Forest & Bird Magazine 369 Spring 2018

ISSUE 369 • SPRING 2018 www.forestandbird.org.nz

MINERAL MINING Coming to a conservation area near you?

PLUS

Saving seabirds

Landmark Motiti win

What’s in a name?

MEMBER SINCE 200,000,000 B.C.

Forest & Bird has been defending New Zealand’s natural environment since 1923. In that time, we have campaigned for the protection of some of our most precious wildlife and wild places, planted hundreds of thousands of trees, removed millions of predators, and created safe forests so our native birds can return.

As New Zealand’s leading independent conservation organisation, we speak up for the rivers, oceans, and forests in your local community and defend vanishing nature in courtrooms and councils throughout the country. But Forest & Bird is needed now more than ever. Nature is in crisis, and our environment is degrading around us. With your support, we can do more

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to protect the natural world. Join us today at www.forestandbird.org.nz/joinus.

ISSUE 369

• Spring 2018

www.forestandbird.org.nz STAY IN TOUCH Forest & Bird National Office Ground Floor, 205 Victoria Street 6011 PO Box 631, Wellington 6140.

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Contents Editorial

2 Act local, think global 4 Letters

Conservation news

6 Ecology of the heart 8 Finding common ground, deer milk world first 9 Kauri closures 10 Bird of the Year 11 Seabed mining win, protecting biodiversity

Cover story

12 Battle looming over mineral mining 15 Rush for rare minerals 16 Ours not mine 18 Te Kuha win

Forest collapse

33 Treaty claim hope for nature

In the field

34 Natural capital

Conservation heroes

36 Distinguished life member 37 Youth award 38 Old Blue winners

Focus on flora

42 What’s in a name?

Branch news

44 High country bird count

Going places

Nature’s Future

www.youtube.com/ forestandbird

50 Fifty years a conservationist

Research

JOIN FOREST & BIRD

51 Is it a kākā or kea?

0800 200 064

Conservation in history 52 Walking through life facing backwards

membership@forestandbird.org.nz

Members receive four free issues of Forest & Bird magazine a year.

32 Hothouse Earth

48 Underwater wonders

Watch us on YouTube

www.forestandbird.org.nz/joinus

Climate

Seabirds

19 Whenua Hou 30 Bringing back the seabirds

Our people

54 Jon Denham tribute

Marine EDITOR

Caroline Wood MAGAZINE ENQUIRIES AND LETTERS

E editor@forestandbird.org.nz ART DIRECTOR/DESIGNER

Rob Di Leva, Dileva Design E rob@dileva.co.nz PRINTING

Webstar FOR ALL ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES

Karen Condon T 0275 420 338 E mack.cons@xtra.co.nz Membership & circulation enquiries T 0800 200 064 E membership@forestandbird.org.nz

20 Restoring the plenty 40 Plastic not fantastic 41 Suffocating sea life

Freshwater

23 Whitebait woes 28 Cleaning up our waterways 29 From cow to cup

Predator-free NZ

Pacific conservation

24 Whio wins

56 Little dodo of Samoa

Biodiversity

Parting shot

26 Wilding conifer risk 46 Mohua mission

Green and golden bell frog

COVER SHOT Open pit gold mine, Macraes Flat, East Otago. Photo: Jason Hosking/ Photonewzealand

Editorial MARK HANGER

Act local, think global I recently saw a BBC film clip highlighting short-tailed shearwaters dying of starvation with their stomachs choked full with all manner of indigestible plastics. This was not in Europe, Asia, or North America, but in the Tasman Sea – our own backyard. It was heart-breaking to watch.

Thankfully, at least, single-use plastic bags are about to be a thing of the past. This step-change heralds a significant shift in mainstream public opinion and demonstrates how quickly public opinion can sway government decision-making.

Here at Forest & Bird, we had already announced we would stop using plastic wrap to send out the Forest & Bird and Wild Things magazines, which together have an annual print run of about 125,000 issues. The wrap has been a hot topic in recent years, but paper production also has environmental impacts and not all paper envelopes are made equal when it comes to sustainability.

Perception is key to so much in this realm. But what you see isn’t always what you get. As we have found on our journey researching different kinds of plastic wrap, compostable courier bags, and paper envelope options, companies sometimes make claims about the eco-impacts of their products that fall apart on examination of the fine print. Likewise, the public perceives glass milk bottles as being better than type 1 plastic. Yet if the full environmental cost is calculated – production, cleaning, transport, and so on – this perception is apparently incorrect on many counts.

With public opinion rapidly evolving, social and environmental sustainability are now at the forefront of public thinking. It is imperative we don’t sit back and think the banning of single-use plastic bags is the end goal. It is a small first step on a long road to seeing genuinely sustainable packaging considered the norm in all commercial and manufacturing sectors. We must reduce our country’s appalling record on plastics that is killing our shearwaters and other marine life (see p40).

From this issue, Forest & Bird has become one of the first magazine publishers in the country to switch from plastic to FSC-certified Kraft paper envelopes for mailing.

Driving change is something Forest & Birders have always done. Driving step-change can lead to major fundamental shifts. Every one of us, as supporters of nature, can be first to make those little changes to our own lives, thus encouraging others to do the same. This is how we create a movement, how we create change, and how we can reduce our impact on the environment that we love and have a responsibility to cherish.

We can all take small steps to play our part in this movement. The government has already decreed there will be no more shopping in single-use plastic bags. A next step all of us could take is not using plastic bags in the fruit and veg section, refusing ready meals in black plastic, purchasing a keep cup or, if you don’t have one on you, only buying coffee from cafes with fully compostable cups. Each small step, once taken, makes the next one easier, and the next one easier still. Convince your friends to follow suit, then your relations, and, before you know it, the local community is on board, then the wider community. Act local, think global.

Ka kite anō Mark Hanger Forest & Bird President Perehitini, Te Reo o te Taiao

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Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand Inc. (Founded 1923) Registered Office at Ground Floor, 205 Victoria Street, Wellington 6011.

PATRON Her Excellency The Rt Honourable Dame Patsy Reddy, Governor-General of New Zealand CHIEF EXECUTIVE

Kevin Hague PRESIDENT

Mark Hanger TREASURER

Alan Chow BOARD MEMBERS

Chris Barker, Kate Graeme, James Muir, John Oates, Monica Peters, Te Atarangi Sayers, Ines Stäger CONSERVATION AMBASSADORS

Sir Alan Mark, Gerry McSweeney, Craig Potton DISTINGUISHED LIFE MEMBERS:

Graham Bellamy, Ken Catt, Linda Conning, Audrey Eagle, Alan Edmonds, Gordon Ell, Philip Hart, Joan Leckie, Hon. Sandra Lee-Vercoe, Carole Long, Peter Maddison, Sir Alan Mark, Gerry McSweeney, Craig Potton, Fraser Ross, Eugenie Sage, Guy Salmon, Lesley Shand, David Underwood

Forest & Bird is a registered charitable entity under the Charities Act 2005.

Registration No CC26943.

Forest & Bird is published quarterly by the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand Inc. Opinions expressed by contributors in the magazine are not necessarily those of Forest & Bird.

Forest & Bird is printed on elemental chlorine-free paper made from FSC® certified wood fibre and pulp from responsible sources.

Registered at PO Headquarters, Wellington, as a magazine.

ISSN 0015-7384 (Print), ISSN 2624-1307 (Online).

Copyright. All rights reserved.

Letters Forest & Bird welcomes your feedback on conservation topics. Please send letters up to 200 words, with your name, home address, and daytime phone number. We don’t always have space to publish all letters or publish them in full.

The best contribution to the Letters page will receive a copy of New Zealand Birds in Pictures by Kimball Chen, RRP $49.99, New Holland. Delve into the fascinating world of our feathered friends with acclaimed author and wildlife photographer Kimball Chen. Please send letters to the Editor, Forest & Bird magazine, PO Box 631, Wellington 6140, or email editor@forestandbird.org.nz by 1 November 2018.

No room at the inn

Bird brigade

I wish Abbe Hutchins well in her quest to build a luxury lodge in the Eglinton Valley, Fiordland National Park. In 2004, a small group of folk set up a trust to make Coal Island in south-west Fiordland predator free. Volunteers (many of them elderly) pay hundreds of dollars to cover the cost of helicopter flights to and from the island. They camp for several days in tents in that inhospitable climate, checking traps and doing track maintenance work. Many years ago, the trust applied for consent to provide a small hut or flyable “bivvies” to accommodate the up to six or so volunteers to keep them safe, warm, and dry. The request was denied. Perhaps the trust’s request to the Department of Conservation for a hut to provide shelter for those engaged in the most urgent task in conservation, which is predator control to protect our critically endangered species, doesn’t meet the “Conservation for Prosperity” mantra of the department. Perhaps Abbe’s proposed luxury lodge will! We wait and see.

As I sit talking on the phone to my older sister, both of us enthusiasts for the work that Forest & Bird does, I notice the green cover of a Forest & Bird magazine on the bookshelf beside the phone. I boast to my sister that it is Number 122, November 1956, and I have been an on-off member since 1954 when I was 11 years old. The next moment I look through the window and see the “Fantail Brigade” has arrived. They have discovered cluster flies, and, together with the welcome swallows, they work tirelessly ridding us of this plague, swooping, diving and fluttering. I forgive them for fouling my washing on the clothesline. Last year, there were around 20 fantails in the brigade – an amazing number. I think it is about the same this year. Our native bird population has increased remarkably. Last year, there were two kererū. This year, there were five, probably mum, dad, and the kids come to feed on our tree lucerne. The bellbird numbers have also increased. They particularly like the nectar in my abutilons, and I see them streaking like jetfighters past my window to their favourite food.

Ray Willett RD1, Te Anau Best letter winner

Octoboy opens eyes We were reading the latest magazine as we often do and came across the article about Bennet and his concerns about how many octopus one can take per day (Winter 2018). I thought it was a really good read and really highlights some of the key issues with marine life, the lack of common sense around it, and also lack of protection.

Land creatures and invertebrates enjoy much higher protection and awareness generally. Being able to take 50 octopus per person per day is well ... crazy! Let’s be realistic, even if you were catching it for food, one person alone couldn’t eat 50 octopus a day. So I struggle to see why the limit needs to be so high. It should be based on what one individual can eat per day, not what he or she can catch to feed others per day. This kid’s story was really neat. I strongly believe our marine biodiversity is a lot more important than nine billion humans destroying the planet.

Bryce McQuillan Rotorua

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Isabel Cookson Oxford

GE risks too great In response to “Broader view needed” (Autumn 2018), while we all want to see indigenous fauna and flora protected to a higher level, we must be wary of hype and remember that outdoor use of risky new technologies can create more problems than they solve. Nearly 20 years ago, Forest & Bird took a stance against a proposal for a GE carrot contraceptive bait because of the serious ecological risks and the fact that possums are indigenous just over the ditch. That strong precautionary approach is especially relevant in the GE debate, and I support Forest & Bird’s strong precautionary GE policy. Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage summed it up when she recently said: “They [GE proponents] have no social licence to operate. There is a lot at stake, and there is a need for the utmost caution. There would be serious questions around the risks to New Zealand’s GE-free reputation from being associated with any field trials of gene technology. Gene editing is an unproven technology for predator control. Gene technologies are problematic and untested and have significant risks.”

Martin Robinson Kerikeri

Insect armageddon An article in a recent edition of The Guardian Weekly was headlined “Insect Armageddon”. Reports on the decline of insects in Europe are not new, but the figures given were startling. For example, since 1989, there has been a 76% reduction in the weight of insects caught by standardised malaise traps in German reserves. The article emphasised the impact of this loss on natural environment processes, including nutrient recycling and food for birds. Some insectivorous birds are greatly reduced. Among the causes listed were habitat changes, especially the loss of “wild areas”. This is particularly relevant to New Zealand, where most of our native insects only live in native ecosystems, much of which were lost during the establishment of farming, horticulture, forestry, mining, and urbanisation.

We now need to protect all remaining native ecosystems and where possible expand them and establish new areas.

Farmers, horticulturalists, and foresters should protect all native habitats on their properties. This will offset carbon use and meet goals of enhancing native biodiversity. They should also establish new native habitats using local native plant species in areas that need protection and other areas that cannot be used for commercial production.

Nicholas Martin Auckland

WIN A BOOK Forest & Bird is giving away two copies of New Zealand Forest Birds and Their World

by Geoff Moon, RRP $34.99, New Holland. A visual and written portrait of the most important or characteristic birds of the New Zealand forest by the late Geoff Moon, former vet and one of our most respected bird photographers.

To enter the draw, email your entry to draw@ forestandbird.org.nz, put BIRD in the subject line, and include your name and address in the email. Or write your name and address on the back of an envelope and post to BIRD draw, Forest & Bird, PO Box 631, Wellington 6140. Entries close 1 November 2018.

The winners of The Hunters: The Precarious Lives of New Zealand’s Birds of Prey by Debbie Stewart, were Kay Nix, of Feilding, and John Wuts, of Napier. The winners of The Vulgar Wasp by Phil Lester were Todd Edwards, of Silverdale, and Bill Roberts, of Auckland

REGIONAL CONSERVATION HUI There’s still time to register for the North and South Island gatherings.

NORTH ISLAND GATHERING

SOUTH ISLAND GATHERING

Aongatete Outdoor Education Lodge, Kaimai Mamaku Conservation Park, Tauranga 28 to 30 September 2018

Tautuku Outdoor Education Centre, Tautuku, the Catlins 26 to 28 October 2018

Forest & Bird and the community have been working for more than 10 years to restore 500ha of forest at Aongatete. Participants will have the chance to walk around Aongatete, enjoy the forest and its birdlife, and find out about its pest control and conservation. There will also be a focus on the nearby ocean, with presentations about a breakthrough in marine protection at Motiti and the Bay of Plenty, how the fisheries quota management system works, and what we have learnt from the Rena disaster. There will be opportunities to walk along the estuary and an optional boat trip on the Sunday to explore the Motiti marine area.

Register at www.forestandbird.org.nz/ northislandgathering

Nestled in the heart of the Catlins lies Tautuku Bay, home to Forest & Bird’s largest reserve and a region containing the last remaining coastal rainforest on the eastern South Island. Join us for a weekend packed with stimulating, challenging presentations and discussions focusing on community-based conservation, citizen science, and the realities of conducting meaningful landscape-scale conservation. Other highlights include a visit to a sooty shearwater colony, bat spotting, nature walks around Tautuku, and an excellent line up of expert speakers, including nature photographer Craig McKenzie. There is also the opportunity to volunteer at the Lenz reserve before or after the weekend – contact the organisers for info.

Register at www.forestandbird.org.nz/ southislandgathering.

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Conservation news

ECOLOGY OF THE HEART

CONFERENCE 2018

Crested grebes.

Photo: Mike Ashbee

Forest & Bird wants to form a coalition of communities to help restore New Zealand’s nature back to how it used to be – abundant and self-sustaining. By Caroline Wood.

O

ne of Forest & Bird’s current priorities is to build stronger relationships with other communities and unexpected alliances to transform the way New Zealanders see the natural world and activate their love for nature.

“We know New Zealanders’ connection with the natural world is part of our national identity. Let’s unlock that, build momentum, take it forward, and sustain the change in decades to come,” chief executive Kevin Hague told Forest & Bird’s national conference in June.

“We are building stronger relationshps with iwi and hapū, and also relationships with unexpeced allies. We recently formed a partnershp with Pāmu and are working with Countdown to reduce plastics in the environment.

Might there also be people in the fishing industry we can partner with? Can we buid an ‘ecology of the heart’ to transform the way New Zealanders see their place and activate their love for the place?”

“Ecology of the heart” is a term coined by New Zealand Geographic co-founder Kennedy Warne. It refers to the idea that we’re moving into a new paradigm where our sense of place, and love for the natural world and its species, come to the forefront and are mainstreamed into political thinking.

During the Forest & Bird’s “Achieving a paradigm shift in conservation” conference, Conservation Minister speakers returned to Eugenie Sage gives a keynote this idea in different speech. Photo: Kirk Serpes

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ways, saying we need to be ambitious – setting a goal of restoring what has been lost, not just protecting what is left.

Forest & Bird believes this is now possible following the election of the Labour-Greens-NZ First alliance government.

Mark Hanger, president of Forest & Bird, said: “I’m really proud of what we’ve achieved as a Forest & Bird community over the past 95 years, but this is very exciting.

We are talking about a quantum shift in ecological thinking.

“Biodiversy loss and climate change are no longer fringe terms. Freshwater degradation was a tipping point for everyday New Zealanders. Coincidentally, or maybe not, we have a new government, one that is listening to Forest & Bird and our partners, so a paradigm shift in conservation is indeed possible and is our focus going forward.

“The fact we have three government ministers here today is in itself a paradigm shift.”

Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage, who opened Forest & Bird’s conference, talked about how nature is at the heart of our success as a country, as a people, as a tourism destination, and Māori culture and identity.

“Nature contributes so much our our health and wellbeing. That’s why three ministers are coming to Forest & Bird’s conference today. We recognise the importance of nature for our country, for Aotearoa. When nature thrives, we as a people thrive,” she said.

Ms Sage reiterated the scale of the task ahead, with 4000 species threatened or at risk of extinction, and with introduced mammalian predators being a major threat. She announced $2m of new funding for an ambitous plan to to eradicate cats, mice, and pigs on Auckland Island, one of New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic islands.

As a country, when we invest in the recovery of species, we can have success. Look at takahē, she told Forest &

Bird delegates, promising that as Minister she would do her best to turn around the biodiversity crisis, working alongside iwi, Forest & Bird, councils, and communities.

Minister for the Environment David Parker also addressed the conference. He talked about some of his top concerns, including a “shocking decline in water quality and continuing loss of biodiversity” as well as climate change, urban development, and the Resource Management Act. “We are working to resolve the long-term challenges we are facing. Growth must not, and need not, come at the cost of our environment,” he said.

Fisheries Minister Dr Stuart Nash took part in a panel discussion called “How can we bring about a paradigm shift in our oceans?”, answering questions alongside Te Atarangi Sayers from Motiti Rohe Moana Trust, Forest & Bird’s seabird advocate Karen Baird, Sheridan Waitai of Ngāti Kuri, and fisheries specialist Richard Wells from Resourcewise.

