetings and workshops on Forest & Bird campaigns and priority setting, and the chance for representatives and members from different branches to get together in an enjoyable setting.

South Island staff organised a memorable field trip to visit sites in the new Hakatere Conservation Park which Forest & Bird Ashburton Branch has played a leading role advocating for. The sites visited included

Ann Graeme

OREST & Bird branch representatives from around the North and South Islands held two successful regional meetings in November in the high country.

The North Island meeting was held at National Park near Tongariro National Park and the South Island meeting at Methven near the Ashburton Lakes, with both venues allowing participants to also explore some of our most spectacular high country habitats.

Forest & Bird General Manager Mike Britton says the meetings were successful in

Forest & Bird Marine Field Officer Jacqueline Geurts with children making Maui’s dolphin sandcastles.

KCC Maui’s dolphin beach day

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HE next generation of New Zealanders is showing its support for the world’s most endangered marine mammal – the Maui’s dolphin.

The Kiwi Conservation Club (KCC) is helping to increase understanding of the issues surrounding the Maui’s dolphin through fun educational activities.

Auckland KCC members and guests recently got together for a fun educational day at the beach at Mission Bay to learn about the plight of the Maui’s dolphin.

Forest & Bird Marine Field Officer Jacqueline Geurts says the aim of the day was to get children and their families together for a fun day of learning about the importance

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a black-fronted tern colony on the Ashburton River, wetlands adjacent to the scenic Maori Lakes area, southern crested grebe habitat at scenic Lake Heron and wrybill habitat on the Cameron River.

North Island staff organised walks at two sites below Mt Ruapehu to view the native flora and fauna protected in this stunning World Heritage Area, including native mistletoes, vegetable caterpillars, long-tailed cuckoo (koekoea), New Zealand tomtit (riroriro) and rifleman (titipounamu).

Helen Bain of the marine environment and show their support for the Maui’s dolphin.

“It was a great morning where we had a talk and quiz session, built some spectacular Maui’s dolphin sand castles, held a treasure hunt, enjoyed a free lunch and shared a lot of laughs.”

Children are intensely aware of conservation issues and understand what the threat of extinction means for the Maui’s dolphin, Jacqueline Geurts says.

“These kids are the next generation of policy makers and if we can engage them in a way that they will enjoy and remember, we have a better chance of protecting the dolphins in the future.”

“We aren’t trying to tell the children what to do, but we explain the issue and engage a thought process. It is amazing to explain an issue and have the children come up with their own answers to a real-life conservation dilemma.”

Helen Bain

WO Auckland schools’ environmental efforts have been awarded Green Schools Awards by Forest & Bird’s Central Auckland Branch.

Glendowie Primary School won its award for cleaning up a stream bordering the school, while Wesley Primary School was awarded for setting up a school recycling scheme.

Central Auckland Branch Chairwoman Anne Fenn says the commitment of the students involved was really impressive.

“Today’s children will become the next generation of community leaders, ratepayers and citizens, so it is really important that they learn to understand and respect the environment. Green Schools Awards hope to encourage young people to learn about and care for the environment around them.”

In both cases the schools will use their $500 prize money to develop their environmental projects further.

Helen Bain

Notice of 85th Annual General Meeting

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HE 85th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand Inc will be held in Wellington on Saturday 28 June 2008 at 8.30am at Silverstream Retreat, 3 Reynolds Bach Drive, Lower Hutt.

The business to be transacted will include the receipt of the annual accounts and annual report to members. All members are welcome. The AGM will be followed by the Council Meeting which is conducted by branch representatives

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branchingout

General Manager’s update

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best tool to protect our native species and habitats from introduced pest species, and the government’s announcement of proposed regulations to prevent albatrosses and other seabirds being killed as bycatch in commercial fishing operations.

Some of these gains have been long-awaited – in some cases as a result of campaigns over many years – and they really have been worth celebrating.

We also need to look forward to more successes in the year ahead, such as improved protection for our endangered

Helen Bain

HE Christmas and New Year period is always a time to reflect on the past year and look forward to the coming one.

There were some memorable highlights for Forest & Bird in 2007. It was a great year with some fantastic achievements that we could not have reached without the ongoing support of our members and the wider public.

The main highlights have been gaining better protection for South Island high country lakeside lands, securing the continued use of 1080 as the

Kapiti Mana Branch restoration projects

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IGHTY-five years after Forest & Bird’s genesis on Kapiti Island, Forest & Bird’s Kapiti Mana Branch is in good heart continuing the vision – and hard work – of the organisation’s founder.

Visiting Kapiti Island after returning from the First World War, Captain Val Sanderson found the forest playground of his youth bereft of birds and overrun by grazing animals. It was the success of his campaign to restore Kapiti to its former glory that led to the formation of the Native Bird Protection Society – later Forest & Bird – in March 1923.

More than eight decades later, the Kapiti Mana Branch is just as committed to preserving Kapiti’s environment and native species – and its work has left its mark throughout the district.

Branch Chairman David Gregorie and Secretary John McLachlan show me what John calls the “pocket handkerchief ” of bush at Queen Elizabeth Park which triggered the resurgence

Plantings at Kaitawa Reserve

in activity by branch members 20 years ago.

Branch member June Rowland was the “leading light” here in instigating the replanting of native species around the small remaining stand of mature kahikatea that was besieged by salt winds, pests and “a sea of blackberry”.

Two decades later the forest and surrounding dunes and ephemeral wetlands are cloaked with tall ngaio, mahoe, cabbage trees, flax, native fuchsia and kanuka – plants grow amazingly fast in Kapiti’s warm climate.

This success spurred the branch on to even more ambitious projects.

