March, 2009
Wed, 25 Mar 2009 1:38 pm – Posted by Emma Gilkinson | 4 Comments
Guest blogger: Kakapo nest-minder, Emma Gilkinson
It’s 8.30 pm and I’m glued to the black and white screen. Sarah the Kakapo is the star of the show. At the moment she is a still feathery pillow with eyes like shiny black berries that open and close from time to time. I’m sitting in a tent 300m away from her nest, in the heart of the forest of Codfish Island, the epi-centre of the Kakapo Recovery Programme. An infra-red camera has been installed at Sarah’s nest to relay her movements to the palm-sized monitor I’m watching.
8.36 p.m. Sarah’s left claw emerges to scratch her left cheek.
I note that down. I’ve come to Codfish Island to be a volunteer ‘Nest Minder’ for a fortnight. Nest Minders are required to keep a vigilant eye on kakapo Mums overnight during the breeding season. The nocturnal birds leave their nests at night to feed, but if they’re gone too long their eggs or chicks risk getting too cold and may need incubation or warming up on the nest with a ‘heat pad’.
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Published in: General, Native land animals, Southland / Stewart Island
Tags: codfish island, kakapo recovery programme, volunteer
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Wed, 18 Mar 2009 9:29 am – Posted by Mandy | 6 Comments
Blowing into the Chatham islands on the kind of Antarctic wind that keeps its trees in a permanent supine position, I’m greeted on the airport’s gangway by a southerly blast that ushers me hurriedly onto a land where the plants, birds and insect life is like no where else in the world.
The Chatham Islands murderous wind; the super-sized Chatham Island tui & the transmittter which tracks each of the birds post-release.
Weta -eating spiders the size of your fist, supersize tui, spike-free lancewood, and over 160 endemic species of insects call this archipelago home, however the majority of these unique species can only be found on the three small, inaccessible offshore islands that surround the mainland.
These very islands hold almost 20% of New Zealand’s threatened bird species (Black Robin, Forbes Parakeet, CI Mollymawk, CI Snipe, CI Shore Plover), but with the hard work of two conservationists these species may stage a return to the main island.
Here to bear witness to the transfer of CI tui onto the main Chatham island after a 25 year absence, I point my jeep in the direction of the Southern tip where the 14 birds are being held pre-release. It only takes a drive through the countryside to see why birds & plants find this land inhospitable.
Large stretches of farmland and patches of bracken fill my window, punctuated by the odd tree set at a 45 degree angle. Farmers removed much of the island’s historical artefacts (Moriori tree carvings) and unique natural heritage* one hundred and fifty years ago by cutting great swathes of forested land, and converting it to farmland.
Now just a few forested patches remain, and the salt-laced, corrosive and sometimes murderous winds, have destroyed exposed parts of these remnants leaving tree cemeteries on their borders.
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Published in: Native land animals, Native plants and forests
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Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:50 pm – Posted by Jenny Lynch | 7 Comments
Guest Blogger: Jenny Lynch, Places for Penguins Co-ordinator
Those of you who live in the Wellington area may have heard of the hit and run death of Juan Carlos in Karaka Bay. Juan Carlos was a little blue penguin befriended by a local resident, Pelayo Salinas de Leon.
RIP Juan Carlos
Pelayo would watch the little blue come from the sea, across the road and into the vegetation behind his house each night. Then one night Pelayo heard a car coming down the road followed by frenzied penguin sounds and an ominous thump. Going outside to investigate he found Juan Carlos dead, lying in the middle of the road with the offending vehicle nowhere to be seen.
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Published in: General, Wellington
Tags: little blue penguins, road kill, underpasses
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Tue, 10 Mar 2009 8:29 am – Posted by Bev Woods | 11 Comments
Guest Blogger: Bev Woods, Secretary for the Northern Branch
Godwits on Manawatu Estuary
As many of you will know, our bar tailed godwits are fattening up for their 11,500 kilometre trip to the Alaskan-north, and will depart anytime in the next few weeks. Packing on an estimated 50% of their body weight in fuel, the birds are currently in the throes of what is best described as a feeding frenzy.
However, their attempts to pile on fat is being thwarted by a group of kite-surfers who race through their resting and feeding area, causing them to take flight and use up valuable fuel. This situation is set against a gloomy international picture in which habitats of godwits are shrinking. The drainage of wetlands, and the discharge of toxic discharges are just some of the reasons they have fewer and fewer spots to feed and rest-up. Two years ago, around 6000 godwits came to the Whangarei Harbour habitats. This year there have been only around 3000.
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Published in: F&B National, Marine and Coastal, Threats and Impacts
Tags: godwits, habitat disturbance
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Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:03 am – Posted by Mike Joy | 6 Comments
Guest Bloggers: Mike Joy, a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Science at Massey University & Masters student Amber McEwan
Of all our threatened endemic iconic species there is only one that almost all New Zealanders have come in contact with. Our other threatened species are on offshore islands or in very hard to access places, seen only by a select few. But this one, can, or at least could until very recently be found literally in many people’s back yards or within walking distance, it was accessible to almost everyone. This beautiful and enigmatic natural treasure is under immediate threat from a very small group of people with the active collusion of a government department.
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Published in: General
Tags: commercial eeling, extinction, freshwater, longfin eels, ministry of fisheries
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Mon, 02 Mar 2009 11:11 am – Posted by Kirstie_Knowles | 3 Comments
Sea pens reach a height of about 20 centimetres and can be found around Fiordland. Photo: Malcolm Francis.
When we think of life in the ocean we often think of our whales, our dolphins, fish and crayfish – things we can see and things that can see us. But actually the building blocks of life in our sea – that provide us with the oxygen we breathe, absorbs the carbon dioxide we pump into the air and regulates the weather and ocean cycling – is actually invisible to the human eye. They are microscopic. They are our plankton, diatoms and foraminifera. Our what?
Exactly. Seldom do we celebrate the very morsels that the rest of our marine wildlife could not do without. Well here’s our chance.
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Published in: General
Tags: carbon dioxide, jellyfish, marine, seaweek
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