Closing the conference, Kevin Hague reminded delegates of the challenges ahead: “Nature is still in crisis. We all know major change is required, to bring things back from the brink and move them in the right direction. We can’t afford to lose, we need to win, we need to turn the ship around and start restoring nature.

“That’s why the theme of this conference is paradigm shift. It’s about a step-change in the way the country sees conservation. We need to go beyond protecting small pockets – we need to be doing conservation everywhere.”

Forest & Bird

Expert panel answering questions about ocean protection. From left: facilitator Megan Hubscher, Te Atarangi Sayers, Karen Baird, Richard Wells and Sheridan Waitai. Photo: Kirk Serpes

Forest & Bird youth groups travelled from across the country to attend the conference. Photo: Kirk Serpes

Forest & Bird

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Send orders with payment and delivery details to: Potton & Burton, PO Box 5128, Nelson 7043, New Zealand You can also order at www.forestandbird.org.nz and click on ‘shop’.

Forest & Bird

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Conservation news Kevin Hague and Steven Carden with the Memorandum of Understanding.

DEER MILK A WORLD FIRST

FINDING COMMON GROUND Forest & Bird is working with New Zealand’s largest farmer to promote best environmental practice in the agricultural sector.

Forest & Bird and Pāmu have agreed to work together on researching, implementing, and promoting agricultural practices that protect the natural environment.

Pāmu, the brand name for Landcorp, is responsible for more than 120 farms with 1.4 million cows, sheep, and deer. All the farms are 100% government-owned.

Announcing the partnership, Kevin Hague, Forest & Bird’s chief executive, said: “Forest & Bird is New Zealand’s largest independent conservation organisation, and Pāmu is New Zealand’s largest farmer. It makes sense for these two influential organisations to collaborate on one of the country’s biggest challenges – how to reverse the crisis facing New Zealand’s unique natural environment.”

Since 2014, under chief executive Steven Carden’s leadership, Pāmu has been shifting business away from high-volume commodities to niche, high-value land use, and encouraging farming to the highest levels of excellence and sustainability.

Mr Carden says Pāmu is committed to environmental stewardship in a meaningful way, and the Memorandum of Understanding with Forest & Bird forms an important part of that commitment.

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“As an industry, we need to move beyond words to actions. At Pāmu, we have been doing this. For example, we ended use of palm kernel expeller (PKE) on our farms, formed an Environmental Reference Group to help us become better environmental stewards, fenced waterways, and initiated extensive riparian planting,” he said.

“We recognise there is more we need to do as we face challenges like climate change and a fundamental rethink of the agricultural sector’s relationship with the natural capital of New Zealand. Having Forest & Bird alongside us will be hugely beneficial,” he added.

The Memorandum of Understanding between the organisations sets out a partnership framework focusing on: n Advocacy for nature in agricultural landscapes n Climate-resilient farming systems n Understanding regenerative agriculture n Restorative partnerships focusing on biodiversity, water, and soil n Endangered species identification, protection, and enhancemen. n Integrated landscape planning n Increasing mutual understanding between the environmental and agricultural sectors.

“I am thinking of adding a wild duck egg and Pāmu deer milk crème brulee to the menu,” says chef Des Harris of The Hunting Lodge, near Auckland.

Des was one of the first chefs in the world to taste Pāmu’s ground-breaking deer milk product, which won the Grassroots Innovation award at the June Fieldays.

The milk comes from a herd of 80 red deer, milked twice a day from November to March on Sharon and Peter MacIntyre’s farm near Gore.

The hinds produce 5000 to 6000L of milk each season, which is sent to Massey University’s food hub for drying.

Des Harris and five other top Auckland chefs were recently offered to chance to taste the new product and come up with ideas of how they would use it in their recipes and restaurants.

While it’s still early days for the product, Pāmu chief executive Steve Carden says deer milk is the sort of innovation that the agriculture sector needs to invest in to make sure it remains competitive.

“Deer milk is one of the ways that Pāmu is investing in innovation, with like-minded partners, to take the milk industry forward.

“With its high-fat content and protein levels, Pāmu deer milk is ideal for food service, cosmetics, and other uses. We expect it to fetch a premium, given its unique qualities.”

Pāmu’s deer milk won’t be available on supermarket shelves just yet. It’s being developed as a high-value, niche export product.

Auckland chefs enjoying their first taste of deer milk.

KAURI CLOSURES Forest & Bird closed its kauri forest reserves — covering 250ha — in August, and called on councils, the government, and private landowners to do the same until a cure for the disease is found.

Meanwhile, internal memos reveal that officials from the Ministry for Primary Industries were aware the spread of kauri dieback was alarmingly high and there was widespread dissatisfaction with the Kauri Dieback Programme’s ability to deal with the biosecurity crisis.

Papers obtained by Newshub confirm Forest & Bird’s position that the programme needs “a fundamental change in approach”. The documents also reveal it could take two years to develop a National Pest Management Plan for kauri dieback.

“Forest & Bird has been saying all along there’s a major problem with the Kauri Dieback Programme, and we

now know officials have been telling their Minister the same thing,” Forest & Bird chief executive Kevin Hague said.

“MPI’s biosecurity team has known this is a crisis situation, but this hasn’t translated into urgent actions to protect kauri forests. The disease is spreading rapidly, while research into a cure or prevention is barely progressing.

“Kauri dieback disease is 100% fatal to kauri trees. We know it’s mainly spread by humans and pigs.

Dealing with these factors will slow the disease’s spread until scientists have worked out what will save our forests in the long term.”

Forest & Bird is calling on MPI to work with iwi and local government to put Controlled Area Notices in place and start eradicating pigs where possible, while the National Pest Management Agency and plan for kauri dieback are being developed.

Annalily van den Broeke, Waitakere Branch chair, with a new sign showing Forest & Bird's Matuku Reserve is closed to protect kauri.

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Conservation news

Bird of the Year nearly here…

Voting kicks off on 1 October for the nation’s favourite and fiercest bird competition. Who will scoop this year’s crown? By Kimberley Collins.

BIRD OF THE

YEAR HALL OF FAME 2017

Kea

Photo: Thomas Hamill

O

ur Bird of the Year is a fun campaign with a serious message. By asking New Zealanders to campaign and vote for their favourite bird online, Forest & Bird is raising awareness for native birds and the threats they face.

Well-known and enthusiastic New Zealanders act as “campaign managers” for their favourite bird, and many will go to great lengths to get their chosen candidate ahead in the polls. Much like a general election, it includes all the drama and dirty tricks that you might see in a political campaign.

Last year was our most successful campaign yet and saw more than 40,000 people vote for their top bird. A series of scandals, including fraudulent votes and a smear campaign, meant the campaign went viral, reaching millions of people through social media and even making international headlines.

This year promises to be even bigger and better.

Cast your vote and go in the draw, courtesy of sponsors Heritage Expeditions, to win an expedition to the New Zealand sub-Antarctic Islands, Stewart Island, and remote Fiordland. This is an exciting new itinerary that departs this December, worth more than $9500.

And to keep you on your toes, we have a new mystery sponsor coming on board – to be revealed when the campaign is formally launched. All we can say right now is they are passionate about all birds in New Zealand.

“A vote in our Bird of the Year campaign is a vote for nature and a great way to help us get the message out that New Zealand’s unique native birds are in trouble – with two-thirds of all species at risk of being lost forever from habitat loss, predators, and climate change,” says Phil Bilbrough, general manager marketing and communications.

“As New Zealand’s leading independent conservation organisation, Forest & Bird is proud to have done our bit over the past 95 years to protect and restore many iconic species, including kea and kōkako, two previous Bird of the Year winners.”

Voting starts at 9am on Monday 1 October and runs until 5pm on Sunday 14 October. For more information, or to sign up as a campaign manager, please visit www.birdoftheyear.org.nz.

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2016 Kōkako Photo: Tara Swan

2015 Kuaka (bar-tailed godwit) Photo: Peter Ward

2014 Tara iti (New Zealand fairy tern) Photo: Rex Williams

2013 Mohua (yellowhead) Photo: Jake Osborne

Seabed mining decision quashed in High Court New Zealand’s only known population of blue whales has been granted a reprieve from the imminent threat of experimental seabed mining.

In late August, the High Court quashed the Environmental Protection Authority’s decision to allowing Trans Tasman Resources (TTR) to start ironsand mining off the coast off Pātea, in the South Taranaki bight.

TTR was granted consent last October to mine ironsand from the sea floor between South Taranaki and Golden Bay. The proposed activity covered 65 km² of seabed and was consented for up to 35 years.

Forest & Bird argued against TTR’s proposal at both the original EPA hearing and at the High Court, appearing alongside iwi, fishing, and other environmental groups.

“This area is home to 34 species of marine mammals, including Hector’s and Māui dolphins, humpback whales, and New Zealand’s genetically distinct population of blue whales,” said Forest & Bird’s chief executive Kevin Hague.

“Trans-Tasman Resources were proposing to spend the next 35 years sucking up 8000 tonnes of seafloor every hour. This activity would likely kill everything on the sea floor, and severely disrupt the habitat of blue whales and other soundsensitive creatures.”

“The High Court agreed with us that TTR’s riskmanagement model was in effect adaptive management or, in plain English, ‘suck it and see’ mining.

This is prohibited under the EEZ Act, and in Forest & Bird’s view was a dangerous experiment on our ocean mammals.”

Thanks to the generous financial support of the T-Gear Trust, Forest & Bird’s legal team appeared in Wellington’s High Court in April alongside other concerned groups.

The strength of argument presented by conservation, iwi, and fishing groups has been heard, and the ocean species of Taranaki are safe for now pending the likely legal appeals that will follow this ruling.

PROTECTING BIODIVERSITY

South island tomtit.

Photo: Jake Osborne

Forest & Bird has been working hard over the last 18 months on the development of New Zealand’s first National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity. Attempts by governments to produce an NPS have failed twice in the past (in 2001 and 2011), but the latest attempt directly involved stakeholders from a range of interest groups in a collaborative process to produce a draft document.

Once operative, the NPS will direct regional and district councils on how native vegetation and habitats are protected and how effects on these areas are managed in regional and district plans. The draft NPS will be presented to the Associate Environment Minister in late September and is expected to be made public in mid-October. The group is also producing a report on complementary and supporting measures aimed at supporting implementation of the NPS and achieving other changes to ensure biodiversity in New Zealand thrives.

PREDATOR FREE 2050

Imagine New Zealand predator free and flourishing with native wildlife nzpost.co.nz/predatorfree

/NZStampsandCoins

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Cover story

BATTLE LOOMING OVER MINERAL MIN Sky-rocketing demand for rare minerals to fuel emerging technologies could put some of New Zealand’s most iconic conservation areas at risk. By Caroline Wood.

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ome of New Zealand’s most recognisable natural heritage areas could be destroyed by mineral mining unless the government follows through on its promise to ban new mines on conservation land.

Minerals are in demand worldwide, not least because they are used for a range of emerging green-tech industries, including wind turbines, solar power, and electric vehicle batteries. They are also needed to manufacture mobile phones, computers, and home appliances.

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Te Reo o te Taiao

In May, at the inaugural New Zealand Minerals Forum, in Queenstown, the government published three GNS Science reports showing the potential of mineral mining in New Zealand.

They identify and provide detailed maps of areas with potentially high deposits of lithium, rare earth elements, and/or nickel and cobalt. Most areas are located on conservation land and in places popular with tourists and domestic visitors.

New Zealand’s largest gold mine, Macraes in Otago, has a footprint of about 1400ha. Photo: Jason Hosking, Photo New Zealand

NING

For example, there’s high potential for lithium in the Rotorua Lakes area and the rest of the vast Taupo Volcanic Zone, which stretches from the Bay of Plenty to Lake Taupo in the central North Island. In the South Island, Dun Mountain and the Red Hills, Mount Richmond Forest Park, Nelson/Marlborough have high potential for nickel and cobalt, while the Hohonu Range, on the West Coast, has high potential for rare earth minerals and lithium.

“There is sky-rocketing demand around the world for minerals that are used in clean-tech and that can aid our transition to a low-carbon economy. That represents a real economic opportunity for New Zealand,” said Energy

and Resource Minster Megan Woods as she released the reports in May. “The MBIE-commissioned study has revealed lithium potential in the central North Island and the Hohonu Range on the West Coast of the South Island, nickel and cobalt potential in Nelson-Tasman-Marlborough and Southland regions, while REE potential exists on the West Coast.

“The better picture we have of what exists, the better placed we will be to be in a position to potentially capitalise on demand for the scarce minerals, which has surged in recent years,” Minister Woods added.

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Cover story

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t about the same time the GNS Science mineral reports were published, government officials from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment were preparing to open previously closed conservation areas after a three-year moratorium on mineral prospecting.

Mining companies can now apply for permits to look for minerals at Dun Mountain and the Red Hills, Victoria Forest Park, and the Howard Conservation area in the Nelson/Marlborough region. In Otago, the Rock and Pillar Conservation Area, parts of Oteake Conservaton Park, and Te Papanui Conservation Park were also opened.

MBIE commissioned the GNS Science mineral potential studies last November, the same month the Prime Minister announced her government would move to ban new mines on conservation land.

Since then, the mining industry has been lobbying the government to let it carry on “borrowing” conservation land to dig big holes in and mine for profit.

Chris Baker, chief executive of Straterra, the industry group representing New Zealand’s minerals sector, claims New Zealand can benefit economically from mining “while managing the environmental effects of what is ultimately only a temporary use of land”.

In an editorial published in the Dominion Post in June, Baker also claimed mines have a small footprint, and much of the land is “rehabilitated” after mining is finished.

But, as we’ve learned from mining on the Stockton and Denniston Plateaux, rehabilitation results in a muchdegraded landscape, with the underlying rock formations permanently changed and rare plants competing with weeds and more common plants to survive.

Many of the areas with high mineral prospects identified in the GNS Science reports are on conservation land. With the government moving towards a ban on new mines in these areas, it’s unlikely mining companies will invest money in prospecting these areas.

Much will depend on the detail of the ban and whether it will cover all the conservation estate, including stewardship

Red Hills, near the Red Hills Hut looking west, Richmond Forest Park. Mineral-rich Dun Mountain and the Red Hills are thought to have large quantities of nickel and cobalt. Photo: Neil Silverwood

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land. A discussion paper is expected next month.

Forest & Bird wants the government to move quickly to stop new mines being opened on conservation land.

We hope many of our members and supporters will join our campaign to ensure the government follows through on its original promise to ban all mining on all kinds of conservation land.

“We need our publicly owned conservation land to be used for conservation, not for digging huge holes in the ground,” says Forest & Bird chief executive Kevin Hague.

“This isn’t pretty, or subtle, mining. You have to go through a lot of rock to get a little bit of the precious mineral you are after.

High lithium deposits are likely to be found across the Taupo Volcanic Zone. Photo: Mount Tarawera panorama by Matt Biddulph

“Mineral mining should occur outside the conservation estate, and it should be done sustainably with as little impact as possible on the local environment. This is not how the mining industry does things at the moment.

“Having 40,000 people march down Queens Street in 2010 made it pretty clear that the public didn’t want mining on conservation land then, and they don’t want it now.”

Lithium is a metal used in a wide variety of applications and is in high demand globally for use in lithium-ion batteries to power electric vehicles, portable electronic devices, and home energy storage. To date, no targeted exploration for lithium has been done in New Zealand.

Lithium deposits are most likely to be found at Hohonu, Paparoa, and Karamea, in the South Island, and the Taupo Volcanic Zone in the North Island.

The Hohonu Range has high potential for rare earth minerals and lithium. Photo: Mount Te Kinga Scenic Reserve, with Lake Brunner in the foreground by Neil Silverwood

RUSH FOR RARE MINERALS The following conservation land areas have high potential for rare minerals. GNS Science used innovative techniques to create three maps of potential mineral deposits using geochemistry, geophysics, rock analyses, and cutting-edge data interpretation methods. The reports are the first of their kind in New Zealand.

NORTH ISLAND n The Taupo Volcanic Zone, which stretches from the Bay of Plenty to Lake Taupo in the central North Island (lithium). The report also highlights small parts of Coromandel and Great Barrier Island as having high potential for lithium.

SOUTH ISLAND n Dun Mountain and the Red Hills, Mount Richmond Forest Park, Nelson/Marlborough (nickel, cobalt). n The Hohonu Forest Conservation Area on the West Coast (lithium, rare earth minerals). n An area that includes scenic reserves and parks next to and within Nelson Lakes National Park (nickel, cobalt). n Several hotspots near iconic Mt Tapuae-o-Uenuku, inland KaikĹ?ura range (rare earth minerals). n Mt Somers and Mt Barossa in Hakatere Conservation Park, Canterbury (lithium). n The area around Eyre Mountains Conservation Park (nickel, cobalt) and the Longwood Forest Conservation Area (rare earth minerals), in Southland.

Rare earth elements like lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, samarium, and gadolinium are metals used for a wide variety of technological applications considered critical to modern society. China is the largest supplier of rare earth minerals but has restricted exports over the past two years, leading to significant price increases. Areas in New Zealand with highest potential for containing rare earth minerals include the West Coast, Marlborough/north-west Nelson, and Fiordland/Stewart Island.

Nickel and cobalt are crucial elements in the greentechnology movement. They are used in many areas, including lower-emissions energy production, electric car batteries, superalloys for defence, and fuel efficiency in transport. Australia and New Caledonia have 45% of the world’s reserves of nickel, while the central African copper belt has 60% of the global cobalt supplies. The Tasman, Nelson, and Marlborough regions have the highest potential for nickel and cobalt mineralisation.

Mt Somers conservation area and Hakatere conservation area have high potential for lithium. Photo: Neil Silverwood

Forest & Bird is calling for no new mines of any kind on all conservation land, including stewardship land.

The government is expected to release a discussion paper in October about its proposed policy to protect public conservation land from mining.

The mining industry is already pushing back. We may not be able to save all of our precious lands unless we have your support.

Forest & Bird is calling on branches, members, and supporters to mobilise and join our campaign to ban new mines on all conservation lands.