Further north the 6.8-hectare Kaitawa Reserve was set aside as reserve when the surrounding area was subdivided for housing 30 years ago, but in the 1990s Kapiti Coast District Council proposed selling it.

Forest & Bird member Molly Neill stepped in, and the branch has been steadily planting natives and clearing weeds every

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Hector’s and Maui’s dolphins, and greater protection for some of our most precious braided rivers which face the potential threat of hydroelectric development and extraction for intensive commercial use.

My thanks go to all our dedicated members whose support makes possible all the conservation work that Forest & Bird does– your contribution is truly appreciated and makes a real difference to the important conservation goals that we all want to see achieved.

We also launched a new promotion of our Sustain membership in December,

which is a programme for monthly giving. The response to that promotion so far has been very encouraging and I would like to thank those who have already responded.

While the support we receive from members and donors is enormously valuable, we do encourage everyone who is in a position to consider becoming a Sustain member to do so. By doing so you will be helping to better ensure the conservation of our native plants, animals and wild places.

Future generations will thank you for it!

Mike Britton

week at Kaitawa ever since. The results are impressive and the branch now considers Kaitawa “the jewel in our crown.”

Planting along the Wharemauku Stream that runs through the reserve stabilise its banks and protects against floods; numerous walkers enjoy the scenic walk through new plantings of rimu, kahikatea, northern rata, totara, ngaio, carex, flax and many other natives that have supplemented the reserve’s “backbone” of remnant forest, and everywhere the tui and kereru swoop and feast on the abundance of food the native vegetation provides.

John – who was awarded an Old Blue for his work here – says historic accounts of the area describe flocks of 100 kereru. The most he has seen in recent years is nine, but numbers are growing fast. He has also seen the occasional kaka, which probably venture across from Kapiti Island.

At yet another Forest & Bird-tended reserve, Greendale, branch member Errol Hardy proudly shows us a profusion of tiny kahikatea seedlings – originating from a few 300-year-old kahikatea across the stream – popping up under the shelter of Forest & Bird’s plantings. Just a decade ago this was a racehorse paddock.

The branch keeps up with demand for its ever-increasing plantings by growing on 5000 plants a year at its Waikanae nursery.

Although in recent decades Kapiti has undergone enormous population increases and development, which inevitably

put immense pressure on the environment, David says improving community attitudes mean conservation is still outweighing destruction of the region’s natural places.

“People are really beginning to value these places and appreciate that we need to look after them.”

Educational leaflets distributed by the branch to Kapiti letterboxes on matters such as controlling cats and not dumping potentially invasive garden rubbish into reserves help spread the green message in the community.

Where Forest & Bird was once in the minority in championing the conservation cause, conservation has now become “mainstream,” John says.

“Forest & Bird has its beginnings in Kapiti, so it is continuing a long legacy. There are now lots of other groups doing work as well, but they are still following the same vision that Forest & Bird started.”

Helen Bain

The winner is…

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HE winner of the draw for a pair of Leica binoculars advertised in 2007 is Auckland member Greg Billington of Newton. He will receive a pair of Leica 10 x 25 Trinovid binoculars worth $750.

FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

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Lower Hutt Branch joins up the green dots

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Ellerslie Flower Show stall a winner again

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OREST & Bird’s display won a merit award at the Ellerslie Flower Show in November for the second year running.

The exhibit, focusing on New Zealand’s fragile coastal environment, was designed by Forest & Bird field officers Nick Beveridge and Jacqueline Geurts to show visitors how important the coastal area is for providing habitat for some of New Zealand’s most vulnerable native species, from the little blue penguin to the katipo spider.

The koru shape of the display was inspired by the ram’s horn shell commonly found on New Zealand beaches, and the plants on display ranged from the large and well-known pohutukawa to smaller and lesser-known dune plants such as the shore bindweed.

As well as raising awareness among the thousands of visitors to Ellerslie, Forest & Bird signed up scores of new members during the show.

Helen Bain

Queen’s Service Medal Awards

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OREST & Bird member Rosalie Smith was awarded the Queen’s Service Medal in the New Year’s honours for services to agricultural journalism and the community.

A member of the Tauranga Branch, Rosalie’s conservation work has included involvement in the campaign to save native forest in the Kaimai Ranges; she has also served as chairperson of the Kaimai Mamaku Forest Park Advisory Committee, helped set up the Uretara Estuary Managers group, and is a committee member of the Aongatete Forest Resoration Trust.

William Cranson of the Kapiti Mana Branch was awarded the QSM for services to the New Zealand Fire Service.

He served as Branch Chairman from 1973-78 and again from 1979-80, and Secretary/ Treasurer from 1978-79.

Jenny Campbell, Secretary of Forest & Bird Southland Branch, also received the QSM for services to the community.

Jenny was involved in the establishment of Te Whenua Awhi Invercargill Environment Centre and is active in various community groups, including Forest & Bird.

Helen Bain

Martin Hunt

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ONGSTANDING Wellington Branch committee member, Martin Hunt, died in January. He was a stalwart of the branch and will be missed by friends and fellow committee members for his dedicated contribution to the life of the branch, which is one of the Society’s largest. He will also be remembered for his involvement in the Kakapo Recovery Programme.

Seaweek 2008

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EAWEEK 2008 is being held from 2-9 March. For information about this year’s events please see the Seaweek website at: www.seaweek.org.nz

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OREST & Bird’s Lower Hutt Branch has hatched an ambitious plan to link natural wildlife sites in their local area.

Its “Natural Lower Hutt” plan, initially devised by former branch chairman Russell Bell, aims to link up bush “corridors” to connect natural areas of bush in places such as Wainuiomata, Eastbourne and the Hutt Valley’s eastern hills and Belmont Regional Park and pockets of native vegetation on the opposite side of the valley.

