DUNZ has over the last 30 years supported, and often initiated, a number of threatened waterfowl recovery programmes (brown teal/pateke, blue duck/whio) which have been very successful and are now coordinated by other groups. DU’s role in lifting the profile of the endangered bittern (matuku) by supporting research by Dr Emma Williams has similarly been successful. Earlier this year an expert panel convened by the Department of Conservation reclassified the conservation status of bittern as “Nationally Critical” which places it in the same category as kakapo and takahe. This classification is the last step before “Extinction”.

The critically endangered black stilt/kaki (Himantopus novaezelandiae) is one of the most endangered birds globally and remains the rarest wading bird in the world, despite over 30 years of intensive management. The species is only found in New Zealand’s South Island and is considered a Canterbury icon.

The black stilt was formerly widespread throughout the New Zealand mainland, and was still breeding at North Island locations in the late 19th century. During the 20th century the range contracted from being South Island wide, to being confined to Canterbury and Otago in the 1950s, South Canterbury-North Otago by the 1970s, and the Mackenzie Basin by the 1980s.

Today the black stilt’s breeding distribution is limited to braided rivers and wetlands in the upper Waitaki River valley of the Mackenzie Basin. Breeding pairs are now confined to the area between the Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki basins in the north, and the Ahuriri River in the south.

The Department of Conservation (DOC) has managed the Kaki Recovery Programme since 1981, when the population declined to just 23 adult birds. The programme aims to increase the population by wild egg collection and captive rearing, captive breeding, predator control, and increasing public awareness. By 1991 the wild population still only consisted of 31 adult birds, while in 2010 the number had increased to 85 birds, and 130 birds in 2012. However, today there are still only 106 black stilts remaining in the wild and the species remains on the brink of extinction.

This is due to a number of challenges from a range of threats: introduced predators, habitat degradation, habitat loss, hybridisation with pied stilt, and human recreational disturbance. Intensive predator control is undertaken due to a whole suite of introduced mammalian predators, as well as native avian predators. These predators are prevalent across the area and are subject to major fluctuations. The development of irrigation has also seen major changes in land use in the Mackenzie Basin, particularly modification for conversion to dairy farming, resulting in extensive habitat loss.

DOC and The Isaac Conservation and Wildlife Trust (ICWT) are the only two organisations globally to captive breed this exceptionally rare species, in order to halt extinction. Annual releases into the wild of captive bred birds and predator control have undoubtedly prevented the black stilt from becoming extinct in the wild. Without this intensive conservation effort, the species would be extinct in less than 8 years.

ICWT therefore plays a pivotal role in black stilt conservation, with up to 61 birds per season housed in two custom-built aviary complexes. ICWT’s captive pairs produce three to four clutches each season, with all eggs generally transferred to Twizel for artificial incubation and hatching. More recently ICWT has also been hand-rearing chicks from Twizel, whilst a snow-damaged aviary there minimized capacity. Each season up to 50 juveniles are held at ICWT for pre-release conditioning until release in the Mackenzie Basin. At present there are 121 juveniles in captivity at DOC and ICWT, which will be released in August.

Releasing black stilts on the mainland remains difficult and continues to be a numbers game, even with intensive predator control and monitoring. Many of New Zealand’s threatened species benefit from translocations to predator-free offshore islands; however there are no islands with suitable braided river habitats for black stilt transfers, making releases confined to very limited sites. On average 120 chicks (from wild collected and captive bred eggs) are released annually, slowly increasing the fragile population. However the post-release survival rate is still only 33%, with even fewer birds becoming part of the breeding population. While the species may be rebounding from the brink of extinction (compared to the all-time low population in 1981), the black stilt still has a long way to go, with long-term survival remaining dependent on captive breeding efforts and rigorous predator control.

For these reasons ICWT intends to expand its black stilt capacity by 2025, by building a separate incubation and brooder room facility. This will broaden ICWT’s hand rearing capability and increase overall output for the Kaki Recovery Programme.

DOC has also just received $500,000 from Global Wildlife Conservation (GWC), which will fund the replacement of the flight aviary which was destroyed in a 2015 snowstorm. This means the programme will again be able to rear and release an additional 60 black stilt juveniles annually

Sabina Lluecht - The Isaac Conservation and Wildlife Trust

Earlier this year Jim Law took Rex Bushell on a tour of Wairio Wetland. Rex was impressed. He is involved with the Mangaiti Gully Restoration Trust in Hamilton. Mr Bushell was very impressed with the Wairio project.

When he arrived home Mr Bushell took the time to look on Google-earth to help locate the wetland in what he described as a “rather extensive landscape”.

Mr Bushell had spent three weeks touring the country, including the South Island and visited many restoration projects being done by both government institutions (like councils and DOC) and community driven ones.

“The one thing that stood out was that there can be no template to lay over any restoration project. Each one is individual both in people available (and their abilities) to run them and the natural area being restored,” Mr Bushell said.

“I returned to our home project, Mangaiti Gully Restoration Trust, full of inspiration by what I have seen.”