Here are some things you can do to help: n Donate to help us pay for campaign materials. n Sign up to become one of our rapid responders and help coordinate campaign actions in your local community. n Write to your local MP asking them to support no new mines on ALL conservation lands.

For the latest information, or to make a donation, see www.forestandbird.org.nz/ campaigns/ours-not-mine.

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Cover story A new alluvial gold mine being dug out of the forest on conservation land at Mikonui Valley, on the West Coast, by Butlers Mining Company. Photo: Neil Silverwood

Ours not mine

Mining companies continue to apply to open new mines in important forest and coal measure habitats despite the government signalling it wants an end to mining on conservation land. By Lynley Hargreaves.

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few weeks ago, gold miners began felling mature kāmahi trees at the base of a broad forested hill in the Mikonui Valley, on the West Coast. The area is part of a priority site for biodiversity management listed in the West Coast Conservation Management Strategy.

And yet it is one of several areas of conservation land given approval for open-cast gold mining over the past 10 months.

This is intact well-established forest with few weeds, within near-continuous native habitat from the top of the Southern Alps down to the Tasman Sea. It is home to tūī, tomtit, brown creeper, morepork, and grey warbler and is visited by kea and kākā, among other forest birds. Critically endangered long-tailed bats were recently recorded flying down the forest margins.

On 8 November last year, the government’s Speech from the Throne announced a policy of “no new mines on conservation land”. Environmentalists cheered. But as this magazine goes to print, the ban is yet to be implemented and mines are still being permitted.

Coincidentally, Butlers Mining Company’s application for a gold mine in the Mikonui Valley arrived at the Department of Conservation offices on the same day as the no-new-mines policy was announced. It was one of least eight applications on DOC’s books that day.

Another application was from New Zealand Gold, which wants to mine an area called Bowen Terrace, which is less than a kilometre up-valley from the Butlers’ mine at Mikonui and part of the same stewardship area.

The mining company claimed the vegetation here is “common regenerating West Coast forest”, but some of the lowland kahikatea forest on this glacial outwash terrace is old growth. The terrace has significant flora values and is a highly functioning natural forest, according to a DOC report.

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If mined, drainage changes would make it unlikely to return as lowland kahikatea – a forest type that DOC is actively trying to protect. This application is still pending approval, while New Zealand Gold seeks alternative ecological advice.

But plans for other gold and coal mines are forging ahead. There were nearly 50% more applications for mining in the six months after the government’s 2017 announcement than there had been during the same period the previous year.

Part of the reason miners are keen to retain access to the conservation estate is the current legislation, which gives preferential treatment to mining operations. Any other commercial activity on conservation land requires a concession, which can’t be granted if the activity is contrary to the purposes for which the land is held.

In contrast, miners get access arrangements under the Crown Minerals Act, which simply says the decision-maker must “have regard to” the purpose for which the land is held. This is quite a different – and weaker – test than other commercial interests, such as tourism, have to meet.

“Mining is in this uniquely privileged position. No other business operator would be allowed to get away with the large-scale destruction of our publicly owned conservation lands,” says Forest & Bird chief executive Kevin Hague.

“New Zealand has the highest proportion of native plants and animals in the world at risk of extinction. How can we hope to turn that around while allowing opencast mining on large swathes of conservation land?”

In the Mikonui Valley, forests destroyed by alluvial gold mining will take at least a century to return to their former state, if they ever do. There are six mining access arrangements in the area and several more awaiting decisions. If mining on conservation land is allowed to continue, those applications will keep on rolling in.

DENNISTON’S UNIQUE COAL ECOSYSTEMS The cumulative effect of mining can be seen most starkly in the prime location for New Zealand’s coal mining industry – the Buller coal plateau, where the unique geology means much of the landscape can never be returned to its former state after mining.

When resource consent commissioners granted consent for Bathurst Resources’ Escarpment opencast coal mine in 2011, they said: “From the evidence presented to us, it is abundantly clear that large-scale mining is poised to invade the entire Denniston Plateau coal reserves, which, if unchecked, will totally destroy the ecosystems which are present.”

That hasn’t happened yet, and Forest & Bird continues to campaign against new mines in the area. In 2017, we revealed secret plans by the previous government to make a Special Economic Zone on the Buller coal plateau that would bypass usual environmental rules.

Only this year, Bathurst Resources applied for resource consents for new test-drill holes elsewhere on conservation stewardship land at Denniston Plateau, despite the company’s nearby Escarpment mine being currently mothballed because it’s uneconomic to operate.

Mining currently occurs on a wide variety of conservation land types – from ecological areas and wildlife management areas to scenic reserves. But debate has centred on one category of land – conservation stewardship land, which holds one-third of the conservation estate. Forest & Bird says stewardship land is part of the conservation estate and should be included in the government’s “no new mines” policy.

“The debate over stewardship land shouldn’t be about whether it’s valuable or not. It’s about what kind of conservation protection it should have. Should it be a conservation park or an ecological area, or could it be made available for lowland forest restoration or to create buffers against climate change?” says Kevin Hague.

RARER THAN GOLD

The mothballed Escarpment mine on the Denniston plateau.

Photo: Neil Silverwood

Another argument put forward to justify mining on conservation land is jobs. But most of the 292 coal mining-related jobs on the West Coast in 2017 were on mines located off the conservation estate, and most of the job losses have been from mines that weren't on the conservation estate either.

“New Zealand’s regions need diversified economies, as buffered as possible from the commodity price roller coaster. The days of destroying lowland forest, rare habitats, and wetlands are gone. There should be no new mines on conservation land,” adds Mr Hague. * Please help us defend nature from new mines by donating to our fundraising appeal. Every donation makes a difference – see www.forestandbird.org.nz/oursnotmine.

Archey’s frog. Photo: Neil Fitzgerald

A year ago, Forest & Bird magazine highlighted the impact of gold prospecting on critically endangered Archey’s frogs in the Parakiwai Valley, in Coromandel Forest Park, near Whangamata.

Conservation land is still being actively drilled for gold

by New Zealand’s largest miner, Oceana Gold.

“This area is a classic example of conservation land that should be protected, and we believe that there are many other examples across Aotearoa New Zealand,” says Augusta Macassey-Pickard, spokesperson for Forest & Bird’s Mercury Bay branch, who first highlighted the frogs’ plight.

“Our conservation land is special. It is for the benefit of all, including future generations. It is the backbone of our biodiversity and home to many threatened species.”

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Cover story

FIGHT TO SAVE TE KUHA Forest & Bird’s battle to save a pristine area of forest and rare coal plateau habitat from being destroyed by a new opencast coal mine continues. We had a win in June when the government turned down Stevenson Mining’s application to include 12ha of public conservation stewardship land in the Te Kuha mine footprint.

But Stevenson is seeking a judicial review of that decision, and Forest & Bird’s legal case appealing the company’s resource consents in the Environment Court has been postponed until the outcome of the judicial review is known.

In early August, Forest & Bird lawyers were in the Court of Appeal in Wellington fighting a related Te Kuha case – over what the Buller District Council needs to take into account when deciding whether to allow the rest of the land to become a mine.

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The untouched Te Kuha mine site overlooks Westport.

Photo: Neil Silverwood

The proposed mine is just outside Westport and would be visible from both the town and the iconic Buller Gorge road, which is a popular tourist route. The councilmanaged public water conservation reserve is a roadless area of wilderness, and the proposed mine would lay waste to an important habitat for roroa/great-spotted kiwi, South Island mātātā (fernbird), an important population of forest ringlet butterflies, and ancient trees.

“Legal complications aside, what we’re talking about here is a company that wants to dig up planet-destroying coal while laying waste to kiwi habitat,” says Forest & Bird chief executive Kevin Hague.

“I’d like to thank all of you who have supported us in opposing this mine, and we will continue to fight it in every way we can.”

Seabirds

Watching over

Whenua Hou

With a population of less than 250, this small seabird needs urgent help if it is to survive. Photo: Jake Osborne

The race is on to protect a newly discovered diving petrel living on Codfish Island, as Johannes Fischer, from Victoria University of Wellington, explains.

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ne of New Zealand’s most threatened seabirds is the Whenua Hou diving petrel. With less than 250 left in the world, all dependent on a single 1km stretch of sand dunes for breeding, they are in big trouble.

This little seabird was described as a new species to science only in June this year. The colony on Whenua Hou was previously considered to belong to the South Georgian diving petrel, but my research discovered differences in the birds’ size, shape, and colour.

Together, these differences were enough to classify them as a separate species based on the criteria used

by BirdLife International. I worked with Kaitiaki Roopu, a group made up of representatives from Southland’s four Ngāi Tahu rūnanga, to name the species after Whenua Hou/Codfish Island, the only place they survive to the present day.

While the Whenua Hou diving petrel used to breed in colonies throughout southern New Zealand – in the Chatham Islands, Otago Peninsula, Stewart Island, and the Auckland Islands – they are now restricted to a tiny colony in the dunes of Sealers Bay, Whenua Hou, 3km west of Rakiura/Stewart Island.

The Whenua Hou diving petrel is a highly specialised species – the only seabird that breeds entirely within a sand dune environment. Unfortunately, this specialisation means it suffers from the effects of storms and storm surges, which erode the dunes these birds depend on and can entomb them inside their burrows.

Given this dire situation, the Whenua Hou diving petrel is considered nationally critical in New Zealand, the same threat status as kākāpō and kakī. Forest & Bird recognised the need for its conservation and supported my PhD project (2017–20) through a grant from the JS Watson Trust.

Seabirds like the Whenua Hou diving petrels are “ecosystem engineers” and have a significant impact on their surrounding environment. For example, they boost the diversity of other species groups, provide terrestrial

ecosystems with nutrients, and aerate the soil while digging their burrows. Unfortunately, seabirds are also one of the most threatened species groups on the planet, which means their conservation is of urgent importance.

The aim of my PhD is to identify the ideal conservation strategy to secure this species. Specifically, my project combines tracking, breeding biology, and capturemark-recapture studies to identify threats and potential conservation strategies.

I have concluded the first season of my research, and the initial results are coming in. Twenty-six Whenua Hou diving petrels have been equipped with tiny data loggers and are now out at sea, collecting information on their winter locations. Ten nest boxes were also installed, but most information on the breeding biology was gathered with a burrowscope: the birds arrive in mid-September, lay their eggs in mid-October, which hatch in late November, and the chicks finally fledge in mid-January.

I’m also really pleased to report that nearly 95% of the adult population was captured and marked during the 2017/18 breeding seasons, making it one the most well-marked seabird populations on the planet.

Repetitions of these efforts in the 2018/19 and 2019/20 As rare as kākāpō. Johannes season will allow for robust Fischer with a newly discovered analyses and thus the Whenua Hou diving petrel. identification of the required Photo: Graeme Taylor conservation measures.

JS Watson trustee and ornithologist Alan Tennyson, from Te Papa, commented: “This is significant research, Johannes has achieved a huge step forward in understanding this species.”

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Marine

The wreck of the Rena teaming with life after fishing controls were imposed on the area.

Photo: Darryl Torckler

RESTORING THE “PLENTY” The Motiti Rohe Moana Trust has been awarded the inaugural Kōtuku Award by Te Reo o te Taiao/Forest & Bird for tiakitanga ahurei/outstanding guardianship.

By Melanie Nelson and Caroline Wood.

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small group of kaumātua and kuia from Motiti Island, in Te Moana a Toi/the Bay of Plenty, has been working for nearly a decade to find legal mechanisms to protect their marine environment, taking on the might of the wellresourced Ministry for Primary Industries in the process.

Against the odds, they have successfully taken cases to the Environment Court and High Court.

In significant judgments, both ruled the Resource Management Act does apply to the coastal marine area and that regional councils have duties and responsibilities to protect these areas, including powers to regulate fishing to protect native species.

The decision is considered so significant and precedent-setting by the government that MPI recently announced that it was appealing the High Court decision in the Court of Appeal to clarify the law.

Forest & Bird joined the Trust’s legal fight in 2016, with our lawyers

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appearing in both the Environment Court and High Court cases.

In June, the Motiti Rohe Moana Trust was announced as the winner of Forest & Bird’s prestigious new Kōtuku Award, with President Mark Hanger paying tribute to its “groundbreaking and outstanding marine conservation achievements”.

The Motiti Rohe Moana Trust was established nearly a decade ago as a kaitiaki entity for participating in legal marine processes. The trustees are all kaumātua and kuia, born on Motiti Island in Te Moana a Toi/the Bay of Plenty, which they have also referred to as the “Bay of Empty”.

Their battle to bring back the plenty began with a wānanga that was organised in 2009 to address current and future issues facing Motiti Island. The whānau of Motiti were distressed about the degradation of the island and surrounding resources.

“The Trust proposed the Motiti Rohe Moana to the Ministry of Primary Industries in 2010 and

also sought a mātaitai reserve (a customary seafood gathering site) and potentially a taiapure (a stretch of coast, reef, or fishing ground set aside as a reserve for inland kinship groups to gather shellfish or to fish), all of which were declined because of Ministry policies,” says the Trust’s technical advisor Te Atarangi Sayers.

“We realised there were some fundamental flaws with the customary regulations. That belief cemented when the Rena grounded in 2011 and our application to protect the Otāiti/ Astrolabe Reef by banning fishing within three nautical miles of the wreck was rejected.”

Te Atarangi, who has just been elected to Forest & Bird’s Board, has broad whakapapa roots and is part of many tribal groupings, including the hapū of Te Patuwai at Motiti Island in the Bay of Plenty/Te Moana a Toi. He initially proposed marine spatial planning as a framework for preserving the productivity of marine areas at university, but he got only a

D for his paper because his lecturer didn’t think it would work!

But he didn’t forget the idea and suggested this approach to the newly formed Motiti Rohe Moana Trust, saying he believed the RMA could be used to work around the limitations of various other laws that govern New Zealand’s marine space.

After the container ship the Rena foundered on the Astrolabe reef in 2011, spilling 350 tonnes of oil and killing up to 20,000 seabirds and countless fish, the government temporarily closed the area. This prevented fishing and marine life thrived, but when MPI lifted the closure in 2016 the area was again cleaned out by commercial fishers.

The Motiti Rohe Moana Trust asked the Bay of Plenty Regional Council to place controls over fishing there, but the council claimed the law did not allow it to do so.

The matter went to court in 2016 and 2017, with first the Environment Court and then the High Court agreeing the RMA could be used to control the effect of fishing in the coastal marine area. The Environment Court noted a decline in snapper stocks in the area is consistent with a general loss of biodiversity and stated that it was disturbed by the level of bycatch reported.

The Environment Court has issued interim directions that the process to protect Otāiti’s marine environment should continue, despite MPI appealing the decision. It means this new avenue for coastal marine protection is currently available through the law and any community in the country (including whānau, hapū, and iwi) can initiate a plan change, through a Schedule 1 variation to the RMA. It can also be done by the regional authority.

Te Atarangi Sayers

There has been a decline in snapper stocks in the Bay of Plenty. Photo: Snapper at Goat Island marine reserve by Darryl Torckler

LEGAL FIGHT HEADS TO SUPREME COURT The Ministry for Primary Industries is threatening to take the Motiti legal fight all the way to the Supreme Court, potentially tying up the tiny hapū in litigation for years.

Leave to appeal the High Court’s decision to the Court of Appeal has been granted to the Crown in respect of four questions of law that address the interplay between the Resource Management Act 1991 and the Fisheries Act 1996.

Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash was forced to defend the move at Forest & Bird’s June conference, saying he wanted a clarification of the law because it could result in a “fundamental change” to the way New Zealand manages its inshore fisheries.

“I think this is an issue we need to understand the implications of. I would have no problem if it went all the way to the Supreme Court,” he said.

But Kevin Hague, Forest & Bird’s chief executive, called on the government to drop the appeal.

“We urge the Minister to direct the Ministry of Primary Industries to drop its court case challenging RMA controls on fishing and instead celebrate this wonderful outcome for New Zealand’s marine biodiversity.

“This is the first time the Resource Management Act has been used to protect important marine ecosystems and surrounding buffer zones. It’s a hugely important step in a long process and has implications across the entire country,” he said.

Forest & Bird’s legal team is preparing for the Court of Appeal hearing, when they will stand alongside the Trust’s legal team to defend the original High Court Motiti decision.

Forest & Bird’s new Kōtuku award A Kōtuku award may be awarded to an individual or group outside the Society who has made an outstanding and profound contribution to environmental management or guardianship in Aotearoa New Zealand. The kōtuku/ white heron is a Māori symbol of prestige and rarity. The whakataukī (proverb) “He kōtuku rerenga tahi” refers to a type of person so prestigious as to rarely be seen. As such, this award will be given on occasion rather than annually, when the work of the winner is fitting for the prestige and rarity of this award.

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Fantastic fish

WHITEBAIT WOES

Forest & Bird is calling for restrictions on the sale of whitebait to allow populations to recover.

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hitebait used to be so plentiful they were caught by the truck-load and used for fertiliser on farms.

Forest & Bird would like to see whitebait restored and made abundant in our streams and rivers once more.

Forest & Bird’s freshwater advocate Annabeth Cohen says ending the commercial sale of whitebait would help alleviate the pressure on the struggling native fish – with four out of the five species that make up the catch threatened with extinction.

“It’s time for us as a country to decide if we’re willing to see these precious creatures go the way of the huia or if we’re prepared to ensure they’re still around beyond our own lifetimes,” she said.

The Department of Conservation’s recent Conservation Status of New Zealand freshwater fishes 2017 report lists three of these whitebait species as “at risk – declining” and one as “threatened”. Native fish aren’t currently protected under the Wildlife Act.

Kōaro, shortjawed kōkopu, banded kōkopu, giant kōkopu, and inanga are the endemic species that make up the whitebait catch. It’s illegal to sell trout (an introduced fish species) but not whitebait.

“Until whitebait and their habitats are thriving, it makes no sense to sell these fish for a profit, especially when four out of five whitebait species are at risk of disappearing forever,” says Annabeth.

There is currently no maximum catch limit for native freshwater fish, including whitebait. The fishery is the only one managed by the Department of Conservation, and it doesn’t keep records of how much fish is taken during the whitebait season.