The plan would enable existing projects, such as areas of intensive predator control, habitat restoration and reintroduction of species, to be joined up and hopefully flourish further as a result.

Green corridors enable native birds and other species to move from one area to another, rather than being isolated in small pockets of suitable

habitat. This means their gene pool can be widened and their numbers can increase – and they are likely to move into areas where more residents can see and enjoy them.

Lower Hutt Branch Chairman Stan Butcher says the plan is challenging but he believes it is achievable.

The biggest hurdle will be connecting the eastern and western sides of the valley, but Forest & Bird’s Upper Hutt Branch’s replanting project at Hull’s Creek in Silverstream is already well advanced and this could connect with a good stand of bush at the Keith George Memorial Park close by on the western hills.

All five of Forest & Bird’s other branches in the region support the plan and it is hoped similar projects will be developed in their areas.

Helen Bain

Waihou River restoration plantings

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UNDREDS of hours of work by Forest & Bird’s Thames-Hauraki Branch are really starting to reap rewards on the west bank of the Waihou River.

The riparian strip between the river and its embankment, which separates rural Hauraki from a salt meadow and the river, has been the focus of a group of Forest & Bird members led by Project Manager Ken Clark.

The area from the mangrove margin of the river, which leads into a broad salt meadow, has been the target for enhancement.

Clumps of salt marsh ribbonwood, marsh clubrush and some sprawling Muehlenbeckia complexa are the only natural colonisers of this area. However, the predominant plant is the introduced tall fescue.

A considerable amount of experimental planting has taken place, with more than 20 different species of trees and shrubs planted out, both on the west bank and on the eastern side at Shelly Beach.

The southern west-side strip has been the most successful, possibly due to it being the least

saline of the areas in this harsh environment, subject to tidal change and salinity.

The best results have been achieved with ngaio, flax and pohutukawa. Kahikatea and puriri have given good but variable results, but most of the other species have failed.

Over the past three years volunteers have put in more than 740 hours on the project.

More than 600 plants were planted in 2007 with many more to come, as the local nursery is growing on another lot of seedlings to a suitable size.

The timing for the completion of this project is fortuitous, as it is expected to coincide with the completion of the hydrology studies for the ecological rehabilitation of the Kauaeranga Valley floodplain.

This major project at the entrance into Thames township is a combined Department of Conservation, Environment Waikato, Thames-Coromandel District Council and Forest & Bird initiative. Hopefully planting on this project will start in 2008, after associated earthworks and walkways have been completed.

Doug Ashby

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Conservation project grants awarded by JS Watson Trust

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Maureen Baling of Massey University will be investigating the translocation of shore skink (Oligosoma smithi) and the function of variability of colour in the species from Tawharanui Regional Park.

Diane Batchelor of Carterton will conduct an ecological survey of fungi at Mt Holdsworth in the Wairarapa.

James Bell of Victoria University will study marine reserve connectivity between the lower North Island and upper South Island by investigating population genetics.

Gaylynne Carter of Massey University will be investigating the effects of stoat control on

Rod Morris/Department of Conservation Te Papa Atawhai

HE JS Watson Trust has been helping fund conservation projects beneficial to New Zealand’s endangered flora and fauna since 1986. Twelve grants for conservation projects were allocated for the 2007-2008 year by the Trust, which is administered by Forest & Bird. The latest projects to be supported are as follows: ship rat populations in relation to endemic forest ecology.

Christopher Hepburn of the University of Otago will be investigating whether exotic species are irreversibly changing native marine habitats on the Otago coast.

Gary James of the Wellington Branch of Forest & Bird will be growing a variety of common and rare native plants at low cost to supply budding community native forest restoration projects around Wellington City.

Todd Landers of the University of Auckland will track the long-range at-sea movements of threatened Westland petrels (Procellaria westlandica).

The at-sea movements of Westland black petrels will be tracked by researchers at the University of Auckland.

Victor Meyer of Auckland will be conducting research on the biodiversity and phylogeny of the Philosciidae and Armadillidae terrestrial isopods (Crustacea, Isopoda, Oniscidea).

Dai Morgan of Massey University will collect diet, density, movement and home range data on all pest mammals (cat, ship rat, mouse) present at an island in the Hauraki Gulf.

The data will indicate how important rodents are as prey items for cats and the threshold rodent density that causes cats to start hunting birds.

Luis Ortiz Catedral of Auckland will document habitat use, social interactions and breeding success of newly translocated critically endangered orange-fronted parakeets on Maud Island in the Marlborough Sounds.

Kate Richardson of Hamilton will study the survival, dispersal and body condition of the endangered hihi or stitchbirds translocated to a mainland site in the Waitakere Ranges, Auckland.

Lisa Tracy of the University of Otago will study the genetic consequences of habitat fragmentation and population bottlenecks in the endangered yellowhead (mohua).

JS Watson Conservation Trust Applications are invited from individuals or conservation groups for financial assistance for conservation projects for the 2008-2009 year.

This Trust is administered by Forest & Bird.

Application procedures and forms can be downloaded from our website – www.forestandbird.org.nz.

For further information email office@forestandbird.org.nz or write to: JS Watson Conservation Trust Forest & Bird PO Box 631 Wellington

Preliminary applications close Wednesday 4 June 2008

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bookreviews

New Zealand’s Wilderness Heritage

By Les Molloy and Craig Potton, 320 pp, hardbound, Craig Potton Publishing, 2007, RRP $89.99

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HIS impeccably presented book on New Zealand’s spectacular wilderness landscapes, habitats and species would be my pick for a 2007 book of the year.