Mr Bushell was so inspired by all he had seen on his travels, he went on to write up a management plan for the whole 30 hectares of Mangaiti Gully.

“Ducks Unlimited are doing such great job,” was his closing comment.

Rex Bushell, Co-ordinator

854-0973 or 021-237-3857

http://gullyrestoration.blogspot.co.nz

Another great day on the journey to restore the Wairio Wetland!

About 40 good folk, including a large and enthusiastic contingent from the local Kahutara Primary School, turned up on a nice fine Wairarapa day to add 300 odd trees to the thousands planted over the last 12 years at the Wetland.

Don Bell, a great supporter of the project, had all the plants on site and some good keen lads from Palliser Ridge Station and Trevor Thompson from DUNZ had holes dug before the planting contingent from the school and others arrived. Thus, the actual planting proceeded at pace and all adjourned for refreshments before mid-day. Apart from one attempt at synchronised swimming (it is a wetland after all) all went to plan! It is hard to beat a day out in the elements helping to make things better in this land of ours!

Ross Cottle

Emma Williams and I are helping the South Wairarapa Schools - Martinborough, Pirinoa and Kahutara - to achieve some of their environmental studies assignments and general objectives.

Emma has visited Kahutara School once already and her talk was very successful, she had her dog Kimi with her and the children loved that.

Then Emma went up to Hawke’s Bay and further north where she worked with older young people. Emma has developed a package for schools on wetlands and wetland birds with bitterns in particular, and where they are in the habitat.

Emma’s lovely black labrador Kimi, helps with her work and accompanies her on visits to schools.

We will start another series of school visits in the South Wairarapa during August and plan to visit Wairio wetlands at some stage and track bitterns that have radio transmitters attached to them.

The overall plan is to introduce pupils to wetland conservation and so attract some new young members for Ducks Unlimited!

Gill Lundie

The mission to save more than one endangered bird species has been enriched by last year’s successful breeding programmes at Pukaha Mount Bruce.

The Shore Plover programme saw over 10 birds transported from Pukaha Mt Bruce National Wildlife Centre to Motutapu Island in the Hauraki Gulf and Waikawa Island off the Mahia peninsula (see photo).

The shore plover is in a perilous position with fewer than 200 left in the wild and a history of conservation efforts being hampered by rat infestations. Shore plover were first spotted by observers on Captain Cook’s second voyage to New Zealand.

The shore plover is the most endangered bird reared and cared for at the Pukaha centre. It is very susceptible to mammalian predators; even one rat can cause enormous damage.

Past Department of Conservation attempts to establish shore plover on Mana and Portland Islands were undone by what was thought to be a single rat in both cases.

The breeding and hatching of over 10 chicks at Pukaha had been a real triumph for the staff and wider conservation efforts.

In another success for the breeding programme, over 10 pateke (brown teal) were bred and hatched at the centre in the last breeding season.

The endangered ducks have a wild population of between 2000 and 2500 making them New Zealand’s most rare mainland waterfowl.

As well as great results in the Shore Plover and Pateke recovery programmes, the whio (Blue duck) also produced more than one clutch of ducklings.

Pukaha new free flight aviary that opened in May 2016 enabled the breeding pair of whio that call it home to lay eggs which were then artificially incubated and hand-reared. Those ducks were sent to Turangi where they spent time in a purpose-built environment to prepare them for release to the wild.

The second clutch of eggs is allowed to stay with the parents and be raised naturally. The theory is that by letting the parents raise them, the ducklings will be better parents when it is their time to breed.

Laura Hutchinson - Marketing & Communications.

Pukaha Mount Bruce
027 244 1221
www.Pukaha.org.nz

Yet another well run AGM, with interesting places to visit and plenty of old friends meeting up and catching up.

The auction with Dan Steele as auctioneer ran well, and provided more funds for the coming year. The silent auction also went well, with many interesting items that looked quite fascinating

For those of us with access to habitat, trapping is one very positive way we can tip the odds in the favor of native birds. So why would Britain’s Brexit have anything to do with such important work?

The EU along with Russia and Canada signed up to AIHTS, the Agreement on International Humane Trapping Standards. This binds all member states and Britain was, until Brexit, one of those. The AIHTS agreement is only based on commercial fur-bearing species, and none of the small vermin trapped by British gamekeepers has a commercial value. However stoats in some of those colder signatory countries are commercial when their pelts turn white in winter. These are then known as ermine. This fur has long been used to trim expensive royal robes and similar. While British stoats, (and their NZ descendants), will sometimes turn white, often it is usually only a partial change. So this species has little or no commercial value in Britain which has always imported the ermine it needs. However this collective AIHTS agreement means that Fenn and also body-grip traps, (known in NZ as Conibears), will shortly no longer be approved to catch stoats in the UK. They’re still perfectly legal for weasels and rats, but how do you keep a stoat out of a trapping tunnel set for one of the other species?