“It’s time for regional councils and central government to take action on protecting and restoring wetlands and rivers, ending commercial catches, improving water quality, and putting recreational catch limits in place.”

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Juvenile whitebait.

Photo: George Novak

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Predator-Free NZ

WHIO WINS

Whio with ducklings in the Tongariro Forest project area.

Photo: Bubs Smith

Record numbers of whio pairs and ducklings were recorded in a recent survey in the Tongariro Forest, thanks to 20 years of sustained predator control. By Caroline Wood.

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wo months ago, Laura Dawson visited the Tongariro Forest whio project and crossed a monitoring bridge over a swift-flowing small stream.

“I looked up the stream and couldn’t believe it – there was a pair of whio, and further up the same stream there was another pair. I looked downstream, and there was another pair. All together, there were three pairs of whio all within half a kilometre.

“It’s absolutely phenomenal. Around the rest of the country, you might see one pair per kilometre, and that’s in an area with good pest control.”

The 20,000ha Tongariro Forest, west of the Tongariro National Park in the central North Island, is bordered by three main rivers, the Whakapapa, Whanganui, and the Mangatepopo, all of which are home to whio.

They are protected by trapping along the rivers, as well as aerial 1080 drops every three years. The birds are also microchipped for accurate monitoring.

“Recent surveys show there are now four times the number of whio in the Tongariro Forest than there were 30 years ago,” says Laura, from Forest & Bird’s Taupo branch, who has served on the Central North Island Blue Duck Trust for 13 years.

“That’s telling us how healthy the habitat is. There is a lot of food in the river, and predator control, in particular aerial 1080, has made a big difference.”

There are eight priority breeding sites for whio/blue duck in New Zealand, with the most successful being the Tongariro Forest, which was recently shown to have the densest whio population in the country.

In December 2017, monitoring was carried out on the Tongariro Forest’s Western Diversion streams for the first

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time in three years with “spectacular” results.

There were 121 pairs of whio recorded on a 52km stretch of river, an increase of seven pairs since the last survey in 2014. The total number is four times the number recorded in 1998, when there were only 30 pairs.

Senior DOC biodiversity ranger Ali Beath said: “This season was a record year for whio productivity, with 252 ducklings being counted. There were two main contributing factors: stable flows during nesting and brood rearing, and an aerial 1080 operation throughout Tongariro and Pukepoto Forests.”

Interestingly, predator traps were not deployed last year to assess the effect of a 1080-only regime, with productivity still “outstanding” despite the lack of labourintensive trapping.

“This is now one of the longest-running whio monitoring programme in the country. In that time, we have seen both a spectacular increase in pair numbers, as well as productivity spikes in years with stable flows and predator control,” Ali added.

Genesis Energy has played a key role in the project’s success, working to ensure stable flows in whio’s Western Diversion stream habitats.

The company’s environmental coordinator and ecologist Cam Speedy says: “As counter-intuitive as it sounds, less water is better for whio in these particular rivers because of their steep-sided nature.

“This is a wonderful conservation story, and something we have worked hard to achieve. It’s also an endorsement of the environmental sustainability of Genesis Energy’s operations.”

Other key members of the project team include Bubs

Smith and Dean Flavell, of Te Whare Aronui o Tuwharetoa, who undertook the 2017 whio survey.

Bubs Smith, who was DOC’s first whio ranger on the project, said: “The earlier days saw a very intensive management regime. A lot was learnt, and it has been great to be able to take a more hands-off approach and concerntrate more on the control of predators.

“Whio are an inconic taonga species and a really great indicator of the water quality in their habitat. The success of this project can be attributed to all those who have been involved since its inception. The combined effort to achieve the great results not only benefit whio at a local level but also nationally.”

Whio dog Fern with handler Malcolm Swanney (left) and national Whio Recovery Group leader Andrew Glaser with his whio dog Neo. Photo: Alison Beath

BLUE DUCK PRIORITY SITES

DOC ranger Alison Beath holding a whio during monitoring.

SAVING AN ICONIC SPECIES The Electricity Corporation of New Zealand (later to become Genesis Energy) began work to renew its resource consents for the Tongariro Power Scheme in the early 1990s. This started a lengthy process of consultation with many parties, including the Department of Conservation (DOC) and Forest & Bird.

We were concerned about the effects of the Tongariro Power Scheme on the environment, especially its impact on whio, their habitat, and the natural character of rivers and streams. Together with the power company, they agreed a mitigation package.

This included the release of minimum flows below the Mangatepopo and Whanganui intakes on the Western Diversion of the Tongariro Power Scheme, and the establishment of the Central North Island Blue Duck Charitable Trust in 2002 to protect whio in the Whanganui, Tongariro, and Taranaki areas.

Forest & Bird’s advocacy was led by former president Keith Chapple, who masterminded the establishment of the trust and served on it until his death in 2005. The trust’s primary objective is to create new self-sustaining whio populations, not necessarily limited to the central North Island, enhance existing populations, and educate the public.

The five current trustees are Bill Fleury and Peter Morton from DOC, independent scientist Warwick Silvester, Cam Speedy from Genesis Energy, and Laura Dawson from Forest & Bird.

Whio are one of only four duck species in the world that live in fast-flowing water and are regarded as an important “indicator” species – if they are present, the river or stream is considered to be in a healthy state.

Loss of habitat (changing land and water use) is a major threat to whio. They nest in burrows and caves along the river bank, which also makes them highly vulnerable to flooding. But their biggest threat is predators, including stoats, rats, and cats.

Populations are now patchy and isolated. They have low reproductive success, and monitoring shows there are more males than females. The total population is estimated to be between 2000 and 3000, and declining.

The Genesis Energy Whio Recovery Programme is a five-year national recovery and management plan aimed at increasing whio populations nationwide and fully protecting the species at eight “security” sites where they breed.

These priority sites are Te Urewera Mainland Island, Whirinaki Forest, Tongariro Forest, and Manganui o te Ao in the North Island and Oparara River, Wangapeka/Fyfe Rivers, Styx/Arahura rivers, and Northern Fiordland in the South Island.

For more information, see www.whioforever.co.nz.

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Biodiversity matters

A recent view from the Milford highway of Te Anau Downs property near the Fiordland National Park boundary. Rows of cut manuka shrubland are obvious, with inter-planted Douglas fir that will dominate this landscape in the near future and likely create a serious wilding problem.

Wilding conifer risk An investigation has been launched into a possible breach of consent after Forest & Bird and local residents raised concerns about the planting of exotic conifers on the edge of Fiordland National Park. Forest & Bird’s conservation ambassador Sir Alan Mark looks at the issue and calls for better enforcement of existing rules.

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learance of indigenous vegetation, often in remote areas throughout New Zealand, for a range of reasons, including farming, soil conservation, wood production, and carbon capture, has the potential to create a serious threat through the establishment of wildings many kilometres downwind, often into quite remote natural areas, through seed that are specialised for wind dispersal.

Such wilding conifer problems are widespread in the South Island high country from Nelson-Marlborough, through Canterbury, including the Mackenzie Basin, the Wakatipu Basin in Otago, and also in Southland, where they are found on Mid Dome and the Takitimu Mountains.

Recognised as a national problem, a strategy is now in place and several million dollars allocated annually to tackle this serious problem.

Currently, there are plantings of Douglas fir, known to pose one of the most serious wilding problems, close to the boundary of our most prestigious national park and World Heritage Area, Fiordland, where it borders the busy tourist highway accessing Milford Sound. Here there is ongoing, large-scale clearance of extensive stands

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of native manuka shrubland (now highly prized for its potential to produce valuable honey) for the planting of Douglas fir stands.

The serious wilding threat from these plantings must surely be obvious, including to the beech forests and other vegetation in adjoining Fiordland National Park, based on its known tolerance of shade, as we have seen elsewhere in New Zealand and in its home range in the Rocky Mountains of the USA. Te Anau Downs Station was granted a resource consent by Southland District Council in September 2004, authorising clearance of some 300ha of native vegetation from a 425ha block of land, to plant Douglas fir (a permitted activity at the time). This block is east of the Milford highway between Retford Stream and Dunton Creek. However, it appears that the clearance and planting has exceeded this area and now extends to the highway, and further clearance to the west of the highway is currently under way.

Presumably, the consent was granted in innocence and ignorance of the potential spread of Douglas fir, as

was also the case with Glenfellen Station above Garston, where 190ha of Douglas fir was planted in upland tussock grassland. At the time, a consent from Southland District Council was required only for plantings of more than 200ha. Given its wilding potential, this planting was later cleared and the tussock cover retrieved by the Department of Conservation, at considerable cost, when it acquired the area through tenure review. As a result, the Council amended its District Plan to limit further plantings.

Recently, the Minister of Conservation, Hon Eugenie Sage, when visiting Milford, expressed concern for this destruction when seen first-hand. She responded: “I was dismayed to see massive destruction of manuka shrublands over hundreds of hectares on Southland’s Te Anau Downs Station. It’s an appalling sight on the road to Milford Sound/Piopiotahi, especially when the shrublands are feeding habitat for threatened long-tailed bats and many birds and insects. Such destruction of native habitat by private landowners is a major failure in RMA enforcement and causes biodiversity loss.”

I am aware that Te Anau residents have been taking photographs of this destruction and expressing deep concern among themselves, but they aren’t speaking out publicly, probably because in this small community they do not want to be ostracised for criticising a prominent farmer.

Southland District Council is aware of the concerns about the clearance of indigenous vegetation on the property and is investigating whether there has been a breach of its District Plan rules. We will keep an eye on this.

Since Southland District Council’s new District Plan came into effect in January 2018, the only legal clearance of indigenous vegetation, without a resource consent, is of vegetation that has regrown naturally on land that was lawfully cleared since 2000 (Permitted activity rule BIO.1 para 6). Environment Southland is known to be concerned n

Southland District Council is investigating the clearance of native vegetation to make way for Douglas fir plantings at Te Anau Downs station.

about wilding conifers with its long involvement at Mid Dome (where I was a trustee for the first decade), and with vegetation clearance of natural areas and subsequent exotic afforestation, with wilding potential, as expressed in its Southland Regional Policy Statement 2017.

Under the new National Environmental Standards for Plantation Forestry, which came into effect in May this year, a wilding risk assessment must be done by a suitably competent person before any forestry trees are planted (section 11(1) of the NES). If the risk assessment identifies any notable risks of wilding spread, permission to plant can be refused. Section 12 of the NES also states that “Afforestation must not occur within a significant natural area or an outstanding natural feature or landscape.”

This surely must apply close to the boundary of Fiordland National Park. n Sir Alan Mark, FRSNZ, is Emeritus Professor, Department of Botany, University of Otago, Dunedin.

References available. For more information about wilding pines, see http://www.wildingconifers.org.nz. To read the new National Environmental Standards for Plantation Forestry, see http://bit.ly/2MckBBb.

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Freshwater

CLEANING UP OUR WATERWAYS A new report released by Forest & Bird in August reveals regional councils are not properly enforcing dairy effluent rules in some of our biggest farming regions.

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egional councils are supposed to protect our rivers, lakes, and wetlands. But when it comes to managing the significant environmental risks posed by dairy effluent, some councils are failing even the basics.

Forest & Bird used the Local Government Official Information Act to ask regional councils for details of their dairy effluent monitoring regime from 2016 to 2017, and compiled the results into a report, the first of its kind in New Zealand, called Cleaning Up: Fixing compliance, monitoring and enforcement in the Dairy Sector.

The report revealed significant inconsistencies and gaps in how regional councils are enforcing the rules for dairy effluent management.

Our experts gave each council a “report card” based on their performance in detecting and responding to serious non-compliance with the dairy effluent rules.

“It’s time the government took stronger action to reign in poorly performing councils,” says Forest & Bird’s freshwater advocate and report co-author Annabeth Cohen.

A total of 5000 dairy farms were not inspected for dairy effluent compliance in 2016-17.

“Half of all regional councils don’t inspect all their dairy farms annually – together, these regions account for threequarters of New Zealand’s dairy farms,” says Annabeth.

There were also inconsistencies and gaps in how councils responded to offending. In Taranaki, there were four separate serious non-compliance incidents involving effluent discharged to water, drawing three different enforcement responses from the council. One persistent offender in Northland received 12 enforcement actions in one year but was not prosecuted.

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Throughout the country, only 55% of cases of serious non-compliance had a follow-up visit.

“This is extremely concerning, given that ‘serious noncompliance’ means damage to the environment has either occurred or was imminent. We are facing a freshwater crisis, and yet too many councils are letting farmers get away with breaking the rules,” Annabeth said.

“When councils don’t address poor farming practice, it’s unfair to the many farmers who are doing great work and following the rules.”

Annabeth says that, while some councils are doing a good job, it’s very concerning that some of our big dairying regions are not pulling their weight, such as Waikato Regional Council (graded F) and Environment Southland (graded E).

Forest & Bird has set out a range of recommendations for regional councils and central government.

“It’s simple really – we want all councils to know about all the dairy farms in their region, inspect all farms every year, and take appropriate action when rules are broken. And as for the government, it’s time they ensure councils are meeting these basic requirements and take stronger action to reign in poorly performing councils,” says Annabeth.

“We welcome the new RMA Oversight Unit announced

by Environment Minister David Parker earlier this year, but it’s crucial that the unit is given a strong mandate and proper resourcing to actually hold councils to account.” www.forestandbird.org.nz/resources

FROM COW TO CUP How much water does it takes to produce 1L of milk? The answer depends on which part of New Zealand your milk comes from, as Daniel Collins explains.

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ilk is a staple of New Zealand’s culture, economy, To look more closely, we can turn to an AgResearch and landscape. We put it on our breakfast table study published in 2012. Studying water use in several and in our coffee. It employs nearly 50,000 dairy farms in Waikato (largely unirrigated) and Canterbury people and contributes 3.5% to our total GDP. It has (extensively irrigated), the scientists identified how much also transformed 1.7 million hectares of countryside into water was abstracted and how much milk was produced. a pastoral quilt. This transformation has changed water With a few approximations again, the calculation leads quality and also quantity. to a water footprint of roughly 1L of water per litre of milk The dairy industry is the largest consented consumer of in Waikato and 250L of water for 1L of milk in Canterbury. freshwater in New Zealand (notwithstanding the Manapouri The large difference comes down to the climate: wetter hydropower diversion). Water is taken from rivers or in Waikato, dryer in Canterbury. The 1L for Waikato aquifers to quench cows’ thirst and wash down milking is probably on the low side regionally, with yet other sheds, but much more water is used to irrigate and grow estimates ranging up to 10L. the grass that feeds the cows. In some places, this has led These water footprint estimates – 160L average for the to reduced river flows and aquifer levels. whole of New Zealand (1–10L for wet Waikato and 250L for The amount of water used by the dairy industry has thus dry Canterbury) – refer to abstracted freshwater, not total become another cause for concern. But how much water is water used. used? A useful way to approach this question is to calculate There is another number out there that many people the water footprint of milk. may know: 1000L of water per litre of milk. This number A water footprint is both a combines rainfall, irrigation, and a “pollution dilution” metaphor and a measurement volume together into one. The of how much water is used to number is easy to remember, produce something – a cotton but it does not represent t-shirt, a kilogram of beef, or 1L the effects of dairying on of milk. river flows or aquifer levels.

As a first estimate, we can tally The rainfall contribution up the amount of water abstracted would have been more or for pastoral irrigation and divide it less evaporated/transpired by by the amount of milk produced over whatever plants were on the the same period of time, nationally. land, and the “pollution dilution” For this, we turn to dairy industry volume is really just a crude way statistics and an Aqualinc Research of representing water quality Ltd report from 2010 (the most degradation. recent publicly available data), with Although it is only one piece a few reasonable but necessary of the puzzle, understanding approximations. how much freshwater is used to of water per 1L of milk The result of the calculations produce milk helps us assess average for the whole of is a water footprint of roughly the sustainability of dairying in New Zealand 160L of water per litre of milk. different parts of the country This is water abstracted from a and in different climates, now of water per 1L of milk river, aquifer, or lake. But not and in the future. But we in wet Waikato all farms use the same amount need more up-to-date and of water. Some are more detailed data to do these efficient in their use than properly. of water per 1L of milk others, and where rain is n Dr Daniel Collins is a in dry Canterbury plentiful less abstraction is hydrologist at NIWA. needed.

160L 1–10L 250L

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Forest & Bird project

BRING BACK THE SEABIRDS

Sooty shearwaters tītī (Puffinus griseus) are one of the most abundant seabird species worldwide but populations are declining and in New Zealand, only a few remnant colonies persist on the mainland.

One of them breeds at Sandymount Reserve.

Life at the conservation coalface isn’t always simple, as Caroline Wood finds out when she visits a Forest & Bird seabird project on the Otago Peninsula.

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his isn’t a walk in the park, I reflect, as I struggle to keep on my feet while scrambling up a steep slope from the beach towards Forest & Bird’s new sooty shearwater/tītī seabird project on the Sandymount cliffs.

It’s early August and we’re at the start of a three-hour tramp to check predator traplines ahead of this year’s tītī breeding season.

The project is on Otago Peninsula, just outside Dunedin, the wildlife capital of New Zealand. In a few weeks’ time, hundreds of thousands of tītī will return from as far away as the North Pacific to breed on small southern off-shore islands, most of which are predator-free. A few hundred individuals will return to these vertigo-inducing Otago cliffs, just as their bird ancestors have for thousands of years before them.

Sandymount reserve is one of only a few remnant sooty shearwater breeding colonies left on mainland New Zealand. It’s also swarming with predators waiting to munch on the seabird’s eggs and young. We’ve seen evidence in the sand as we walked into Sandfly Bay – footprints of a large ferret, as well as many possum tracks. Possums are a massive problem at the tītī burrows and can happily survive

The Otago Peninsula's steep hills are challenging places for seabird conservationists to do predator control.

on these treeless, sandy, windswept clifftops.

It gets steeper as we zig-zag up the hillside away from the beach. We are heading towards tītī territory through silver tussocks, harakeke/flax, native stinging nettles, and muehlenbeckia, mixed up with the dominant yellowflowering lupin. There’s no footpath, just a rough trapline cut through the scrub by a hardy Forest & Bird volunteer.