The quality and reproduction of the 300 photographs is second to none. They are so sharp and clear they seem almost threedimensional on the page.

The book is structured around thirteen regional chapters which detail the incredible variety of landscapes, offshore islands and geothermal and glacial features which make New Zealand “many countries in one”.

Over the course of 320 pages it manages to pack in more than this with its thoughtful descriptions of our main protected areas, the flora and fauna values protected within them, and the many species that live in and between them, and how these varied landforms, ecosystems and species evolved into what they are today.

The wilderness heritage theme flows through the book, with areas of untamed nature described as tranquil places of reflection and solitude to be set aside from industrial activities such as commercial logging, fishing and mass tourism.

It also has a lot to say about conservation, including a vision for better protecting this unique wilderness heritage.

One of the most powerful points made here is that, despite having the world’s fourth largest exclusive economic zone (EEZ), relatively little is protected within New Zealand’s marine environment. We ought to treat New Zealand’s ocean wilderness areas as we’ve treated fully protected areas on land and set aside more as no-take marine reserves to match terrestrial protection.

Ultimately, like New Zealand itself, it is the scale and variety of this important book that is so impressive.

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Bird – The Definitive Visual Guide

By BirdLife International and David Burnie, 512pp, hardbound, Dorling Kindersley, 2007, RRP $75

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HIS visually stunning popular book on the world’s birds is an impressive collaboration between the publisher and BirdLife International.

The superb photographs of over 1500 species and informative text convey the variety and complexity of avian life, with a CD of 60 bird songs adding a welcome dimension to the sensory experience.

A comprehensive introductory section covers bird biology, behaviour, distribution, migration, nesting, flight, song and conservation with examples from a wide range of species.

This is followed by generous layouts on the 32 main habitat types which birds are found in and several more on the main threats to their survival.

Then you get to the main body of the book: 380 pages covering every bird family and over 1000 representive species.

Each bird family has its own introduction and 24 world class birdwatching sites are profiled.

The user-friendly design means the book is accessible to younger readers, yet contains enough up-to-date information to hold the interest of readers already familiar with the basic facts about the world’s birds.

The three bird families unique to New Zealand - kiwis, New Zealand wattlebirds and New Zealand wrens - are included.

With the exception of the birds of paradise that occur in and around New Guinea, relatively few Pacific Island species are covered in depth.

In comparison with other large format photographic books of this length this major work is reasonably priced.

Handbook of Australian, New Zealand & Antarctic Birds, Vol 7, A & B Edited by RJ Higgins, 1984 pp, hardbound, OUP, 2006, RRP $492

T

HIS volume completes the series, which has been a major undertaking for Birds Australia, the BirdLife International Partner in that country.

Taken together, this series offers a comprehensive contemporary synthesis of information on the bird species of the two countries and one region of the title. You could say it is also the most academic of the bird books reviewed here.

Volume seven will be of most interest to New Zealand readers because it includes the wattlebirds, pipits, swallows, fernbirds and white-eyes, as well as many introduced species such as Australian magpie, rook, house sparrow, various finches and buntings, both the thrushes, common starling and common myna.

Each species account runs to several pages which means these are, in effect, scientific papers summarising all published information on each.

The paintings of each species and their sub-types are especially good. Derek Onley’s portraits of both subspecies of kokako, including a juvenile bird and an adult bird in flight, are among the highlights.

The only disappointment with the paintings is that the huia is not included.

I found myself wondering why, when the New Zealand piopio is. Both species are thought to have become extinct early in the twentieth century and it could be argued that the huia is the more visually interesting of the two species.

At the price, this is one for the experts. w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

bookreviews

Handbook of the Birds of World Vols 11 & 12

By Josep del Hoyo, 800pp, Lynx Edicions, hardbound, $397 per volume

S

INCE Volume One appeared, this series has been widely accepted as the definitive reference work on the world’s 10,000 bird species.

These two most recent volumes in a projected series of 16 get off to a powerful start with absorbing introductory essays on the ecological role of birds and the evolution of birds. The essay in Volume 12 draws on the latest fossil evidence and includes interesting examples from this part of the world.

The bird families covered in Volume 11 include the fantails, flycatchers and monarchs, many of which occur in the Pacific Islands. The endemic New Zealand fantail is also included among the 44 fantail species covered.

Volume 12 has a stronger emphasis on Australian and New Zealand bird species covering the babblers, logrunners, whistlers, Australasian robins and fairywrens. The yellowhead (mohoua), whitehead (popokatea), brown creeper (pipipi), New Zealand tomtit (riororiro), New Zealand robin (toutouwai) and Chatham Island black robin are all covered.

In the absence of a comprehensive, up-to-date guide book to the birds of the Pacific Islands, this series offers the most in-depth contemporary account of them.

Each species is illustrated with specially commissioned paintings which show the different plumages of the sexes and juvenile stages necessary for field identification.

Copies can be ordered online at www.hbw.com w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

Southern Alps – Nature & History of New Zealand’s Mountain World

By Alison Ballance, 320 pp, hardbound, Random House, 2007, RRP $89.99

T

HIS delicious book celebrating the Southern Alps by award-winning natural history film-maker and writer Alison Ballance contains everything you ever wanted to know about their geology, human history and natural history.

Presented in an absorbing narrative, the stories of the geological and biological processes that have combined to create the Southern Alps unfold in breathtaking detail.

Alison Ballance’s subtle descriptions of the alpine flora, and close encounters recalled with alpine zone birds such as kea and rock wren, are riveting.

She weaves together epic journeys and explorations of mountains and glaciers with picturesque habitats from alpine flower gardens and wetlands to beech forests and tussock grasslands to tell the monumental story of “the backbone of the country”.