The AIHTS agreement might have already put paid to the Fenn and body-grip traps in the UK but Britain successfully negotiated a two year extension, (expiring July 2018), to allow authorities there to find and test suitable alternatives. Brexit also raises the possibility that common sense may again apply. Interestingly the DoC and Goodnature traps made here in NZ are among alternatives, albeit the weight, bulk and expense of these means they are not a direct replacement. But why would the Fenn trap, which has been the gold standard since 1959, fail to meet the new requirements?

Fenn traps work by breaking the backbone of an animal whereas DoC traps inflict a blow to the head. The latter is more or less instant death but the Fenn is sometimes less instant depending on how the animal is caught. In early Fenn trap trials inventor Alan Fenn determined that tunnel height is critical. The animal must not be thrown clear of the trap but must hit the roof and be held there while the traps closes on it. Nor can the tunnel be too low or the trap will expend its energy hitting the tunnel itself, (keeping in mind that the traps tends to jump perhaps 20mm when sprung off). Traps must be recessed and level with the ground and also snugged into the soil, so the animal enters the stable trap straight-on. If used in a wooden trap, the floor needs to be built up level with the trap plate to achieve the same direct animal orientation over the plate. Universal black plastic trap covers in NZ have always been made to fit the larger Mr6 Fenn, not the Mk4. So they are not at all ideal in any critical test. Lastly Fenn traps should be set fine not hard. It is not clear if any of these requirements were factored in to NZ humane trap testing. If just 1 in 20 animals fails to die instantly and takes a minute or so to clinically expire in a Fenn trap, the new standard is breeched. But were all 20 out of 20 traps set wrong?

In this country the stoat was introduced from the UK and also has no commercial value. It is however associated with the decline of many of our iconic native bird species including kiwi especially and also waterfowl. Brown teal, for instance, walk directly to their nest, (rather than fly), which soon leaves a trail that no stoat walking around a pond could miss. This species was one of our most common waterfowl in NZ but soon after the arrival of mustelids, (stoats, weasels and ferrets), their populations collapsed. To this must also be added the destruction of habitat and other factors, but clearly the welfare of stoats in NZ is probably not our highest priority. Or is it?

DoC have recently withdrawn all their thousands of Fenn traps from the field and replaced these with DoC 200, 250 and similar traps to meet new humane standards. Yet DoC use aerial 1080 poison in NZ on a massive scale. This can take up to 18 hours to kill a stoat even in ideal laboratory conditions, so it seems very odd that we should be concerned that 1 in 20 stoats might take a minute to be clinically dead in a steel trap. Perhaps being terribly concerned with traps is a way of offsetting apparent indifference about the wide scale use of aerial poisoning?

What all this means to us kiwis is that the future supply of Fenn traps from the UK is far from assured. This author has spoken to the manufacturer of them in Redditch, who obviously is a worried man. So it would seem that the NZ Government’s goal of a Predator Free NZ in 2050 is off to a very bad start if the standard tool of the British gamekeeper is about to become consigned to museums.

Whether the new DoC and Goodnature traps can be made to do the same job as the Fenn remains to be seen. But if using DoC traps, can I suggest that, if you want to keep playing the piano with a full compliment of fingers, be extremely careful and use the correct safety that should be supplied. At least one Department of Conservation worker was allegedly rushed to hospital having nearly bled-out but for the quick thinking of their work companion.

A tasty morsel.

It is reputed that the cook on Captain Cook’s ‘Endeavour’ had a deal going with the ships cat. He’d let it in the ships hold to catch the rats there, which the chef would cook and eat the rear part of, the cat got the rest. On long voyages, this would have been the only fresh meat available and apparently he thought that with some pepper it tasted quite OK. So there’s an option… if meat is scarce.

John Dyer

I run a yearly total as at November 30 each year as part of the excellent initiative of the ‘Swamp Comp’.

For the year ending November 2015 from 6 DoC 200 traps placed around the margins of my wetlands, the list was 11 Weasels, 1 Stoat, 2 Ferrets, 33 Hedgehogs and 7 Rats.

So for the 2016 year where 2 more traps were added in February, with the total of 4 Weasels, and Stoats, 1 Ferret, 12 Hedgehogs and 16 Rats it seemed that we were making a great inroad.

It may seem now that the inroad thought was rather premature, with just under 5 months of the current year run, the total sits at 20 Weasels, 3 Stoats, 7 Hedgehogs and 9 Rats.

The other point is that I have one trap [See photo, note there is an egg, I also bait with the juice from Sardines in spring-water] that is generally located in a central position, with the other traps generally outside of it.

That trap known as Cabbage Tree, has accounted for 15 of the Weasels, 2 Stoats, and 4 Rats, the last one as of April 25.

Possibly the high number may be attributed to the very wet Summer-Autumn where the wetland core which is generally only damp under the Harakeke, Coprosma and Toe Toe associations is this year very wet, so perhaps there is a concentration moving around the dryer margins, however that is only a possible theory as equally the food abundance could be another contributing factor.

Ian Jensen.