It’s great to be out of Forest & Bird’s head office, but this is hard yakka. Our Dunedin-based Bring Back the Seabirds project manager Francesca Cunninghame is used to this terrain. She effortlessly hops over fences and down steep hillsides to check nests and traps. Her young son Niko is with us in a backpack shouldered by his dad Jorge. Niko has been on similar expeditions since he was three weeks old. After working for Forest & Bird through the New Zealand seabird breeding season, the family will head to Ecuador to carry out conservation work on critically endangered mangrove finches – only 100 remain on Earth.

We emerge somewhere near the top. Someone built a fence... what, here? It runs at a crazy angle down the cliff face, towards the sea. I stop to catch my breath and imagine myself slipping on a tussock and tumbling down the hillside with a bemused seabird watching me roll past.

But the views over the ancient volcanic landscapes of the Otago Peninsula are worth it, and here at last are the small tītī nesting burrows dug into side of the cliffs.

The Department of Conservation manages the Sandymount reserve, but there’s no road access to Forest & Bird’s tītī project and volunteers undertake most of the predator-control work. It’s hard work. The traps have to be checked, cleared, and reset every few weeks. Our volunteers need the skills of mountain goat, fitness of a marathon runner, and eyes of a kārearea, as the burrows are hidden in grass and we have to be careful not to collapse them.

We start winding our way around the clifftop, checking traps. The DOC 200s haven’t caught anything but the yellow plastic Timms traps put out by the Otago Peninsula

Biodiversity Group and maintained by Forest & Bird have.

Five possums in fewer than 10 traps, which is pleasing and depressing at the same time. Francesca and David Bowden, Forest & Bird’s programmes and volunteer manager, carefully reset the traps using freshly chopped apple. This definitely works in the possum traps, but the egg bait doesn’t seem to be working in the DOC 200s.

Maybe try changing to fresh rabbit meat, muses David.

Francesca is worried about getting the predators under control before tītī return to breed this spring. At the start of the 2017 and 2018 breeding seasons, Forest & Bird surveyed the Sandymount site with a specially trained seabird-detection dog. There were numerous burrows and a lot of adult bird activity around them, but few had incubating birds, suggesting a breeding population exposed to high predation.

Remote camera monitoring confirmed the presence of rats, mice, possums, cats, hedgehogs, ferrets, and stoats.

All of them can impact on nesting sooty shearwaters, their eggs, and chicks during the seven months the birds are actively breeding. The cameras will be used again this season to help monitor the breeding tītī.

“Sadly, last season were weren’t successful at protecting the tītī. All the active burrows we identified at the start of the season failed to fledge chicks, and the cameras recorded chicks being killed by introduced predators,” says Francesca.

Forest & Bird's programmes and volunteer manager David Bowden resets a Timms trap. Photo: Caroline Wood

Bring Back the Seabirds project manager Francesca Cunnighame (centre) with Niko, Jorge, and Caroline Wood.

“We’re now developing a plan to see whether we can alter our trapping to help the birds successfully breed.”

Francesca says she tries not to feel disheartened about the multiple threats tītī face, as well as their land-based predators. Large numbers of sooty shearwaters are caught in New Zealand waters as bycatch, particularly by southern trawl fisheries, and they are also impacted by climate change and potentially over-fishing.

But there are rays of hope. Forest & Bird’s marine team is working to persuade the fishing industry and government to sign up to a Zero Bycatch pledge, put cameras on boats, and increase marine protection around Dunedin through the SEMPA process. And our national climate team is working to get the Zero Carbon Act passed to mitigate climate impacts in the ocean as well as on land.

Francesca has also just heard that another Forest & Bird seabird project at Lawyers Head will get extensive rat baiting and new seabird signage, thanks to Dunedin City Council. Forest & Bird will continue to do mustelid control at the site, home to threatened red-billed gulls and whitefronted terns. And Forest & Bird’s death-defying fairy prion fence at the nearby St Clair cliffs proved popular with tītī last breeding season, with six chicks fledging there.

How can you help?

If you are interested in volunteering or making a donation to any Forest & Bird seabird project, contact f.cunninghame@forestandbird.org.nz.

50 years ago

Saving Waipoua Several members spoke in appreciative terms of the intense interest that Professor WR McGregor had displayed on matters relating to the preservation and conservation of the indigenous fauna and flora for New Zealand. The preservation of Waipoua kauri forest, the last major stand of one of the world’s outstanding trees, was obtained largely as a result of his indefatigable efforts. The Society strongly supported the campaign to have the Waipoua Forest declared a kauri forest sanctuary, a campaign in which Professor McGregor took the leading part.

In recognition of its special interests, the Society had the right to nominate one member to the Waipoua Kauri Forest Sanctuary Advisory Committee.

Forest & Bird magazine, August 1968

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Climate

FEELING THE HEAT Since the Industrial Revolution, when humans began burning large amounts of fossil fuels, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from about 280 to more than 410 parts per million (ppm).

The last time it was this high was nearly four million years ago. And at the rate we’re going, carbon dioxide concentrations will be at 1000ppm by the end of the century. This last happened more than 50 million years ago, when Earth was a steamy sauna and temperatures in New Zealand were 10 to 15˚C warmer than they are now.

HOTHOUSE EARTH

Looking after nature is critical to preventing the world slipping into a hot-house phase within decades, says Forest & Bird’s climate advocate Adelia Hallett.

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ew research says the climate is changing faster than it has at any time in the past 1.2 million years, threatening the very existence of humans and other species.

To put that timescale in perspective, humans have been around for 300,000 years, and human “civilisation” – agriculture and settlements – for less than 12,000 years.

And while it’s true the Earth has experienced hothouse phases before, it hasn’t happened during human existence.

Hothouse phases occur when atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations get high, trapping heat within the Earth’s atmosphere and initiating feedback loops like melting ice caps and changes to ocean currents that become a selffulfilling legacy.

That means, heat leads to more heat. Put simply, the Earth stops being able to cool itself.

In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers say that after examining the evidence of

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previous periods of intense warming they fear even 2˚C of warming could trip the feedback mechanisms that lead to hothouse Earth.

“Hothouse Earth is likely to be uncontrollable and dangerous to many, particularly if we transition into it in only a century or two, and it poses severe risks for health, economies, political (especially for the most climate-vulnerable), and, ultimately, the habitability of the planet for humans,” the paper says.

The researchers, led by Emeritus Professor Will Steffen of the Australian National University, say that, while it is too late to retain the climate that has marked the Holocene, it is possible to move into a new “Stabilised Earth” state, in which humans take action to limit climate change as much as possible.

And that involves working with nature, they say.

“While reducing emissions is a priority, much more could be done to reduce direct human pressures on critical biomes that contribute to the regulation of the state of the Earth System through carbon sinks

Global average temperatures are already more than one degree warmer than at the start of the Industrial Revolution and are expected to hit 1.5˚C by about 2040.

and moisture feedbacks, such as the Amazon boreal forests, and to build much more effective stewardship of the marine and terrestrial biospheres in general,” the paper says.

Measures that will help include managing forests and soils to maximise carbon sequestration and increasing biodiversity, because more biodiverse systems store more carbon.

New Zealand’s native forests currently store more than 6.2 billion tonnes worth of carbon, while our huge marine exclusive economic zone make us one of the largest carbon sinks in the world.

Surely that’s worth fighting to protect.

HOW CAN YOU HELP? As people who care about nature, you can do a lot. Making sure our native species and ecosystems are in as healthy a state as possible so they are more resilient to a warming world is important.

It’s also vital to keep up the public pressure on our government to cut greenhouse gas emissions at a rate and scale that will really make a difference for nature.

See www.forestandbird.org.nz/ what-we-do/climate.

Forest collapse

Successful redress with Ngāpuhi could see huge flocks of kūkupa return to Te Tai Tokerau.

TREATY CLAIM HOPE FOR NATURE

Whangaroa kaumātua encouraged Forest & Bird’s northern advocate Dean Baigent-Mercer to write ground-breaking evidence in support of Ngāpuhi Treaty claims that could change the fate of Northland’s collapsing native forests.

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ublic conservation land within Ngāpuhi rohe is under Treaty claim that includes forests like Puketi, Omahuta, and Russell State Forest. Most are in varying states of collapse.

The introduction of cats, and Norway and ship rats to Aotearoa were accidental. But many exotic species, including stoats, possums, and weasels, were introduced because the Crown empowered Acclimatisation Societies (European settler groups) to bring species from other lands. Acclimatisation Societies saw the islands of Aotearoa as a kind of “Empty Eden” they wanted to fill.

Ngāpuhi had no say in the introduction of possums, stoats, and weasels but have to live with the diverse and ongoing consequences from the disappearance of rongoā (medicinal plants) to the lack of native birds for food and feathers to use in korowai (cloaks), to the current collapse of native forests.

These introduced animals have reduced native wildlife and plants, and their abilities to multiply and regenerate, and in some cases pushed species to extinction in Te Tai Tokerau. The consequences on Ngāpuhi hapū include food security, cultural, spiritual, ecological, and economic impacts.

The brief of evidence submitted in support of Ngāpuhi Treaty claims says that because of the Crown’s negligence, if and when conservation land is returned, Ngāpuhi would inherit the ecological debt of collapsing forests with lost native species, very low numbers of native birds, and the huge financial and ongoing costs of pest control to bring the ngahere back to life.

The evidence also highlights: n How the Crown ignored expert evidence in 1876 against the introduction of stoats and weasels n The severe reduction or regional extinction of about 33 native bird and two bat species n Memories of kaumātua about northern forest’s rich biodiversity in the past

n

The arrival of possums to Te Tai Tokerau during the 1960s and how native forests that were full of pigeons became forests full of possums within a single human lifetime n Impacts on tohu/natural indicators, beekeeping, future tōtara forestry, climate change mitigation, and carbon credits.

It concludes that, because the Crown permitted the introduction of mustelids, possums, and other species that have become invasive and destructive, the responsibility of redress rests with the Crown.

As the Crown can’t return these native ecosystems to their 1840 state, the costs of pest control need to be embedded within Ngāpuhi settlements, with hapū to decide how this work is carried out and appropriate capacity building funded by the Crown.

The Crown also needs to cover the costs of reintroducing native species that have been lost because of the devastation caused by possums, stoats, and weasels into areas with proven low-pest populations that have successful and ongoing pest control, so reintroduced native species can survive and thrive.

And the Crown must take all necessary precautions to prevent new invasive species from entering and establishing within Ngāpuhi rohe and fund the elimination of species that become invasive.

Negotiations over Ngāpuhi historic grievances are expected to get under way soon.

The evidence is a really interesting read and can be used by other tribal areas or for environmental and historical education throughout the country. You can download and read the full brief of evidence at https:// www.forestandbird.org.nz/campaigns/northland-forestcollapse.

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In the field

Ann Graeme considers the thorny question of putting a price on nature and its contribution to human wellbeing.

NATURAL CAPITAL N

ature is free. It doesn’t figure in the market economy. We don’t put a price on the air we breathe, the beauty of the forested ranges behind the town, the landslide that doesn’t happen because of the blanket of forest, or the stream that runs clear because its waters have trickled through a wetland.

These benefits are not given dollar values, but we know the cost of rearing a cow and the profit of selling her milk.

The beneficial relationship between nature and human wellbeing has long been recognised, but it has not been accounted for in the “real world” of the free market, the Gross Domestic Product, and the bottom line.

But, recently, as our impact on the planet increases and climate change accelerates, greater efforts are being made to quantify “ecosystem services” – the elusive values of our natural world. This term “ecosystem services” is so bland and boring it might have been perversely chosen to discourage our interest, but it masks a radical idea.

Ecosystem services mean what natural ecosystems give to us – the benefits they freely provide. Natural capital is the stock of natural ecosystems from which these benefits flow. These are the terms of the marketplace and conjure up a financial situation with which we are all familiar. If you

Whangamarino wetland in the Waikato was “valued” at $39,800 per hectare per year by the regional council’s Hidden Economy report, and yet it is in serious trouble – polluted, full of invasive carp, and choked with weeds. Photo: Oscar Thomas

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have capital invested, year after year you will benefit from the dividend you receive. If you cash up and spend your capital, you will no longer get a dividend, and in the long run you will be poorer.

We have already cashed up a great deal of the planet’s natural capital. In the words of the UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: “These ecosystem changes have helped to improve the lives of billions, but at the same time they weakened nature’s ability to deliver other key services.” In other words, the world is running short of natural capital.

Consider the ecological services provided by native forests: they regulate the atmosphere and the climate by taking in carbon dioxide and emitting oxygen. They control erosion on steep land. They moderate run-off and floods, and help keep streams and rivers free of silt. Forests are home to a myriad of interesting and beautiful native species. In the green shade of the towering trees, people find rest and recreation, far from the constraints of our built environment.

So what is it worth to leave this native forest intact?

One regional council has calculated the value of all the different ecosystems under its care. In its report The Hidden Economy, Waikato Regional Council puts the ecosystem value derived from its region’s native forests at $2400 per hectare per year.

Wow. But that figure pales beside the per hectare value it put on the region’s freshwater wetlands. Like forests, they offer storm protection and flood control, and are home and breeding places to a suite of native species. But wetlands do much more. They have an extraordinary ability to recycle the nutrients, treat the waste, and settle the silt that flows from the land into streams and rivers.

Waikato Regional Council also calculated the value of its freshwater wetlands at a whopping $39,800 per hectare per year (source: The Hidden Economy). These figures are staggering. They immediately invite argument about how the values are calculated. Is carbon dioxide intake, at

Oparara. Photo: Neil Silverwood

New Zealanders have grown wealthy by spending the nation’s natural capital. Now, like an aging person, we need to build up our savings because, as climate change advances, we will need more ecosystem services. which forests excel, more valuable than nutrient recycling, for which wetlands are champions? How much value does a kōkako add to a forest or a mudfish to a wetland? And how do we put a price on recreation or the value of a landscape?

Rather than focus on the figures, the value of these exercises is to change the way we look at nature. It is no longer the environment here and business over there. It is all interconnected.

And in the Waikato, although farmers and regional councillors will have already known about the value of wetlands, it must have focused – even blown – their minds to see such a monetary value ascribed to wetlands. In a region dominated by dairy farming, these reports must have given weight to the importance of protecting and restoring the wetlands that help to clean up after the cows.

New Zealanders have grown wealthy by spending the nation’s natural capital. Now, like an aging person, we need to build up our savings because, as climate change advances, we will need to call on more ecosystem services.

We need more wetlands to protect us from flooding and provide clean water. We need more forests to protect our catchments and suck up carbon dioxide from the air and store it, and healthier forests so they can maximise the ecosystem services they provide. We need more mangroves to protect our harbours.

We have two priorities: the first is to protect our existing natural capital and the second, just as importantly, is to increase this capital and so increase the services it provides.

Carbon trading and credits address one priority. These

priorities encourage investing in forestry, which will lead to more natural capital.

But for land owners who maintain the natural capital that already exists and provides the ecosystem services on which we all depend, there is no reward. These landowners may be the Crown, or traditional owners, or private foresters and farmers. If we, as a society, can stop taking nature for granted and recognise our debt to the natural world, we may be able to devise tools to share the costs more equably.

Fernbird. Photo: Oscar Thomas

If we are serious about managing climate change, we will have to look at paying people not to cut down forests.

It doesn’t matter whether these are native forests or pine forests on steep land. Earlier this year, farmers and ratepayers on the East Coast paid a heavy price to repair the downstream damage caused by felling the pine forests in the steep hinterland.

This cost didn’t include the loss of natural capital and ecosystem services provided by the forests. Carbon credits are a useful tool to encourage tree planting. While we need wood from well-managed plantation forests, clearfelling forests and losing carbon credits negates their wider ecosystem services. We need a more nuanced approach that rewards landowners, year after year, for looking after their forests and keeping them standing.

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Conservation heroes

SAFE PAIR OF HANDS

Here are the winners of Forest & Bird’s 2018 conservation awards.

F

orest & Bird has awarded its highest honour of Distinguished Life Member to Graham Bellamy in recognition of his long service to the organisation, including 12 years as treasurer.

Graham joins a prestigious group of Distinguished Life Members that includes Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage, botanist Sir Alan Mark, and wildlife photographer and publisher Craig Potton.

Forest & Bird president Mark Hanger said Graham played a very valuable role for the organisation during a period of rapid growth.

“He has taken the financial management of Forest & Bird to another level. Graham provided a lot more rigour, and he’s very considered and professional in his approach,” he said.

The role of treasurer has a relatively low profile, but Mark added that Graham made a big difference to the organisation and sacrificed a lot of his time, a large part of it while he was still working full-time.

In 2006, Graham agreed to step in temporarily as treasurer of Forest & Bird, and he worked with the Board and General Manager to strengthen the organisation’s financial controls and reporting.

“Here we are 12 years later, and I have decided to resign from the ‘temporary’ position,” Graham joked.

“I feel very honoured, but I didn’t join the Board with the intention of staying for 12 years or in the hope of receiving an award. I feel that I’ve simply done what was required of me as national treasurer and a Board member.”

He is happy to be leaving the role this year with strong financial processes in place and with a greater personal appreciation for nature and the work being done to protect it.

“I have learned a lot about the importance of conservation work and advocacy, and I’ve seen some amazing restoration projects. I’ve met some very dedicated people doing great work for Forest & Bird and for conservation,” he added.

As well as looking after Forest & Bird’s financial health, Graham had also done valuable work for the Upper Hutt branch, which he joined in 1977, becoming branch treasurer in 2005 and chair in 2016. During this time, Graham initiated a project to eradicate old man’s beard and has been a regular volunteer at the branch’s nursery.

Graham received the award at the Forest & Bird’s Annual Conference in Wellington in June. He is looking forward to devoting more time to branch work.

TĪ KŌUKA AWARD Forest & Bird has launched a new award, which will be given to a member who has made a significant contribution, over a long period of time, to furthering the conservation aims of the Society at a local or regional level. The tī kōuka, or cabbage tree, is a Māori symbol of persistence and successful regrowth.