The spacious design is an engaging blend of historical graphic illustrations, old black and white photographs and contemporary colour images of landscapes and species by Arno Gasteiger, Rod Morris and others.

A few of the colour photographs that appear later in the book do not seem to have reproduced quite as well as might have been expected, so in a couple of instances they seem slightly washed out.

The photographs of nineteenth century climbing attire on pages 267 and 268 are gems among the more than 300 images.

These help make this the value for money publication it undoubtedly is.

Rare Birds Yearbook 2008 Edited by Erik Hirchfeld, 274pp, limpbound, MagDig Media, 2007, RRP $45

I

T is a reflection of the state of the world’s bird species that there is now a publication which focuses solely on the plight of the 189 that are critically endangered.

Compiled in cooperation with BirdLife International, this new yearbook includes an entry of up to two pages for each species, complete with its history, latest information on its status, and the measures being taken to protect it.

Each species is illustrated in colour, with many of the photographs published for the first time.

It includes useful notes on each country.

For example, the USA, together with its overseas territories, and Brazil both have more critically endangered species (25) than any other country.

This is nearly three times as many as New Zealand, which has nine – all included in this publication. In the South Pacific region Australia and French Polynesia each have six.

It also contains two special sections on climate change and ecotourism which set out the scale of the threat posed to birds by the former, and potential for the latter to help save some of the species covered in the book.

Copies can be ordered online from www.rarebirdsyearbook.com For each copy sold, the publishers will donate $10 to BirdLife International’s conservation work.

Michael Szabo FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

47

The Real Vanuatu With Forest & Bird

tion Area

Conserva Helping Vatthe

BIORESEARCHES CONSULTING BIOLOGISTS AND ARCHAEOLOGISTS ESTABLISHED 1972

Environmental Impact Studies Surveys of Marine, Freshwater & Terrestrial Habitats Pollution Investigations Resource Consent procedures Archaeological; Historic Places Appraisal bioresearches@bioresearches.co.nz www.bioresearches.co.nz P.O Box 2828 Auckland PH: AUCKLAND 379 9417 Fax (09) 307 6409

Get track and contribute Getoff offthe thebeaten beaten track and tocontribute the futuretoofthe Vatthe Conservation future of Vatthe –Park.

Fourteen days four islands, Vanuatu’s firstvisiting national park. one live volcano, snorkelling over vibrant Fourteen days exploring three coral reefs, and helping with a weed islands: walk in Vatthe’s tropical project to help save Vatthe’s tropical forest.snorkel over forest, stay in remote Matantas village, Stay in locally accommodation. vibrant reefs, owned kayak village and see Tanna’s active volcano.

You will travel with Sue, who lived worked You will travel with Sue who, hashas lived andand worked withwith the the landowners of Vatthe. landowners of Vatthe.

Sue Maturin, Forest and Bird, Box 6230,Dunedin Dunedin Sue Maturin, Forest and Bird, Box 6230, PH 03 Ph477 03 9677 477 9677, fax 03 477 5232, email: s.maturin@forestandbird.org.nz Email: s.maturin@forestandbird.org.nz Party limited to 12. departs Party limited to 12.

Trip Trip departs JuneJune 20082004.

Friends of the Driving Creek Wildlife Sanctuary Trust We are raising funds to build a predator proof fence in Coromandel.

Membership & donations sought.

DCWST, P O Box 87, Coromandel.

07 8668703 sanctuary@drivingcreek.co.nz

RON GREENWOOD ENVIRONMENTAL TRUST

The trust provides financial support for projects advancing the conservation and protection of New Zealand's natural resources, particularly flora and fauna, marine life, geology, atmosphere & waters.

More information is available from the Trust, at: PO Box 10-359, Wellington

FOR SALE

Brand new 4bdrm, 2 bathroom, 3 storey home finished to your requirements.

Approx 1000 acres of covenanted native bush 5 mins from Mangawhai beach shopping & cafes.

Looking for something different?

Brian Marsh a/h (09) 432 2248 or (0274) 983 809 Northland Real Estate Ltd MREINZ

To advertise in Forest & Bird please contact Vanessa Clegg on 0275 420 337 or Karen Condon on 0275 420 338.

NATURE’S TREASURES NEED YOUR HELP New Zealand’s breathtaking natural landscapes and beautiful native animal and plant life are precious treasures to us all. They are part of our identity as New Zealanders.

But with so many of our natural treasures threatened with extinction, it is vital that we continue to protect them for future generations to experience and enjoy.

The Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand Incorporated is the leading independent voice for conservation. Our vital conservation work couldn’t continue without the generous gifts we receive from supporters.

By leaving a gift in your Will to Forest & Bird you will help ensure our vital 48 FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008 conservation work continues to make a difference.

Forest & Bird is not funded by the government. We rely on the generosity of Kiwis through donations, subscriptions and bequests.

Bequests can be made to the “Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand Incorporated”.

For a copy of our bequest brochure or to discuss leaving a gift in your Will to Forest & Bird please contact Kerin Welford on Freephone 0800 200 064.

Kerin Welford, Senior Fundraiser Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand Incorporated, PO Box 631, Wellington 6140. forestandbird.org.nz Email: k.welford@forestandbird.org.nzw w w .www.forestandbird.org.nz

Bush & Beyond

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Concerned about your carbon footprint when traveling?

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Details on our website together with our trip schedule for 2008.

5% discount for F&B members.

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Money

The Original From Comfortable LodgeKahurangi stay to Off track Guides wilderness backpacking.

