What absorbs 1/3 of our atmospheric carbon?
What is thought to hold over 80% of NZ’s unique plants and animals?
What has forests, volcanos (some of the largest lava fields) and mountains?
What holds the world’s tallest mountain?**
Where did we come from?
What covers two thirds of the earth?
Yep, you guessed it – the sea.
Seaweek kicked off this Sunday with a bunch of events in celebration of the deep, blue yonder that surrounds us.
Photo competitions, film screenings, underwater –litter picking, rockpooling, sea-librity parades – you name it – it’s happening across the country .
Blue, salty and filled with a horde of colourful sea-critters – the sea has held my fascination for, er, 25 years and counting.
Having spent my first few years sploshing around on the sea’s surface, I shrugged off my earthbound existence and slipped beneath the surface with the help of an aqua-lung thirteen years ago
I have never looked back. Oh, to have fins and gills!
Our critically endangered Southern Bluefin Tuna swims around the seas of several countries from Australia to Japan – and while these countries are working to reduce their quotas – we are trying to bump ours up by 25%.
Southern Bluefin Tuna, Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Fisheries.
The back-story goes something like this. Five (Japan, Australia, Indonesia, South Korea & NZ) countries work together to set up a Commission for Conservation (estab 1994) for Bluefin Tuna that sets fishing quotas for each country.
However, one of the founding signatories, Japan ( 1994) and recent signees Indonesia (2008), Taiwan (2002) & Korea (2001) have flouted their quota agreements and now New Zealand wants to get even, by putting in a proposal to up its tonnage from 420 – 532 tonnes.
Last year my entire holiday leave was spent rooting out kea – on the wind, rain, snow and hail lashed mountains of St Arnaud, near Rainbow Ski field in Nelson. The trip below took place in the heart of winter
Keas make their homes in small mountainside burrows, and my job was to firstly find their nest, and secondly check if they were still being used.
The world's only snow-parrot - the kea, Photo: Andrew Walmsley
Not just a simple matter of ‘too roo, isanyone there?’ If the nest was kea-less, I had to do a thorough check of Sign of Lifes – namely, feathers, poohs, or kea nearby. Finally, I would do the sniff test.
I had been tasked with the job of converting a 1990s map into an up-to-date GPS map that would provide a good snapshot of our kea-population in this area, and a record of their breeding success.
The reality of doing this meant that we needed to put in lots of man-hours, walking up and down mountains looking for obscure holes in the ground where kea could be nesting.
Blogger: North Island Conservation Manager Mark Bellingham
Our much venerated 2,500 year old kauri tree -Tane Mahuta - and forest giants like him may recieve greater protection with plans afoot to make our 15th National Park in the heart of Waipoua Forest.
Situated four hours from our largest city, a national park will place greater protection around this sub-tropical forest and the endangered creatures who call it home – from North Island brown kiwi to kokako.
Our towering kauri and our endangered species, such as our kokako and north island brown kiwi will be placed under greater protection if a National Park goes ahead.
National Parks aren’t created quickly – it took 14 years for Whanganui, 12 years for Paparoa.
We’ve been campaigning for a National Park in this area since 1988.
Turning this DOC land into a National park will mean that the area cannot be flogged off without the consent from the governor general.
Blogger: Mandy Herrick, Web Manager for Forest & Bird
The march of pivot irrigators through some of our most iconic landscapes continues unabated. New territorities are being sought everyday - and drylands are being dressed up in lush pasture and filled with cows.
Several applications to green our russet brown McKenzie country are currently before Environment Canterbury. In order to see what we’d be losing, we travelled through this stunning downy landscape and spoke to people about how they felt about the impending transformation of the Mckenzie.
Please note: If you want to watch a longer version of this video, see here To view the full length interview with Brian Turner, go here
P.S I’d like to pass on my thanks to some of the people who helped in the making of this video - Anne from Alpine Recreation, Karl Z, Julie Barry, Natasha Turner and Garth. All the photos featured in the piece were taken by Gottlieb Braun Elwert.
Three local product designers who created the world’s first multi-kill trap are now on the brink of unveiling a whole new suite to pest-killing devices.
Named after pioneering conservationist and kakapo lover, Richard Henry, the tree mounted trap delivers a blow to the head of stoats using a CO2 powered piston, and then re-sets itself.
Our re-homed Hutton’s Shearwaters will soon be enjoying top notch security.
The splinter population was successfully transplanted to this seaside spot over the last few years by DOC and Forest & Bird after concerns were raised about the precarious nature of their two predator prone mountainside colonies.
Now, local conservationists are swiftly moving into stage two – creating a gated community.
Department of Conservation ranger, Matt Sidaway, has mastered the art of speaking like a bird. And not just one bird, he’s fluent in bellbird, fantail, robin (the north island dialect) and parakeet. In this video, he shows you how to whistle your way into a feathered friendship.