The Tī Kōuka award will be announced at the annual conference and presented by a Board member at a regional meeting, island gathering, or local branch meeting. The first three recipients were announced at the Sanderson dinner in June and they are Katherine Hay (Waikato branch), Teresa Hurst (HastingsHavelock North branch), and Warwick Massey (Warkworth branch).

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YOUTH AWARD Te Kaiārahi Rangatahi o te Taiao

INSPIRING OTHERS

F

orest & Bird’s youth award is awarded annually to recognise and encourage New Zealand’s future conservation leaders.

Wellington teenager George Hobson hopes to use Forest & Bird’s Te Kaiārahi Rangatahi o te Taiao youth award as a springboard for drawing more young people into conservation.

“It’s very exciting. I think the award will definitely set me up for the work I want to do in the future and build up additional credibility, so I can encourage more young people to become involved in conservation,” George said.

The 14 year old, who is an active member of Forest & Bird’s new Wellington Youth Group, has encouraged many young people to love nature over the last four years. His infectious enthusiasm, advocacy, and organisational skills are very persuasive.

George’s first involvement with conservation started nearly four years ago when he became a youth ambassador at Zealandia. There he developed guiding skills and an ability to communicate his passion for nature to children and adults while taking tours and visiting schools.

“When I’ve taken school groups around the valley and their eyes light up when they see a takahē, I realise it’s an amazing opportunity to be able to show other people the wildlife we have in New Zealand and to see them become enthusiastic about conservation.”

He has since become coordinator of Young Birders New Zealand and been campaign manager for the banded dotterel in Forest & Bird’s last three Bird of the Year competitions. He also monitors his favourite bird at Eastbourne near Wellington.

“Banded dotterels are very cute, quirky little birds that have been very under-represented in the general public’s consciousness. What most people don’t know is that their population is decreasing at an alarming rate,” George said.

Photography is another of George’s passions, and recently he was appointed official photographer of the Wellington Forest & Bird Youth Council. He loves to take wildlife photos whenever his hectic schedule allows.

Earlier this year, George organised a trip for six Zealandia youth ambassadors and three staff to Rotorua.

He arranged visits to several conservation and cultural organisations, including Rotorua Canopy Tours, the Kaharoa Kōkako Trust, the Te Puia geothermal area and Māori cultural centre, and the Turangi National Trout Centre to see young whio/blue ducks being prepared for release into the wild.

Darren van Hoof, until recently the lead ranger for education and youth at Zealandia sanctuary in Wellington, nominated George for the award, saying he had a special gift for empowering others to achieve conservation goals.

“He has drive and enthusiasm in abundance, qualities that he has used to great effect when collaborating with different conservation organisations to facilitate youth involvement,” Darren said.

ALL CHANGE ON BOARD Forest & Bird’s AGM and council meeting saw three members of the Board retire and three new members elected. Graham Bellamy, Tony Dunlop, and Lindsey Britton stand down from the Board but will remain very active at the local level in Wellington, South Auckland, and the Far North.

Graham, Tony and Lindsey have added considerably to the Board during the many years they have been members. They brought new perspectives, new skills, and fresh approaches to the Board, and their respective contributions will be missed.

Fortunately, three new faces have joined the team, bringing new skill sets to the table. Alan Chow, from North Canterbury Branch, was elected treasurer, alongside Monica Peters, from the Waikato, and Te Atarangi Sayers, of Tauranga.

Board meetings will periodically move to other parts

of Aotearoa New Zealand in future to make them more accessible to branches and members. This will also enable the Board to gain a better insight into what is happening in the regions. The next Board meeting will be held in Auckland on 3–4 October.

Te Atarangi Sayers

Monica Peters

Alan Chow

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Conservation heroes

LOVE NATURE Graeme Loh – Old Blue

Neil Eagles – Old Blue

After his early involvement with the Native Forest Action Council in the 1970s, Graeme Loh joined Forest & Bird at the start of the 1980s. He quickly joined the executive, where he served for more than a decade, as well as serving on the then Otago branch committee, standing down when his partner Sue Maturin joined the organisation’s staff.

“Graeme has had an outstanding four decades of conservation work. He is a great role model for would-be conservationists,” said Graeme’s nominators Beatrice Lee, former Dunedin branch co-chair, and Mark Hanger, current branch chair.

Graeme, who lives in New Zealand’s wildlife capital Dunedin, said he did not regard receiving the Old Blue as a sign his conservation work is winding down.

“Receiving the award is invigorating. It says I’m doing the right thing, so I’ll do more of it,” he said.

“As a young person, I learned you could ask for the creation of a national park – it might take 10 years, but you would get that reward if you put the work in.

“You didn’t have to be a revolutionary. There was a process that involved some struggle, but you could get a result that was acceptable to all members of the community.”

His Forest & Bird volunteering continued alongside a career in the Wildlife Service and later the Department of Conservation.

For Forest & Bird, he led work to build a boardwalk across saltmarsh at the Tautuku estuary in the Catlins and in recent years a daring project to build a predator-proof fence at the top of the St Clair cliffs in Dunedin. This aims to provide protection from predators for the world’s only mainland breeding population of fairy prions, which otherwise only nest on ratfree offshore islands.

He has also been active in efforts to control the spread of wilding conifers in Otago and of boxthorn on limestone cliffs in the Waitaki Valley to protect rare native plants.

Graeme remains as passionate as ever about nature, and he sees the control of invasive weeds as an important focus for future conservation work.

“That is what I see as the frontier. There’s still an opportunity to stop gorse getting into a new valley, to stop lupins or marram getting onto a new beach, and weeds such as buddleia invading our shingle river beds,” he said.

Neil Eagles joined Forest & Bird in Gisborne in 1977 and moved to the Napier branch in 1981. He served as branch secretary for several years from 2001 and as chairman between 2008 and 2016.

Napier was a highly respected Forest & Bird branch, thanks to Neil’s leadership, says branch chairman David Belcher. Neil also deserved recognition for his service on several Hawke’s Bay environmental forums.

Neil, who lives in Taradale, said he felt the award reflected not only his own efforts but those of others in the Napier branch as well.

“I’m honoured to receive the Old Blue, but the achievements were only possible through having a good committee and through the work of a lot of good people,” he said.

“I’ve always tried to do the best I can, and I’ve been retired for about 12 years now, so I’ve been able to put more time into the work.”

One of Neil’s major commitments has been to the Little Bush Reserve at Puketitiri, northwest of Napier, where he was involved in a pest control programme and committed many hours to weed control, track maintenance, and other work. The reserve contains species including kahikatea, matai, rimu, and hinau, among them several trees that are at least 500 years old.

He has also organised the branch’s annual tree planting day, started a monthly newsletter to members, and spent a lot of time maintaining the branch’s Hartree Lodge at the William Hartree Memorial Scenic Reserve, also in the Puketitiri district.

For the last 10 years, Neil has been on the TutiraMaungaharuru Forum, which aims to improve the environment around Lake Tutira, where Forest & Bird has planted trees since 1985.

He has also represented the branch for more than four years on the TANK (Tutaekuri, Ahuriri, Ngaruroro, and Karamu) project, which advises the regional council on managing important Hawke’s Bay waterways.

Neil has been keen on conservation since his boyhood living near Otari-Wilton’s Bush in Wellington and remains excited about the possibilities for nature in Hawke’s Bay. “There are a lot of things going on around Hawke’s Bay, and there are a lot of people trying to do something to make our environment better,” he said.

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Roger Williams – Old Blue Roger Williams jokes that he never thought a former civil engineer would win a conservation award, but those engineering skills have been put to great use since he retired 14 years ago.

He has built tracks, boardwalks, an observation tower, bridges, a bird hide, and a fish pass. Most recently, he designed and led building of an advanced kauri dieback hygiene station to more effectively prevent the spread of the disease.

Roger, who lives in Warkworth, said winning the Old Blue was a total surprise, adding he would not have been able to achieve nearly so much without the help of many other volunteers.

“Individually, you can only do so much. All you can do is set a good example and hope that other people and local authorities pick up on it,” he said.

Warkworth Area Forest & Bird branch chair Sally Richardson described Roger as a committed and valued member of the branch. He took on a large number of practical projects as well as making submissions on many issues, often related to the rapid growth of Warkworth as a satellite town of Auckland.

Before moving to Warkworth, the Williams family lived in the Waikato for 39 years. Roger and wife Patte worked on the development of the Maungatautari sanctuary, where he designed and led the building of the 16m-high viewing tower.

In Warkworth, Roger has designed and built walkways and cycleways in areas such as the former cement works and Parry Kauri Park. He and Patte have organised and led weed control and planting efforts at many sites in the area.

Tāwharanui Regional Park has become a major focus for Roger. He has built walkways in the park, leads a maintenance team, and monitors takahē, kiwi, and pāteke.

“I’ve done most things over the years at Tāwharanui,” he said.

Kauri dieback has been a particular concern with the spread of the disease through areas in the north. His hygiene station design at Kauri Park, which requires people to walk through and clean their shoes at the park entrance, was a response to the ineffectiveness of other hygiene spray stations.

He has also led the building of dry gravelled walkways and boardwalks at Kowhai Park to reduce the chances of the disease spreading.

The Old Blue award is awarded annually to people who have made a significant contribution to Forest & Bird or to our conservation goals.

Nelson Tasman – Branch of the Year Nelson Tasman has won Forest & Bird’s branch of the year award this year in recognition of its achievements as one of the organisation’s most active branches in restoration projects, raising community awareness, and giving a voice to nature in resource management hearings.

Nelson Tasman branch chairman Julie McLintock said the branch has always been able to draw on a group of committed volunteers to carry out restoration work, make submissions, and campaign on behalf of nature.

“We have a great committee, and there are also a lot of people outside the committee who do marvellous work for us. That’s one of the strengths of our branch,” Julie said.

The Forest & Bird Branch Award recognises outstanding achievement by a branch in restoration, projects, advocacy, submissions to local government, and running Kiwi Conservation Clubs.

Over the past year, the branch completed the initial stage of the Paremata Flats restoration, near Cable Bay, with more than 300 people on the project’s volunteer list.

More than 80,000 trees have been planted since 2011, under the leadership of Ian Price, and plans are in place for second generation planting and ongoing predator and weed control.

The branch has also undertaken a joint project with Nelson City Council to tackle wilding conifers and other weeds in the Dun Mountain area, which has rare ultramafic soils with a high mineral content and is home to rare native plants.

The review of the Nelson Biodiversity Strategy has also been a focus for the branch as well as submissions on the Regional Pest Management Plan and resource consents. Nelson Tasman members have also been helping coordinate volunteers working at the Bat Recovery Project at Pelorus Bridge.

Promoting conservation to the wider community through public events has been a strength of the branch. Regular meetings with high profile speakers often attract more than 50 branch members and interested members of the public.

Nelson Tasman also hosted Forest & Bird’s annual South Island gathering in Murchison last year.

Last year. the branch began awarding the annual Andy Dennis Forest & Bird Memorial Scholarship for trainee conservation rangers at the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology. The scholarship commemorates the prominent Nelson-based conservationist who died in 2016.

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Marine

PLASTIC NOT FANTASTIC

Photo: Chris Jordan

Forest & Bird is partnering with Countdown supermarkets as part of efforts to turn back the tide of plastics filling our oceans killing marine life. By David Brooks.

This year, we joined with supermarket chain Countdown to encourage New Zealanders to cut down their plastics use during Plastic-Free July. Countdown also ran a children’s competition earlier in the year to design a bag with an environmental theme. These are due to go on sale later in 2018, and a donation from each bag will be made to Forest & Bird.

Countdown was the first of the big two supermarket chains to commit in October last year to end the use of single-use plastic checkout bags by the end of 2018. It also decided to stop selling single-use plastic straws by the beginning of October this year.

Countdown’s general manager corporate affairs Kiri Hannifin says Countdown wanted to do something that would make a real difference. “We had been looking at removing single-use plastic bags at our checkouts for a number of years and talking about it with our customers.

Towards the end of last year, we were convinced this was a move Kiwis wanted,” she says.

Forest & Bird's fundraising and membership manager Jess Winchester says the partnership was an opportunity to work with the one of top supermarket groups on a vital environmental issue.

“Working with Countdown fits in with our strategic goals, which include achieving a sustainable economy and improving the marine environment. We congratulate them for the work they are doing, and it’s great to see them looking beyond what happens inside their supermarkets to their distribution and supply chains as well,” Jess says.

Kiri Hannifin says the tie-up with the Society is a way of raising awareness about plastics and sustainability more generally. “We’re delighted to work with Forest & Bird, and we have great respect and gratitude for the work it 40

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does for New Zealand.”

Countdown initially trialled the removal of single-use bags on Waiheke Island, and in May another 10 stores throughout the country stopped using them. As the programme is refined over coming months, more stores will be added until the entire network converts to reusable bags by the end of the year.

“We’re delighted about how it’s been received,” she said. “Already 60% of people are bringing their own bags to our 10 pilot stores, which is incredible given we are only a few weeks in. We’ve seen a 17% in the use of singleuse bags at the checkout across the country since it was announced, and the satisfaction rate amongst customers is in the high 80s.”

She added that plastic bags are just a start and the company is beginning to go through its stores, distribution centres, and supply chains to see where unnecessary packaging can be removed. Countdown aims to be using only recyclable packaging by 2025. Already, rigid packaging used in the supermarkets’ bakeries has been converted to recycled plastic made in New Zealand and using domestic plastic waste.

Countdown has a goal of reducing the carbon emissions in its operations to 10% below 2015 levels by 2020 and is one of 60 major New Zealand businesses that in July formed the Climate Change Leaders Coalition.

Kiri Hannifin, of Countdown.

SUFFOCATING SEA LIFE Plastic pollution is an international biodiversity crisis, says Dr Steph Borrelle, from the Auckland University of Technology, who recently presented her PhD research to Forest & Bird staff.

There are estimated to be more than five trillion plastic pieces that together weigh more than 250,000 tonnes floating on the surface of the ocean worldwide. There is likely much more in the deep ocean and distributed on beaches of the world – in fact, plastic is found in every place we look, she says.

A plastic bag was recently found in the Mariana Trench, the deepest point in the world’s oceans, and also in Antarctica. It’s found on every beach on every continent.

Plastics pollution has exploded since the 1950s, with 8.3 billion tonnes of plastics being produced and an estimated 4.9 billion tonnes discarded and still in the environment. A very conservative estimate of the amount of plastic dumped worldwide each year is eight million tonnes, Steph says.

When we think of plastic pollution, we usually think of large items such as plastic bottles, but there is also the issue of micro plastics, which are everywhere, and come from many sources – synthetic clothing sheds plastic fibres when it is washed, car tyres shed plastic on the road surfaces that is washed down the drains. Larger plastic items break down into smaller and smaller particles through degradation and physical weathering, industrial abrasives enter waterways through sewerage systems, and personal care products contain microplastics.

Plastics kill marine mammals and seabirds by ingestion, entanglement, or toxins contained within the plastic itself.

The top five killers in order of magnitude are fishing gear, plastic bags and utensils, balloons, cigarette butts, and bottle caps.

When plastic is in the ocean, it can be a serial killer, killing one animal and then being released to kill another, over and over again, says Steph.

More than 90% of tested seabirds have been found to have swallowed plastic, and one dead pilot whale was found to have swallowed nearly 8kg of plastic bags. Steph has found an article showing New Zealand’s seabirds have been mistaking plastic waste for food since at least 1958.

Microplastics have also been found in human food – from table salt, drinking water, and agricultural soils, and it’s in sea ice at both poles. A recent survey on a Wellington beach showed a high level of microplastics.

Plastic has been found in commercially harvested fish, raising the issue of the impact of plastic pollution on human health, but more research is needed.

Despite the huge problems caused by plastics, Steph said she was optimistic the situation could be turned around by a combination of global and local action, such as increasing recycling and moving towards truly biodegradable Steph Borrelle materials.

DOING OUR BIT You asked and we listened! Forest & Bird, which publishes and distributes more than 120,000 conservation magazines a year, has started mailing them to individual members in paper envelopes rather than plastic wrap.

The decision was taken at Forest & Bird’s AGM in June following a remit from the Southland Branch.

“There will be a significant increase in

costs associated with this, but as part of the bigger issue with single-use plastic, the consensus was that the Society should not be using single-use plastic wrappers for mailing its magazines, and we need to lead by example,” said Mark Hanger, Forest & Bird president.

The new envelope, pictured left, will include a reminder if this is the last magazine of your membership. Your unique ID code is located on the envelope, along with the date your membership will expire, and Forest & Bird’s Freephone number and website address if you need to update any of your details. Any questions or comments, please email editor@forestandbird.org.nz.

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Focus on flora

The ’ie’ie (Freycinetia arborea) of the Hawaiian Islands. Photo: Forest & Kim Starr

What’s in a name?

Andrew Crowe encourages us all to be on “first name terms” with the natural world.

W

hen Captain Cook reached Hawai’i in 1779, he was so struck by similarities in culture and language throughout Polynesia that he declared this vast Pacific region to be “certainly by far the most extensive nation upon earth”.

“How shall we account for this nation’s having spread itself, in so many detached islands, so widely disjoined from each other, in every quarter of the Pacific Ocean. We find it, from New Zealand, in the South, as far as the Sandwich lslands [Hawai’i], to the North, and, in another direction, from Easter Island, to the Hebrides [Vanuatu],” he wrote in his journal.

Having conducted three exploratory voyages through the Pacific Islands by then, Cook had come to see how intimately their languages are linked to one another – something that is no less evident to any visitor to the Pacific today.

“What’s this?” I asked my guide, pointing to a woody vine clinging to the trunk of a tree in the misty rainforest of the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i. “’Ie’ie,” she replied. “Freycinetia arborea.”

The plant’s likeness to the climbing kiekie (Freycinetia banksii) of New Zealand is so obvious that anyone familiar with both is inevitably struck by the similarity of the two indigenous names. And yet New Zealand and Hawai’i lie more than a third of the way around the planet from one another.

This leaves one wondering how the original connection between these two plants was ever made over such an extraordinary distance.

The wonder is greater than this, for kiekie and allied names refer to Freycinetia vines also on Tahiti, Rarotonga, Rapa Iti, the Marquesas, Tonga, The kiekie (Freycinetia banksii) and Sāmoa. It is clear of New Zealand. Photo: Andrew that whoever brought the Crowe 42

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indigenous name for this vine to New Zealand was familiar with at least one of these islands or archipelagos.