From Comfortable Including: Lodge stay to Heaphy and Cobb Valley Off track wilderness and much more! backpacking Conservation Including:values Heaphy and

www.bushandbeyond.co.nz

elm wildlife tours

elm wildlife tours

Motueka, 7198 T/F: 03 528 9054 E: info@bushandbeyond.co.nz W: www. bushandbeyond.co.nz

Waikava Harbour View 4 bedroom luxury lodge

Based from the comfort of New Zealand’s two Wilderness Lodges.

ARTHUR’S PASS Southern Alps Heartland or LAKE MOERAKI West Coast Wilderness April, May 2008 Guided by Biologist Dr Gerry McSweeney 6 days of nature & plant discovery, walking, birdwatching, canoeing, gourmet food and fun.

Suits all ages For details contact: Email: gerry@wildernesslodge.co.nz Phone: 03 318 9002 www.wildernesslodge.co.nz

35 School RD 3and much CobbRd, Valley Motueka, 7198more!

T/F: 03Conservation 528 9054 values E: info@bushandbeyond.co.nz 35 School Rd, RD 3

Ph/Fax: 03 249 6600 Freephone 0800 249 660 PO Box 40, MANAPOURI Email: info@fiordland.gen.nz www.fiordland.gen.nz

WILDERNESS WEEKS

Peaceful native setting

Andes Overland – 29 days – 6 June 08 Discover SA – 29 days – 8 August 08 CALL FREE FOR ITINERARY & BROCHURE Latin Link Adventure The South American Specialists 0800 528 465 / marg@latinlink.co.nz

White Heron Sanctuary Tours Come with us, RAINFOREST, NATURE and JETBOATING TOURS, all year round.

Viewing of nesting colony from October to March.

Ph. 0800 52 34 56

www.whiteherontours.co.nz

Waipohatu bush walk Curio Bay fossil forest Hector’s dolphins, yellow-eyed penguins, seals 14 Larne Street, Waikawa, Southland

OKARITO COTTAGE

Tel: 03 246 8866 Email: waikawa@southcatlins.co.nz

Website: www.southcatlins.co.nz

Details www.elmwildlifetours.co.nz

Galapagos Islands

KOTARE COUNTRY LODGE

10 day Multi Activity Trip

‘Where the kotare calls…’

A tranquil base from which to explore historic Warkworth and the Matakana region, 70 minutes north of Auckland. www.kotarecountrylodge.co.nz Ph/fax 09 427 5517

Departs every month from Quito Freephone 0800 874 748 www.southernexposuretours.co.nz

Latin America

South America

Details www.elmwildlifetours.co.nz

For Stewart Island Accommodation in the Bush Rakiura Retreat Motels overlooking Braggs Bay/ Halfmoon Bay • Access to beach • Complimentary cars/bikes • Warm & comfortable • Transfers & Professional guides available • Sleeps up to 22 Individuals & Groups welcome.

PINDONE PELLETS For the control of Possums and Rats Renovated farmhouse surrounded by B&B holidays in rural Italy

gardens and orchards.

Birdwatchers’ paradise– bee-eaters, gargaeys, honey buzzards, marsh harriers, wrynecks and nightingales etc Near mountains, beaches & the medieval towns of Jesi and Ancona – 20 mins Ancona airport

22-29 Nov ’08 $2995 twin share Leader: Ian Hutton Contact: TravelSmart Napier 06 835 2222 john@tsnapier.co.nz

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 2032 Website: www.philproof.co.nz Email: philproof.feeders@clear.net.nz

enquiries@holidays2italy.com Tel: 0039 0731 267869

PINDONE PELLE TS LS PM 35

Freephone 0800 874 748 www.southernexposuretours.co.nz

Further enquiries contact Elspeth Scott, 19 Ngamotu Rd, Taupo 07-378-9390 email: ElspethScott@xtra.co.nz

www.rakiuraretreat.co.nz info@rakiuraretreat.co.nz • 03 2191096

LORD HOWE ISLAND

Unique Small Group Tours

Well appointed cottage. Sleeps 3 but room for more in the attic. Close to West Coast beach, bush walks and lagoon.

Southern Alps form a backdrop and Franz Josef approx.

30 kilometres on tarsealed road.

Cost $70 PER FAMILY Extra Adults $10 per night

For the control of Possums and Rats 2kg, 10kg and 25kg bags avaliable 2kg, 10kg and 25kg “Ask bags available at your local Farm Store” “Ask at your local Farm Store”

The first pellet registered for theand control The first pellet bait registered for thebait control of Possums Rats of Possums and Rats • Cinnamon lured, highly palatable • No pre-feed required • Cinnamon lured, highly palatable

• No pre-feed required

• Reduced risk of secondary poisoning

• Vitamin K1, antidote

• Reduced risk of secondary poisoning

• Vitamin K1, antidote

• No licence required to• purchase or use,tobut mustorbeuseused in bait stations No license required purchase but must be used in bait Rat stations • Kilmore Possum & Protecta bait stations readily available • Kilmore Possum & Protecta Rat bait stations readily available

DEADLY SERIOUS ABOUT PESTS www.nopests.co.nz 0800 111 466 Registered pursuant to the ACVM Act 1997 No: V4110

w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

49

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FOREST BIRD

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FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2007

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Forest & Bird PO Box 631 Wellington

FOREST BIRD

Freepost Authority Number 669

branchdirectory

Upper North Island Central Auckland: Chair, Anne Fenn; Secretary, Isabel Still, PO Box 1118, Shortland St, Auckland, 1140.

Tel: (09) 528-3986.

Far North: Chair, Vacant; Secretary, Michael Winch, PO Box 270, Kaeo, 0448. Tel: (09) 405-1746.

Franklin: Chair & Secretary, Keith Gardner, 5 Stembridge Ave, Pukekohe, 2120. Tel: (09) 238-9928.

