Many people get the wrong end of the stick when it comes to seagulls. But there’s actually more to these chip-stealing birds, as Claudia Mischler writes. “All gulls are the same!” “Gulls are too noisy!” “Those pesky gulls stole my fish and chips!” Does this sound familiar? Many of us have a love-hate relationship with […]
Richard Hursthouse is chair of North Shore Branch of Forest & Bird and Centennial Park Bush Society. He is passionate about raising awareness of pest plant issues. A slow train wreck has been unfolding across the country for decades while politicians sit on their hands. New Zealand has a major and rapidly worsening issue with […]
Old man’s beard was originally introduced as a decorative plant, but quickly spread into our native bush, where it strangles our native plants and stops them from regenerating. Graham Bellamy explains how the Upper Hutt Branch is controlling this invasive weed. In Upper Hutt, we have started a project to remove Old Man’s Beard from the area. […]
In Northland, many great native forests and their wildlife are collapsing. When the sun goes down, thousands of possums relentlessly consume the forest canopy, slowly killing ancient forest giants like tōtara, pūriri, pōhutukawa and northern rātā. Rats come out to consume our native birds, insects and lizards. Dean Baigent-Mercer takes us on a tour of Northland’s forgotten […]
May has been a fantastic month for the volunteers at Ark in the Park, Forest & Bird’s 2100 hectare open sanctuary in the Waitakeres. 100 pōpokotea (whiteheads) and 10 kōkako were translocated to the Ark, helping to restore our dawn chorus as John Staniland, one of the project’s founders, explains. Last week while doing my monthly trapping […]
Which weeds do we need to remove at the moment? Why do we need to worry about them? And what is the best way to get rid of them? Welcome to the first in a series of blogs about some of the worst weeds in our backyards by Richard Hursthouse, Chair of Forest & Bird’s North […]
Good news that DOC will be funded an extra $20.7 million this year to battle the predator boom that is expected this Autumn in response to a massive forest seeding. DOC will now be able to control predators over 800,000 ha, just over 10% of public conservation land. Wildlife over 90% of public conservation […]
Over the past six weeks I have spent many evenings outside keeping an eye out for pekapeka, the long-tailed bats flitting like giant butterflies past the house and over the pond. After many evenings of observing bats close by, I mentioned it to Jono Moore, the conservation ecologist who does bat population monitoring for the […]
A walk along New Zealand’s coast over 800 years ago would have been very risky. You were highly likely to break your ankle as you collapsed one (or more) seabird burrows honeycombing the countryside. There were literally billions of seabirds inhabiting not only the coast but also far inland, breeding successfully on virgin land in […]