Here lies a clue to the vast extent of Polynesian culture and the origins of New Zealand Māori, but indigenous names also tell us how the relevant plant was traditionally used. In tropical Polynesia, the term kie refers to a Pandanus used for fine mats, a kilt or skirt or mat worn as such, or the sail of a boat – all indications of how the leaves of the New Zealand Pandanus-like plant were also used.

Kiekie clearly had a use, but what of plants with no obvious use? It is often said that these originally had no indigenous name, and also that many Māori plant names were simply invented on the spot to entertain gullible Europeans. Such claims seek to make light of the extraordinary wealth of Māori plant names that have been recorded – more than 1000 of them – and the sophistication of culture that such a rich inventory might imply if they could indeed be proven to be authentic.

So is there a sound basis for these dismissive claims?

Were plants with no known use named by Māori? Or are such names a folly – no more than a testament to Māori humour and the curiosity of a European? To find a definitive answer, we need look no further than a test carried out over two consecutive nights almost 200 years ago by the celebrated Austrian botanist Baron von Hügel.

In 1834, with the Reverend William Yate present as a witness, the Baron collected 300 plants and asked one Māori man to name them. As the Reverend’s published report of the occasion clearly shows, the string of names that ensued from the Māori man left him astonished: “He gave the names of all without exception, and that too with little hesitation. Some of these plants were so very small, that it might have been supposed that they would have escaped the notice of an individual. But it was not so: not one could be introduced, however minute, or whatever might be the hidden situation in which it had thriven, but a name was found for it and, lest it should be thought that this man was coining names, another native was called in, the following evening, just as the plants were being placed in fresh paper; and, with one single exception, out of three hundred specimens, he gave the same name to each, as had been given the night before.”

How, then, are we to reconcile this remarkable feat with

the variety of names that were subsequently collected from Māori? In the case of birds, for example, at least 23 Māori names are known for the New Zealand fantail alone.

Part of the answer lies in regional variation within the language. Although such tribal variations have generally been very poorly documented, linguists such as Ray Harlow have clearly distinguished at least eight regional dialects in the North Island and one from the South Island.

Clearly, wherever an obvious likeness exists between a species in Aotearoa and one from the tropical Pacific, there was no need to coin a new name. In all such instances we find almost no regional variation in the Māori name.

One example of a name that was brought to New Zealand from the tropics is kōwhai. The flowers, pods, and leaves of the New Zealand tree (Sophora species) clearly associate it with the shrubby ’ōhai (Sesbania tomentosa) of Hawai’i – a fellow member of the pea family. Here, again, we find a single term for allied plants in New Zealand and a wide region of the Pacific, including the Marquesas, Society Islands, Tuamotus, Austral Islands, and Tonga.

Kōtuku/white heron

Kōtare/kingfisher

With Māori bird names, a similar distinction between locally coined and Pacific terms is evident. While a plethora of Māori terms have been recorded for the bellbird, robin, and fantail, just one each is known for the white heron and kingfisher. Throughout New Zealand, the elegant white heron is known as kōtuku, a name for local heron species that is shared throughout much of East Polynesia.

Similarly, the Māori name for the New Zealand kingfisher, kōtare, is shared by the various local species of kingfisher encountered in the Southern Cook Islands and Society Islands, but not elsewhere.

In this way, Māori names shed light not only on how Polynesians interacted with the life around them but also on the vast extent of their maritime explorations – two very sound practical reasons to be on “first name terms” with New Zealand’s natural world.

WIN A BOOK Kōwhai (Sophora species) of New Zealand. Photo: Velela

Andrew Crowe is the award-winning author of several bestselling field guides and children’s books, including A Field Guide to the Native Edible Plants of New Zealand and Which Native Tree? His current book, Pathway of the Birds is a tribute to the voyaging achievements of Māori and their Polynesian ancestors.

We have a copy of Pathway of the Birds by Andrew Crowe (Bateman, RRP $49.99) to give away to one lucky reader. To enter the draw, email draw@ forestandbird.org.nz and put PATHWAY in the subject line. Or write your name and address on the back of an envelope and post to PATHWAY draw, Forest & Bird, PO Box 631, Wellington 6140. Entries close 1 November 2018.

The shrubby ’ōhai (Sesbania tomentosa) of Hawai’i. Photo: Forest & Kim Starr

Forest & Bird

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Branch news Counting in windy conditions on Lake Clearwater. Photo: Val Clemens

HIGH COUNTRY BIRD COUNT Mary Ralston joins the 35th annual bird count in the Ashburton Lakes high country.

T

he annual winter bird count on the Ashburton Lakes has been organised by the Ashburton Forest & Bird branch since 1984, making it one of the longestrunning bird count data sets in the country. It’s also a great excuse for an enjoyable day out in the high country.

Chief organiser Don Geddes has been running the event for as long as most people can remember. This year, about 30 people turned up to help, including his eight-year-old granddaughter Taylah. The group separates into small teams to survey the 12 different lakes, and Don ensures that those who can barely tell a shag from a swan are with someone more ornithologically knowledgeable.

We head off in various directions with the plan to meet up later in the day at Neville Adams’ bach at Lake Clearwater. This post-count gathering is also part of the tradition – a discussion and a tally of the numbers over a bowl of Neville’s famous vegetable soup.

The day is warmish for July and windy, which is not ideal for bird counts. On Lake Emily, my companion and I see 76 birds, mostly the usual suspects: black swan, Canada geese, paradise ducks, scaup, and mallards.

We also note a black-fronted tern swooping overhead, a harrier, and skylarks that bob and dart ahead of us as

New Zealand scaup. Photo: Bernard Spragg

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we walk to the lake. The counters at Lake Heron spot nine crested grebes, a threatened species and one of the star attractions of the day. But altogether only 11 grebes were counted, compared to 26 last year.

Numbers are highly variable from year to year, which can reflect the conditions. Last year, conditions were perfect with no ice and clear and calm conditions, and the number of birds was high at 4128.

In some years, many of the lakes are iced over and the birds have gone to the lower-elevation Lake Ellesmere or Forsyth. This year, there was no ice, but conditions were tricky for counting because of the wind. The total number of birds counted was significantly lower at 2937.

It’s hard to know to whether the drop is real or whether there’s a high margin of error because of the wind; I suspect there were more birds that we just didn’t see.

The Māori Lakes team multi-task, clearing and re-baiting the trap line around the lakes as well as counting the birds. They see two crested grebes and catching several predators makes the trapping effort worthwhile.

Waterfowl (ducks and swans) counts have been fluctuating over recent years. The most numerous duck is the New Zealand scaup, a native duck characteristic of the high country. This year, 1065 were counted compared with 2228 last year. Hopefully, 2018’s much lower count is an aberration because of the wind.

Paradise ducks are increasing, benefiting from intensification of farming in the basin. And, until this year, the numbers of little shags had been slowly increasing, which was considered an indicator that numbers of little fish in the lakes were at healthy levels.

Back at the bach, we compare notes, and Don enters the results. Soup is slurped, and we admire the view over Lake Clearwater to Mt Potts. We’ll be here again next year for the 36th Ashburton Lakes Bird Count.

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Dawn chorus

MOHUA MISSION Keen English birdwatcher Angela Buckley heads south on an Antipodean quest to spot the elusive forest-dwelling mohua. Images by Adrian Buckley.

H

ow we scoffed! For our projected trip to New Zealand, my brother Paul had lent me his copy of Collins Birds of New Zealand, and beside the entry for “Yellowhead; Mohoua Ochrocephala”, there was a little tick to indicate that he had seen the bird and in brackets “Not in forest, though.” This was the cause of our mockery, because, as any fool in the birding world knows, the mohua lives only in the forest.

What he had seen was probably a yellowhammer, as these birds, though not so common as they used to be in the UK, are widespread in New Zealand. Another cause for doubting his judgement on the bird front was that he had also put a tick beside the bush wren, in spite of the text reporting that these birds are now “exceedingly rare, if not actually extinct”. From that moment, my son Adrian and I were determined to spot the elusive mohua in its proper forest habitat.

This was my third trip to New Zealand to visit my son Adrian. who has lived in Wellington for some years. Between us, we had put many more ticks in a little notebook that has become a sort of heirloom, containing a record of various family visits and what they’ve seen over the years. But none of us had yet found the Holy Grail of the mohua.

This pretty little endemic bird with its obvious yellow

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head and its canary-like trilling call used to be widespread over the whole of the South Island, but numbers crashed in the 20th century, mainly from the introduction of rats and stoats.

The Department of Conservation has made strenuous efforts in the last 20 years to eradicate the pests that eat its eggs and raid its nests for the chicks and fledglings, and numbers seem to have at least stabilised in certain areas.

With these facts in mind, we plotted our next trip to New Zealand around the habitats where we were most likely to get a sighting.

Our first stop was Arthur’s Pass, so we made a few sorties to likely places with no success, but it didn’t matter because there were so many other wonderful things to see and experience, including cheeky kea, and it was only the beginning of the trip.

After that, we drove up the west coast to Karamea at the end of the road, visiting various places along the way, such as Fox Glacier and the Punakaiki Blowholes, both spectacular in their way, but not home to mohua, so we

headed for the Mount Aspiring National Park, where our quest would begin in earnest.

Our first action after settling into our cabin at Makarora Wilderness Resort was to go to the DOC information office to pick the brains of the staff. “Where were we most likely to see yellowheads?” we asked. “Oh, just up the road,” they casually replied, and told us about two places where the birds could be seen in vast flocks every morning, flying back and forth across the road.

So the Adventurous Three, namely myself, my son Adrian, and husband Sean (although sometimes we were down to Adventurous Two, when nerves, feet, or the interest of the latter member gave out) went confidently to these places with hope in our hearts, only to have it dashed every time.

We hacked and plunged our way through torrential downpours in the rainforest, listening for the canary-like trills and whistles of the elusive mohua, to no avail, though it was raining so hard most of the time, we were unlikely to have heard it anyway. We spent many hours driving up and down the road between Makarora and Haast, visiting and revisiting the same places, with no joy.

We wondered if the woman from the DOC office was hiding behind a tree laughing as we frantically searched hither and thither, with only a robin or fantail in sight.

We speculated whether the mohua were in on the game and were dashing back and forth between the sites as we approached, or whether they had, in fact, become extinct and the DOC rangers were trying to keep the legend alive.

Next stop was Glenorchy, at the head of Lake Wakatipu, and the base for exploring the Dart Valley. Once again, we sought the advice of DOC staff, and this time they helpfully drew a little map for us, highlighting a particular area where mohua were said to frequently be seen searching for small invertebrates in the bright scarlet-flowered mistletoe high up in the beech trees.

We headed for the designated spot. We sat and ate our sandwiches. We watched. And waited. And watched. And waited. Nothing. Nix. Zilch. There were plenty of other birds, the usual fantails, tūī, and so on, but not hide nor hair of a mohua.

We still had one more day in the Glenorchy area, the last location where we were likely to see a yellowhead. We decided a trip to the head of the Routeburn Track would be the best mohua-spotting option. There was much to be seen and heard along the loop walk, but no mohua, so it was with an air of slight dejection that we made our way back along the road to the car park. We were consoling ourselves with the thought

that it was a beautiful place and we had experienced many other delights, so we shouldn’t be too downhearted.

Then, suddenly, a canary-like trilling song was heard, small birds were spotted flitting through the tree tops, there was a flurry of activity with binoculars and … eureka! “It’s them!” shouted my son ecstatically. “There they are!

They’ve got yellow heads!” and indeed it was, they were, and they had.

“Thank God for that,” said my husband (only he used stronger language). For the next hour, we had the luxury of watching and photographing the mohua going in and out of a hole in the tree, presumably feeding their chicks within. We had cricks in our necks and aching arms from holding up our binoculars, but it was worth it.

Whatever happened on the rest of the trip, we had achieved our objective. We could go home to the UK with our heads held high. But there was one more thing to be done. With great ceremony, we put our own little tick in the field guide beside Mohoua Ochrocephala, writing beside it the short but significant legend “in forest though”.

MAKE A MOHUA NESTING BOX Forest & Bird’s Central Otago and Wanaka Lakes branch runs trapping lines in the Makarora forest to protect mohua. They have offered to share their mohua nesting box designs, which can also be modified to suit other kinds of birds. The nesting box is designed to be very difficult for rats and stoats to climb in the holes, says Mark Ayre from the branch. Contact editor@ forestandbird.org.nz for a copy of the plans.

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Going places

UNDERWATER WONDERS

Cabo Pulmo, Mexico

Ocean conservation advocate and keen scuba diver Kathryn Curzon recommends her top five marine reserves to visit worldwide.

M

arine reserves and marine protected areas are vital to the health of the ocean. They prevent human activities in defined areas and allow marine life to increase in diversity and numbers. While only 3% of the world’s ocean is currently protected, new marine reserves are being created each year, and existing reserves have been successful in their conservation efforts. Here are my top five marine reserves and why they are working so well.

Cabo Pulmo, Mexico Cabo Pulmo, a marine reserve on the east coast of the Baja California Peninsula, was designated as protected in June 1995. The park is home to a 20,000-year-old coral reef, the oldest of only three on the western coast of North America and the most northern in the east Pacific. The park was heavily fished before it became a protected area.

When local fishermen realised they had to go further from shore to catch fish, they took the fate of the area into their own hands and moved from fishing to scuba diving.

Local communities supported this move from fishing to sustainable ecotourism, and the area soon became a notake zone.

Following the action of the locals, the Mexican government designated the area as a marine reserve, and it was also declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The marine life biomass increased by more than 400% during 2000–10 and continues to flourish. Work still needs to be done to protect this unique environment, as the reserve has been threatened in recent years by proposals for nearby coastal developments.

Palau, western Pacific Ocean Palau designated 499,868km2 of its waters as a marine reserve in 2015 and banned all fishing and mining activity there. It became the world’s sixth-largest marine reserve at the time and is larger than California.

Palau’s president is committed to conserving the island nation’s livelihood and increasing the number of fish 48

| Forest & Bird Te Reo o te Taiao

available to feed local communities. The nation’s economy relies on environmental tourism, so healthy marine life is essential. The nation has no military to enforce its reserve rules, and, instead, the Council of Chiefs placed certain reefs off-limits to fishing. Its local communities have a strong conservation culture, and this was also key to the reserve’s success.

A study undertaken in 2017 has demonstrated that the protected waters near Palau’s populated areas already have twice the number of fish and five times the number of predatory fish as unprotected waters.

Palau

Pitcairn Islands, southern Pacific Ocean Pew Environmental Group’s Global Ocean Legacy project has worked with Pitcairn islanders since 2011 to establish a marine reserve in their waters, and the UK government announced the Pitcairn Islands marine reserve in March 2015. The reserve covers 830,000km2 and is more than three times the size of the United Kingdom.

Locals are permitted to fish coastal areas for their own food, but all commercial fishing is prohibited. The reserve is home to more than 1200 species of marine mammals, seabirds, and fish. Being remote, enforcing the reserve

rules has been challenging and potentially expensive.

New technologies have been used to monitor the area for illegal fishing and develop the reserve’s enforcement plan. A low-cost integrated platform, Project Eyes on the Seas, has been used to analyse fishing vessel behaviour in the area remotely and is being used to develop longterm surveillance plans for the reserve. The project not only confirmed that the Pitcairn Islands has a low level of illegal activity in its waters but also paved the way for new, inexpensive surveillance techniques to be used in other marine reserves worldwide.

Poor Knights Islands

reserve also has cultural importance, having been inhabited by an ancient people, Ngātiwai, guardians of a tapu placed on the islands by the chief in 1822, following the massacre of his people while his warriors were absent from the island.

Ross Sea, Antarctica

Whales are regular visitors to the Pitcairn Islands marine reserve.

Photo: Matt Jolly

Poor Knights Islands, New Zealand New Zealand has 37 marine reserves, including the Poor Knight Islands. This string of small islands is home to a unique marine ecosystem that contains marine plants and animals not found elsewhere, as well as tropical species. In 1981, the islands became New Zealand’s second marine reserve in recognition of its diversity and abundance of marine life.

Fishing of any kind is prohibited in the reserve, and noone can take or disturb any kind of marine life. Visitors are also not allowed to land on the islands, the only place in the world where Buller’s shearwaters breed. Tough penalties exist, including imprisonment, seizing of vessels, and large fines.

Enforcement of the regulations and best environmental practices of tourism companies have been successful in creating a reserve with abundant marine life that is also enjoyed regularly by scuba divers. Jacques Cousteau rated the islands as one of the top 10 dive sites in the world. The

The Ross Sea Marine Protected Area was declared the world’s largest marine reserve when it received international protection in October 2016. It covers an area of 1,548,812km2 off the coast of Antarctica and was created by a unanimous decision involving 24 countries, including New Zealand, the United States, and the European Union.

Environmental groups, scientists, and countries had campaigned for protection of the Ross Sea for decades.

The Ross Sea or “Last Ocean” is mostly untouched by humans and has not been heavily fished or affected greatly by shipping pressures. The waters are the most productive in the Antarctic and contain more than 16,000 species, including emperor penguins, leopard seals, and various species of whale. Fishing was prohibited in the reserve from last December. This new reserve is a great example of how the world can cooperate to protect one of our last remaining wilderness areas.

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Nature’s Future David Belcher with his June 1966 bank statement showing the first cheque he ever wrote, aged 20, for a subscription payable to Forest & Bird. It was a bargain at just 15 shillings and sixpence!

FIFTY YEARS A CONSERVATIONIST Retired farmer David Belcher explains why he’s been supporting Forest & Bird for half a century.

By David Brooks.

T

he first cheque David Belcher ever wrote was to Forest & Bird for an annual subscription.

The year was 1966, and he had just earned his first wages as a farm worker. Half a century later, David is the chair of the Napier branch of Forest & Bird, a regular giver, and a leading volunteer at Forest & Bird and other conservation projects.

“I like to feel I’m contributing something back towards conservation and preservation,” David says.

“I value Forest & Bird highly because it’s the oldest conservation organisation in the country and it’s totally independent.”