Great Barrier Island: Secretary, Bert Vowden, 37 Medland Rd, RD1, Gt Barrier Is, 0991. Tel: (09) 429-0402.

Hauraki Islands: Chair, Brian Griffiths; Secretary, Simon Griffiths, PO Box 314, Ostend, Waiheke Island, 1843.

Tel: (09) 372-9583.

Hibiscus Coast: Chair, Philip Wrigley; Secretary, Jane Bone, PO Box 310, Orewa, 0946. Tel: (09) 424-7171.

Kaipara: Chair, Suzi Phillips; Secretary, Suzi Phillips, Private Bag 1, Helensville, 0840. Tel: 021 271 2527.

Mid North: Chair, Warwick Massey; Secretary, Raewyn Morrison, PO Box 552, Warkworth 0941.

Tel: (09) 422-9123.

Northern: Chair, Vacant; Secretary, Beverly Woods, PO Box 1375, Whangarei, 0140. Tel: 09 432 7122.

North Shore: Chair, Jim Lewis; Secretary, Jocelyn Sanders, PO Box 33 873, Takapuna, North Shore City, 0740.

Tel: (09) 479-2107.

South Auckland: Chair, Dene Andre; Secretary, Vacant, PO Box 23 602, Hunters Corner, Manukau, 2155. Tel: (09) 267- 4366.

Thames/Hauraki: Chair, Marcia Sowman; Secretary, Hazel Genner, PO Box 312, Thames, 3540.

Tel: (07) 868-9057.

Mercury Bay Section: Chair, Eve McCarthy; Secretary, Gay Hart, PO Box 205, Whitianga 3542.

Tel: (07) 866 2986.

Upper Coromandel: Chair, Tina Morgan; Secretary, Jeanette McIntosh, PO Box 108, Coromandel, 3543. Tel: (07) 866-7248.

Waitakere: Chair, John Staniland; Secretary, Janie Vaughan, PO Box 60 655, Titirangi, 0642. Tel: (09) 817-9262.

Central North Island Eastern Bay of Plenty: Chair, Rosemary Tully; Secretary, Vacant, c/o Ezebiz Tax, PO Box 582, Whakatane, 3158. Tel: (07) 308-5576.

Gisborne: Chair, Dick McMurray; Secretary, Vacant, 43 Muir St, Gisborne, 4010. Tel: (06) 867-4081.

Rotorua: Chair, Vacant; Secretary, Sue Werry, PO Box 1489, Rotorua, 3040. Tel: (07) 348-6558.

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

Taupo: Chair, Anne Gallagher; Secretary, Vacant, PO Box 1105 Taupo, 3351. Tel: (07) 376-5907.

Tauranga: Chair, Vacant; Secretary, Cynthia Carter, PO Box 487, Tauranga, 3140. Tel: (07) 552-0220.

Te Puke: Chair, Carole Long; Secretary, Colin Horn, PO Box 237, Te Puke, 3153. Tel: (07) 573-7345.

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

Waikato: Chair, Dr Philip Hart; Secretary, Jim MacDiarmid, PO Box 11 092, Hillcrest, Hamilton, 3251.

Tel: (07) 849-3438.

Wairoa: Chair, Stanley Richardson; Secretary, Glenys Single, 72 Kopu Rd, Wairoa 4108. Tel: (07) 838-8232.

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

Dunedin: Chair, Janet Ledingham; Secretary, Mark Hanger, PO Box 5793, Dunedin, 9058.

Tel: (03) 489-8444.

Golden Bay: Chair, Jenny Treloar; Secretary, Jo-Anne Vaughan, Puponga Rd, Ferntown, RD1, Collingwood 7073. Tel: (03) 524-8072.

Lower North Island Kaikoura: Chair, Sue Jarvie; Secretary, Barry Dunnett, Central Hawkes Bay: Chair, Max Chatfield; Secretary, Pooles Rd, RD1, Kaikoura, 7371. Tel: (03) 319-5086.

Barrie & Judith Bayliss, PO Box 189, Waipukurau, 4242.

Marlborough: Chair, Andrew John; Secretary, Vacant, Tel: (06) 858-8765.

PO Box 896, Blenheim, 7240. Tel: (03) 573-5509.

Hastings/Havelock North: Chair, Ian Noble; Nelson/Tasman: Chair, Dr Peter Ballance; Secretary, Doreen Hall, Flat 1, 805 Kennedy Rd, Hastings. Secretary, Tony Bryant, 49 Motueka Quay, Motueka, 4120. Tel: (06) 876-5978.

7010. Tel: (07) 528-5212.

Horowhenua: Chair, Robert Hirschberg; North Canterbury: Chair: Lois Griffiths; Secretary, Joan Leckie, 44 Makahika Rd, RD 1, Levin 5571. Secretary, David Ellison-Smith, PO Box 2389, Tel: (06) 368-1277.

Christchurch Mail Centre, Christchurch 8140.

Kapiti Mana: Chair, David Gregorie; Secretary, John Tel: (03) 981-7037.

McLachlan, 78 Langdale Ave, Paraparaumu, 5032.

South Canterbury: Chair, Marijke Bakker-Gelsing; Tel: (04) 904-0027.

Secretary, Margaret McPherson, 29 Mountain View Lower Hutt: Chair, Stan Butcher; Secretary, Kevin Road, Timaru, 7910. Tel: (03) 686-1494.

Bateman, PO Box 31194, Lower Hutt, 5040.

Southland: Chair, Craig Carson; Secretary, Vacant, Tel: (04) 970-9264.

PO Box 1155, Invercargill, 9840. Tel: (03) 213-0732.

