Wed, 23 Jun 2010 4:34 pm – Posted by Mandy | 1 Comment
Blogger: Forest & Bird’s Web Manager, Mandy Herrick
We touched down on the moon in 1969. We travelled 11kms to the sea-floor in 1960. We peered into living cells and discovered DNA in 1951.
Moon-travel, deep-sea exploration, cell-research, we’ve done it all, and yet, we still know very little about the unexplored communities that live in the tops of our trees.
Although numerous botanists & entomologists have collected samples from these lofty forest communities, it was only in 1995 that scientist, Graham Dorrington, set off in a dirigible (airship) above the forests of Borneo that we really started to crack open this undiscovered world.
Still 15 years on and this tree-top world remains very much unstudied. It’s a sad fact that we know more about what happens 20 metres underwater than we do in the tops of our trees.
However, that’s all changing.
In the past month, Ark in the Park, the New Zealand Geographic Trust, DOC and Auckland University have been building upon the scant research into our tree-top communities by launching insect-o-logists, tree-o-logists and reptile-o-logists into our trees.
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Published in: General
Tags: ark in the park, Auckland, kauri dieback disease, pest control, research, tree canopy, waitakeres
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Mon, 13 Jul 2009 11:37 am – Posted by Mandy | 5 Comments
If asked to name New Zealand’s public enemy number one, the first thing that springs to my mind is our most reviled Australian immigrant – the possum.
European immigrants to NZ tried to introduce these critters not once, but twice (in 1837 & 1858) to establish a fur industry – and then voila, their population exploded. Now, New Zealand is home to over 70 million possums. In Australia, they’re a protected species.
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Published in: General
Tags: kakapo, pest control, possums, science, sterilisation, stoats
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Tue, 07 Apr 2009 8:32 am – Posted by Mandy | 2 Comments
Cane toad
As we wage war on our possums, stoats, rats to save our precious feathered friends, lets think of our Aussie counterparts, who are battling the menace that is the cane toad (Bufo Marinus).
Plucked from Hawaii and transported to Australia, these toads were used in agricultural pest control to wipe out cane beetles in 1935. They failed.
Now, Aussies have a poisonous killing-machine on their hands. An animal that breeds rapidly, eats voraciously and kills most animals that tries to eat it, including freshwater crocodiles, kangaroos and household pets.
Cloaked in the kind of jargon used to flog insecticides, Toad Day Out was an opportunity for Northern Queenslanders to collect up these remarkable predators, and win prizes (not big ones though, this wasn’t exactly a bounty killing).
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Published in: General, Native land animals, Threats and Impacts
Tags: 1080, agricultural pest control, pest control, possums, rats, stoats
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Wed, 01 Apr 2009 8:52 am – Posted by Bob Walkington | 5 Comments
Guest blogger: Inaugural 2008 Pest-buster Winner, Bob Walkington.
To win the pest buster award means we have a pest problem. To lose the award I would say we are gaining ground over pests. My pest busting ‘career’ began 5 years ago, and I’ve realised to be a good trapper you need to go the extra mile. By that I mean, you need to check the trap itself adding more than just bait, using aniseed, and sometime a bit of eucalyptus to lure in pests. 1080 is a quick fix, but that doesn’t apply where I operate - Taranaki’s oldest covenant “Collier & Dickson” 360ha of lowland podocarp & hardwood forest filled with short-tailed bats, whitehead, kakariki, tomtits and fantail.
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Published in: General, Native land animals, Taranaki, Threats and Impacts
Tags: 1080, pest control, pest-buster, rats, stoats, timms traps. possumsm, trapping
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Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:01 am – Posted by Alan Fleming | 3 Comments
Browsed, milled, cleared & mined over the years - it’s not hard to see why one of our largest tracts of forest – the Bay of Plenty’s Kamai Mamaku forest - has been a key focus for several of our North island branches. So as the newly appointed central North Island field officer, my arm almost left its shoulder socket when asked to take a walk through parts of this 37,000 hectare forest land.
This stretch of forest contains a unique mix of plant-life that encompasses warm kauri in the North and cool beech to its South. Its long, narrow shape and plant diversity is a very microcosm of Aotearoa. Over the week we would take in three very different forests - the northern Waitawheta forest, Aongatete in the middle and Otanewainuku to the south. A snapshot of the forest’s health in one week! Donning some binoculars & channelling the spirit of a forest doctor, I set about on the walk.
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Published in: Bay of Plenty, General, Native plants and forests
Tags: kamai mamaku, pest control
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Mon, 05 Jan 2009 1:28 pm – Posted by Debs | 3 Comments
Last year, on a dusty hot summer’s day, I decided to take the slow road from Blenheim to Christchurch. Armed with my trusty little 4WD, a tent, lots of snack foods, a large swimming towel, binoculars, and a camera; I felt well prepared to enter the vast tawny landscapes of South Marlborough and explore the Molesworth Recreation Reserve – formerly a high country station - during the summer period the road is open to the public.
The deep pools and convoluted geologies of the Acheron River
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Published in: General
Tags: High country, pest control, reserve
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Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:54 pm – Posted by Brent Barrett | 4 Comments
On the holiday beach and around your favourite café tables, there’s a conversation that needs having. It’s about the future of nature and other minor details affecting you and your only planet.
It seems increasingly odd, that the best hours of the best days of the best years of many environmentalist’s lives have been absorbed in a peculiar effort, using human’s position of supremacy to pit bits of nature against each other.
Like many things, it began with the pursuit of profit. In the day, who could argue against a profitable possum industry?
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Published in: General
Tags: Climate Change, pest control, sustainable business
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Thu, 13 Nov 2008 9:09 am – Posted by Helen | 9 Comments
Well, well, well, as I predicted in my pre-election blog (OK, so it was hardly long odds or a wild bet) we have a new government. The question is now, what’s in it for conservation?
At the moment, we’re waiting to see who gets the ministerial posts of most interest to us here at Forest & Bird: Conservation, Environment, Climate Change (if they have a specific minister with responsibility for climate change this time round), Energy, Agriculture, Land Information and Fisheries.
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Published in: General
Tags: agriculture, conservation, election, Energy, fisheries, government, High country, maui's dolphins, pest control, power companies, sea-lions
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