David’s love of nature is rooted in a long family history on the land in Canterbury and later Hawke’s Bay. His father Seymour moved to Hawke’s Bay in the late 1920s on the recommendation of a doctor.

Years of driving a six-horse team every day over dusty paddocks on his father’s farm near Darfield west of Christchurch had left him with a bad throat ailment.

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In 1932, Seymour bought a 67.6ha property near Waimarama called Peach Gully and another 607ha block called Hoemoana, which David continued to farm until selling in the early 2000s. Seymour, who was himself a long-time Forest & Bird member, loved a bush block in a gully fringed by limestone cliffs on the Peach Gully property.

David remembers the Forest & Bird journals arriving in the post, and his interest in them prompted his father to sign up his young son as a junior member. When he left school, David started working full-time on the farm, and at 20 years old he opened a cheque account.

“The first cheque I wrote out in my life was a subscription payable

I value Forest & Bird highly because it’s the oldest conservation organisation in the country and it’s totally independent.

to Forest & Bird for 15 shillings and sixpence on 30 June 1966. All through my years of farming, I paid my subscription every year, but the farm duties meant there was no time available to become involved in branch activities,” David says.

Peach Gully farm was once the site for three former Māori pa, a burial cave, and kumara pits. The property got its name from a trial plot of white peaches planted nearby by food processing pioneer Sir James Wattie.

Birds distributed the peach stones around the area, and peach trees eventually dotted the bush block.

David loved Peach Gully’s bush as much as his father, and before selling the farm he gave part of the block permanent protection under a QEII National Trust covenant. After a few years working on a Havelock North vineyard, he decided it was time to follow his interests and became a regular volunteer for Forest & Bird’s Hastings-Havelock North branch. His farming skills were put to good use at the Blowhard Bush Reserve on predator control, tracks, and other infrastructure projects.

Later, he moved to the Napier branch, working regularly at Little Bush Reserve west of Napier and other branch projects as well as pest control work in the reserve next to his Havelock North property. Before taking over as chairman of the Napier branch in 2016, he also spent nearly a decade as a volunteer and trustee at the Guthrie Smith Arboretum at Tutira, north of Napier.

David’s long commitment to Forest & Bird – which also included buying life memberships for his three children – is a source of continuing pride 52 years after he signed that first cheque.

Nature’s Future Supporter

Research Automated bird species recognition is challenging because of subtle differences in appearance and high variation in background and pose between the kea (first image) and the kākā (second image).

Is it a kākā or a kea?

The future for bird-spotting is artificial intelligence, says Otago University’s Tapabrata Chakraborti.

I

magine you are a tourist taking a walk through a native forest and you see a small bird hopping about in the treetops. Not sure what it is, you take a quick snap on your phone and up pops the species name, images, information about its conservation status, and, because it’s an endemic species, your sighting of a male tomtit will be automatically logged to a citizen science website and the information instantly shared with ornithologists around the world.

Our unique New Zealand birdlife is a national taonga and of interest to experts and enthusiastic amateurs alike.

With the capabilities of modern handheld devices (tablets and smart phones), it should – in theory – be possible for anyone to become a “birder”.

Researchers in the Computer Science Department of University of Otago are working towards this kind of digital birding future. For the past two years, they have been developing automated computer recognition and, if it all goes according to plan, the only equipment you will need for bird-spotting in the future will be your smartphone or tablet.

But first Tapabrata Chakraborti, with his supervisors Dr Brendan McCane and Dr Steven Mills, must find a reliable way of identifying birds from photographs. They are using artificial intelligence, machine learning techniques, and the development of robust applications to do just this.

First they must develop new algorithms that can advance tech-automated recognition of species from images. It’s a bit like facial recognition for humans, but the algorithms analyse all of bird’s body and features, not just its face.

“The main challenge is to develop algorithms that can learn the subtle differences between similar looking birds, like kākā and kea, with minimum training samples,” explains Tapabrata.

“The future and final goal of the project would be to translate these algorithms to a user-friendly app that can operate as a digital birder based on cameraacquired images. These can then be integrated with existing bird apps.

“The user would take a camera picture of the bird in real life on a mobile device and the app would suggest the name of the bird in question.”

An experienced user, such as an ornithologist or a citizen scientist, may also contribute labelled images to the dataset to enhance the performance in time, says Tapabrata.

The same algorithms may also be generalised, with some modifications, to recognise other species – for example plants or insects.

The project recently won the Diane-Campbell Hunt Memorial Award, 2017 for contribution to ecological conservation in New Zealand, and its findings have been well-received internationally.

Te Papa and the Department of Conservation have supported the project by contributing from their repository of bird images. *If you would like to know more about this project, you can get in touch with Tapabrata through his website https://tapabrata-chakraborti.github.io.

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Conservation in history

South Otago members visit the Big Tōtara at Awakiki Bush.

Back (from left): Jan Johnstone, Jane Young, Jim Young. Front: Roy Johnstone, Maria Hamelink, Wilma McDonald, Ian McDonald, Ralph Cochrane. Photo: Richard Schofield

Walking through life facing backwards Forest & Bird’s South Otago branch, which celebrates its 40th birthday this year, indulges in a bit of soul-searching. By Jane Young.

T

he first environmental issue confronting the newly minted South Otago branch in 1978 was the urgent need to halt the destruction of the Catlins native forest. Page after page in the branch’s first Minutes Book details concerns about the clearance taking place and the plans to set up a chip mill. One of the first projects supported by the branch was the purchase of Awakiki Bush, with its spectacular stands of tōtara trees.

Back then, there were no Forest & Bird regional field officers to give support with legal matters, so committee members were thrown in at the deep end and found themselves presenting their case to save the forest from obliteration to organisations such as the Clutha County Council and eventually the Environment Court.

Brian O’Callaghan, the branch’s first chairman, remembers with wry humour how they were concerned to be offered some pro-bono legal assistance – no-one in the branch’s activist group he describes as “the tight five” was quite sure what that meant. But the fledgling branch soon found its feet, and Brian feels strongly that were it not for the young South Otago branch’s actions virtually all of the Catlins bush between the main road and the sea would have been lost.

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The inaugural meeting of the South Otago Branch, which was held in Balclutha on 2 August 1978, was attended by 35 people, a notable achievement at a time when conservation wasn’t exactly at the forefront of local consciousness. Over the years, there has been progress in finding common ground with farmers, who share our concerns about the protection of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, but much less shared understanding with commercial and recreational fishers.

The issue that has recurred with depressing regularity during the branch’s history has been the struggle to obtain protection for marine ecosystems, especially at the iconic Nuggets, in the face of vehement local opposition. It’s not exactly “throwing yourself in front of the bulldozers” stuff, but just standing up to speak in a hostile meeting can be a gut-churning experience.

In comparison, the branch’s more recent protest marches have been more colourful, less stressful, events. Balclutha Bridge and spring blossoms provided the background for the “People’s Climate March” in 2015, while last year’s “Save the Yellow-eyed Penguin” demonstration featured a hospital trolley, harakeke wreaths, penguin suits, and loud funereal music.

Plant collecting at Tawanui in 1997.

Talking to Forest & Bird members involved in the early days, you soon realise one of the most important reasons for their becoming involved in the branch was the fellowship with others who cared about the environment and enjoyed being out on the beach or in the bush.

One shared memory from the branch’s first years is of convivial collecting expeditions in state forestry blocks.

The men would dig up the native plant seedlings while the women worked around a trailer filled with potting mix. These expeditions are largely a thing of the past, but the branch now has two nurseries for plant propagation, and plant sales continue to raise money to fund our environmental work.

Establishing and maintaining trap lines at sites including Forest & Bird’s Lenz Reserve and the Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust’s Long Point reserve also helps to keep some members fit. Involvement in yellow-eyed penguin conservation dates back to the time when, before the days of trail cameras and microchips, members spent many chilly hours counting the penguins plodding to and fro.

There is always the risk, however, of biting off more than you can chew – it’s hard to say “no” when yet another opportunity arises. “Succession planning” has become a bit of a buzz-phrase, but in small branches it can be easier said than done because there are so few people waiting in the wings.

Encouraging local participation can improve the chances of a project surviving the departure of its main drivers, although this in itself requires a real effort to be made. When Catriona Gower, known affectionately as “Bat Lady”, began the Catlins Bat Project, she made a point of setting up a structure that involved local participants so that the project was more likely to become self-sustaining.

The branch has also provided a couple of bat detectors that community members can borrow.

Like many branches, we’ve struggled at times to maintain a Kiwi Conservation Club for children. Volunteers may be keen to take on the coordinator’s role but then have to step back for work and/or family reasons. Maybe we shouldn’t beat ourselves up about this and just accept that there is a limit to how many balls we can keep in the air. On the other hand, in recent years we’ve been able to develop a more consistent working relationship with local schools, mainly involving predator control and revegetation activities.

This educational component of Forest & Bird activities has always been important, although it has taken various forms over the years. A common thread is the evening talks, which have seen the technology change from slide to data projectors.

Like throwing mud at a wall, education of any sort involves doing your best and hoping that some of it will stick. When you man a Forest & Bird street stall, for example, you have all sorts of conversations – marine reserves, 1080, Chilean flame creeper, Māori land issues, pig control, translocations – with all sorts of people. Some of these interactions may have a positive impact, but chances are you’ll never really know.

The whakataukī “Ka mura, Ka muri” represents the way in which Māori traditionally viewed the future – we are all walking through life facing backwards. We can’t see where we are going, so we look to the past to inform us about how we should move into the future. Looking at the past history of our branch, we can learn from both our failures and our successes. And the most important thing to remember?

He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata.

SAVING THE CATLINS BUSH SEP 1978: Concerns about remaining native forest on coastal land between Tahakopa and Long Beach gradually being illegally destroyed by cattle grazing, bulldozing, and burning.

NOV 1978: Large area of scenically important native bush in the Catlins has been recently cleared, probably with government assistance.

MAY 1979: Cleared land towards Chaslands is reverting to broom, rushes, and scrub while farmers continue to clear more land with the assistance of Government Encouragement loans. Peter Gardner and Brian O’Callaghan will contact our local MP to express our concerns.

JUNE 1979: A committee has been set up with Dunedin and Southland branches to coordinate efforts to preserve forest in the Tahakopa Valley and to press for the formation of a Coastal Park.

SEP 1979: Will write to the Department of Māori Affairs voicing concerns about the sale of block IA2 near the Tautuku Peninsula that was hoped to have become part of the Catlins Coastal Park.

Extracted from South Otago’s minute books 1978–79.

Branch members march for hoiho in 2017.

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Our people

WAIKATO WARRIOR Waikato branch stalwart and the drive behind the rebuild of Forest & Bird’s Ruapehu Lodge, Jon Wenham will be remembered for his significant contribution to conservation in Aotearoa.

I

aerial photos, and learning to love the plants and animals of the deserts. After he returned to New Zealand, he ran his own interior decorating firm, very successfully, but retired early to devote more time to enjoying the outdoors, including boating and kayaking on the Raglan harbour, and doing more conservation work.

Jon became a pillar of strength for the local branch. He worked hard to clean up Raglan Harbour, as well as working on the Kaimai-Mamaku project, and organised promotional and display material for the branch for many years.

At the time of his death, Jon was working to protect kōkako in the region and was trustee of the Mokaihaha Kōkako Trust.

Mark Hanger, president of Forest & Bird, who attended Jon’s funeral, said Jon was a stalwart of the Waikato Branch and a long-time Forest & Bird Board member until a couple of years ago.

“He brought a grassroots connection to the board, a huge background in on-the-ground conservation, sound advice, and measured response,” said Mark.

“The Board and all of the Forest & Bird whānau send Jon’s family our thoughts and condolences. For Jon, the current Board hopes we can continue to do justice to your values, your ethics, and your conservation beliefs.”

Jon Wenham died suddenly in his Hamilton home on 26 July, aged 73. He leaves behind a huge conservation legacy as well as his much-loved Ruapehu Lodge.

VALDER GRANTS

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FO R

There’s still time to apply for a Valder Conservation Grant, with applications welcome from individuals or conservation groups nationwide. The Forest & Bird Waikato branch awards, which are granted annually in memory of Lilian Valder, are usually between $1000 and $2000. For more information and application form, email waikato.branch@forestandbird.org.nz, download a pdf from the Waikato branch page on www.forestandbird. org.nz, or write to Secretary, Waikato Branch Forest & Bird, PO Box 11092, Hamilton 3216. Closing date for applications is 30 September 2018.

SA

LE

n 2011, Jon Wenham was honoured for his conservation work in the Waikato with an Old Blue. He also received a special presentation for his leadership of the project to rebuild Forest & Bird’s Ruapehu Lodge after it was destroyed by fire.

Jon was a member of the Waikato branch from the 1980s, a committee member for more than 15 years, and a Board member for seven years. When the old Forest & Bird lodge at Whakapapa Village burned down in October 2008, Jon had been on the Board only for a few months, but he immediately snapped into action to oversee the design, construction, and fit-out of its far superior replacement.

He devoted countless hours up to the opening of the new lodge in October 2010 and in the years since.

“It’s the only purpose-built Forest & Bird lodge, and DOC says it’s the best lodge on the mountain. It’s our national lodge. It’s just as magical in spring, summer, and autumn, not just winter. Everyone really enjoys their holiday to the mountain, whatever the season,” Jon told Forest & Bird magazine in 2015.

A perfectionist in all he did, all the photos and murals displayed in Ruapehu Lodge were selected, enlarged, and framed by Jon, and almost all were photographed by him. He had a very good eye for photographs, and on all the Waikato branch’s trips and camps he would be taking artistic shots of the scenery and vegetation.

For some years, he led an adventurous life, being flown over the Australian Outback hunting for minerals, taking

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Forest & Bird

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Pacific conservation

LITTLE DODO OF SAMOA Rebecca Stirnemann has co-authored a children’s book to raise awareness of the plight of the manumea, the national bird of Samoa, which is being hunted to the edge of extinction.

“One of the amazing things about the manumea is we know very little about it. We don’t know if it nests in the trees or on the ground. We don’t know how many eggs it lays or what is it’s most important habitat. This makes it very hard to do any conservation for the manumea to save this species,” says Dr Rebecca Stirnemann.

Rebecca, who is Forest & Bird’s Central North Island regional manager, previously spent seven years working to protect the critically endangered manumea or tooth-billed pigeon (Didunculus strigirostris) and other Samoan birds.

The manumea is found only in Samoa. It has a large curving bill that has tooth-like serrations on its lower mandible.

Scottish naturalist Sir William Jardine discovered this strange-looking bird and gave it its own genus, calling it Didunculus – the little dodo – in 1845.

Genetic evidence has since confirmed that the manumea is one of the closest living relatives of the dodo, which became extinct more than 300 years ago. But very little is known about it, even though it’s Samoa’s national bird and appears in many local stories, often in association with chiefs.

In the mid-1980s, Dr Ulf Beichle, who studied the manumea, estimated the total population at 4800–7200 birds. Today, the numbers have plummeted, with only about 250 birds thought to be left in the wild.

Rebecca’s research, undertaken for a National Geographic-sponsored PhD, showed a mix of hunting by people, invasive predators such as rats and cats, and loss of forest threatens both the manumea and other native bird species.

Rebecca believes there is still hope if more research is

carried out and recovery efforts are put into place.

“The Fijian and Tongan species of tooth-billed island pigeon are both extinct. The manumea is the last surviving species in its genus. Research is needed before it follows the dodo and disappears forever too,” she says.

Rebecca is one of the few people on Earth to have seen a manumea, and she hopes one day their numbers will increase so others can also see this “princess of the forest”.

She has co-authored a new children’s book, which is being published in English and Samoan, called Mose and the Manumea. The aim is to raise awareness about the species in Samoa and overseas.

In the story, Mose and his cousin Niko set off to search for a manumea in the deep dark forest on the far side of the mountain. They meet some amazing forest creatures on their adventure, but will they find the very special rare bird they are looking for?

Rebecca, who is based in Hamilton, has worked on conservation projects all over the world, including New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, Europe, America, Australia, and Southern Africa. She has a PhD in ornithology, has Masters degrees in bats and climate change, has also worked with bees, reptiles, mangroves, fish, and trees, and is an extensively published researcher.

You can buy a copy of Mose and the Manumea (published by Little Island Press, RRP $25), from Forest & Bird’s online shop at www.forestandbird.org.nz.

Written for children aged 0 to 10 years old, the book’s royalties will be donated to manumea conservation.

Clear skies at Ruapehu Forest & Bird’s Ruapehu Lodge offers warm, comfortable accommodation a short drive from the Whakapapa ski field. You can find interesting and varied day tramps in the area. To make a booking, contact National Office 0800 200 064 and we will be delighted to help. Members receive subsidised rates.

Photo: Bryce McQuillan

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| Forest & Bird Te Reo o te Taiao

Parting shot Roxanne Crawford photographed this green and golden bell frog in a rare sighting of this introduced species posing helpfully on a flower in her garden. In the late 1860s, several consignments of these frogs were received from Sydney and released by the Auckland Acclimatisation Society into the wild. The species is restricted to the upper half of the North Island (north of Gisborne).

New Zealand has four ancient endemic frog species that are in serious trouble.

Hochstetter’s frog and Archey’s frog are found in the North Island, while the Maud Island frog and Hamilton’s frog are restricted to Maud Island in the Marlborough Sounds and Stephens Island in Cook Strait respectively, apart from transfers to other suitable islands for back-up populations.

A further three species from Australia have formed self-perpetuating populations, including the green and golden bell frog (Litorea aurea). They produce loud calls in and around ponds and are very different from our protected endemic species, which are rare, essentially silent, and confined to undisturbed native bush.

The best entry to our Parting Shot nature photo competition will win a prize, and the image will be published in the next issue of Forest & Bird magazine. Share your photos of native birds, trees, flowers, insects, lizards, marine mammals, fish, and natural landscapes, such as rivers and lakes, and you could be in to win.

To enter, post your image on the Forest & Bird New Zealand Nature Group page on Flickr.com.

Alternatively, send your high res digital file (maximum 7mb) and brief details about your photo to Caroline Wood at editor@forestandbird.org.nz.

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