Manawatu: Chair, Brent Barrett; Secretary, Anthea South Otago: Chair, Carol Botting; McClelland, PO Box 961, Palmerston North, 4440.

Secretary, Verna Gardner, 973 Owake Highway, Romahapa Tel: (06) 353-6758.

RD1, Balclutha, 9271. Tel: (03) 418-1819.

Napier: Chair, Neil Eagles; Secretary, Margaret Gwynn, Upper Clutha: Chair, John Turnbull; Secretary, Angela 23 Clyde Rd, Napier, 4110. Tel: (06) 835-2122.

Brown, PO Box 38, Lake Hawea, Hawea, 9345.

North Taranaki: Chair, Carolyn Brough; Secretary, Tel: (03) 433-7020.

Murray Duke, PO Box 1029, New Plymouth 4340.

Waitaki: Chair, Ross Babington; Tel: (06) 751-2759.

Secretary, Annette Officer, 21 Arrow Crescent, Oamaru, Rangitikei: Chair, Tony Simpson; Secretary, Betty 9401. Tel: (03) 434-6107.

Graham, 41 Tutaenui Rd, Marton, 4710.

West Coast: Chair, Vacant; Secretary, Carolyn Cox, Tel: (06) 327-7008.

168 Romilly St, Westport, 7825. Tel: (03) 789-5334.

South Taranaki: Chair, Rex Hartley; Secretary, Lynda Sutherland, 39 High St, Eltham, 4322. Tel: (06) 764-7479.

lodgeaccommodation Arethusa Cottage An ideal place from which to explore the Far North.

Near Pukenui in wet-land reserve. 6 bunks, fully equipped kitchen, separate bathroom outside. For information and bookings, contact: John Dawn, Doves Bay Road, RD1, Kerikeri.

Tel: (09) 407-8658, Fax: (09) 407-1401.

Email: johnfd@xnet.co.nz.

Tai Haruru Lodge, Piha, West Auckland A seaside haven set in a large sheltered garden on the rugged West Coast, 38km on sealed roads from central Auckland. Close to store, bush reserves and tracks in the beautiful Waitakere Ranges. Double bedroom and 3 singles, plus large lounge with wood burner, dining area and kitchen. The self-contained unit has 4 single beds. Bring food, linen and fuel for fire and BBQ. Booking officer: Patricia Thompson, 78 Neil Avenue, Te Atatu Peninsula, Waitakere City 0610.

Tel: (09) 834-7745 after 9am. Off peak rates apply.

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. w w w. f o r e s t a n d b i r d . o r g . n z

Upper Hutt: Chair, Dr Barry Wards; Secretary, Vacant; PO Box 40 875, Upper Hutt, 5140. Tel: (04) 970-4266.

Wairarapa: Chair, Geoff Doring; Secretary, David Aldersley, 75 Kent St, Carterton, 5791. Tel: (06) 379-7446.

Wanganui: Chair, Vacant; Secretary, Ray Hutchison, PO Box 4229, Wanganui, 4541. Tel: (06) 345-2651.

Wellington: Chair, Marc Slade; Secretary, Janet Coburn, PO Box 4183, Wellington, 6140. Tel: (04) 971-8200.

Ruapehu Lodge, Tongariro National Park Situated 600 m from Whakapapa Village, at the foot of Mount Ruapehu, this lodge is available for members and their friends. It may also be hired out to other compatible groups by special arrangement.

It is an ideal base for tramping, skiing, botanising or visiting the hotpools at Tokaanu. The lodge holds 32 people in four bunkrooms and provides all facilities except food and bedding. Bookings and inquiries to Forest and Bird, PO Box 631, Wellington.

Tel: (04) 385-7374, Fax: (04) 385-7373.

Email: office@forestandbird.org.nz

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. For information sheet, send stamped addressed envelope to: Accomodation Officer, PO Box 31-194, Lower Hutt.

Tel: (04) 934-0559 or (04) 569 2542.

Mangarakau Swamp Field Centre, North West Nelson Borders Kahurangi National Park and Te Tai Tapu William Hartree Memorial Lodge, Hawkes Bay Marine Reserve. New, 10 bed lodge with two Situated 48km from Napier, 8km past Patoka on the bathrooms, fully equipped kitchen. Sleeping bags, Puketitiri Rd (sealed). The lodge is set amid a 14ha towels and food required. Contact Jo-Anne Vaughan – Golden Bay Branch Secretary for details: scenic reserve and close to many walks, eg: Kaweka Range, Balls Clearing, hot springs and museum. The javn@xtra.co.nz or phone (03) 5248072. lodge accommodates up to 15 people. It has a fully Tautuku Lodge, Otago equipped kitchen including stove, refrigerator and State Highway 92, Southeast Otago. Situated on microwave plus tile fire, hot showers. Supply your Forest and Bird's 550ha Lenz Reserve 32km south own linen, sleeping bags etc. For information and of Owaka. A bush setting, and many lovely beaches bookings please send a stamped addressed envelope nearby provide a wonderful base for exploring to Mike and Linda Hay, 172 Guppy Road, Taradale, the Catlins. The lodge, the Coutts cabin and an ANapier 4112. Tel: (06) 8444651. frame sleep 10, 4 and 2 respectively. No Animals.

Email: hayhouse@clear.net.nz.

For information and rates please send a stamped addressed envelope to the caretaker: Matiu/Somes Island, Wellington Harbour Diana Noonan, Mirren St, Papatowai, Owaka, RD2.

Joint venture accommodation by Lower Hutt Tel: (03) 415-8024, fax (03) 415-8244.

Forest and Bird with DOC. A modern family Email: diana.n@clear.net.nz home with kitchen, 3 bedrooms, large lounge and FOREST & BIRD • FEBRUARY 2008

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