Mataia Restoration Project Newsletter

November 2014

HELLO family, friends and supporters of the Mataia Restoration Project (MRP) Firstly we extend our sincerest thanks to all of you for the fantastic support and generosity you have given to the Mataia Restoration Project during this past year. Your help in many aspects of the work that we do has been very much appreciated, not just by the Mataia Restoration team but by the flora and fauna. A small success story very close to home: In the early 2000’s one kereru would visit a small kowhai tree in the Homestead garden. This spring Shane counted five in this same kowhai tree – needless to say, leafless kowhai tree. We think there may now be a pair nesting in the homestead bush. Three plum trees in the orchard are in name only, leafless and plumless! Instead of Damson Plum Jam it will be Kereru Jam! And the other very happy recipients of all your hard work-

Kiwi at Mataia – what are they up to:- Three males are currently incubating. Charlie had only 10 days rest before attending another nest! When we were changing the card in the camera this week we checked the nest. It seems that Charlie had pushed a recently hatched egg out of the nest. And he is now only gone from the nest for a very short time each night so we are hoping for video footage of what he has been up to any day now. (A chick from his last nest appeared in footage this week – hoorah! It’s survived this far.) Check out Charlie in this motion sensor camera footage http://youtu.be/cntRhK-Hz9E Charlie calling from nest No 4

Ako successfully reared at least one chick which was sighted, but due to a very difficult nest site we were unable to get any video footage. Ako has now left the nest and he and his mate Pare have ventured into the wetland around the bach to feed. They let us know they are there most nights. Totara has now been sitting on a nest for just over 30 days. We are not sure who his mate is but it may be Ibarakiwi. We are keeping our fingers crossed because he got this far with his first nest then gave up. We have found his nest but won’t start monitoring it with the motion sensor camera until we are quite sure he is secure. Twisty is having another go- third time lucky or is it fourth? Maybe he will get the hang of it this time. Tuarua and mate Occassio- continue to “hang out” in an old puriri log very close to the track along the coast. We thought that Tuarua was sitting on a nest but his transmitter is telling a different story now! Julie Alach, a student at Unitec and (often volunteer at Mataia) successfully completed a study on the territories of the male birds at Mataia – very interesting and they definitely do tend to be sticking to their own little piece of Mataia, hopefully getting acquainted with the females in those areas. Some are still quite young so maybe they will spring into breeding action next year.

Kiwis for kiwi raises funds each year through Trade Me auctions of kiwi experiences. The Mataia Restoration Project put up an experience and Madeline Haydon “bought” this as a birthday present for her father. We invited the whole family to come along too. So on November 30th they were on hand when Pete Graham and Rua, and Kiwis for kiwi representative, Clea Gardiner arrived with Hihiri, a female kiwi from Limestone Island. We released her very close to Hoteo, who seemed to be spending time wandering across to catch up with Taranaki. He seems to have approved of our matchmaking and is staying in his little piece of the QE II bush now with his new mate! We also took Madeline, her partner and her father to help us with the successful tracking and catching of Tahi for a transmitter change.

Madeline, her father and mother get a first up close look at kiwi, Hihiri, (Held by Pete Graham)

Madeline’s family look at kiwi feathers.

We would like to especially thank Madeline. The money that she paid for this experience has gone towards the purchase of some of the 180 eggs we buy each month to “recharge our stoat traps. ( 5 stoats caught so far this month!)

THANKS, Madeline

Pest and Predator Control- the ongoing battle Pest and predator control has been in full swing these past couple of months. We have employed Julie to help us during the busy summer months when the stoats are leaving the nest and finding new territory for themselves, hence the 5 caught so far this month. We are also auditing all our Stoat/Weasel traps to ensure they are working properly and at the right spring set weights. Although mice do have an impact on the ecosystem it is not as devastating as rats, weasels and stoats so we want to make sure the traps don’t spring until at least 80grams. With more and more traps now out on neighbouring properties we have been employing very experienced trapper, Eliane Lagnaz – to help check these traps. Elaine spends much of the summer babysitting much endangered fairy terns! Some property owners are looking after their own traps. Gordon Perry, on the northern side of the Hoteo opposite Atuanui, has caught 152 possums since we gave him traps in August. He has also caught 2 stoats and 2 weasels. Ark in the Park held a most interesting and informative Trapping Workshop which Kevin and I attended in November. Lots of networking and sharing trapping ideas with others. We were also given a great little set of “trapping tools” in a Pringles pack- very easy to carry! The other very exciting happening on the Pest and Predator scene is that all our trapping data is now being recorded on a cloud based data management system called Catchit which is being developed by students at Auckland University. (Thanks especially to Rachel and Sumil!) This is the sort of thing it can do. (See map below)

The very wet and windy weather this week has been a great opportunity for Julie to upload our historical trapping data and we look forward to maps showing stoat catches for the past 4 years. This will help us to concentrate our efforts for the greatest reward! Cats We have been very successful with our cat traps and have caught 9 feral cats over the past 2 months. Six of these were frozen and sent to a PhD student at Massey University for the removal and examination of the stomach contents as part of an ongoing research project. The biggest cat was over 4kg! Two were females looked as though they had had kittens fairly recently! Tracking Tunnels

You may have seen all the publicity recently about the mast year for the beech trees in the South Island and the use of 1080 to kill the huge numbers of rats which breed with so much food around, which then of course attracts the stoats, their favorite food and when they run out , birds! We ran tracking tunnel cards in early August and found 25% of the cards were marked by rats. So it was out with the poison and a further monitoring with the tracking tunnels in late October saw this drop to 15%. We still had high numbers in one particular area and Julie has since been through there re-setting up the bait stations and putting in another line. Hopefully this will help. We have also ordered another 50 physical rat trap boxes as we have had good success with these above the coastal track.

Thanks to Unitec student Melissa Larkin who is helping us with tracking tunnels this year. PS If you read the New Yorker magazine there is a great article featuring New Zealand’s efforts against these introduced mammals. Elizabeth Kolbert and James Russell visited us in early September and Elizabeth writes very descriptively about what she saw here. To be read between meals! Check it out here http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/22/big-kill

Volunteers. A very big thanks to Year 10 students from Kings College who have each put in a day’s work at Mataia this year. They have many and varied tasks ranging from planting trees to carrying kiwi temporary burrows into the bush. The group that came on September 4th carried buckets of packaged poisoned bait into the bush and put it into Bait stations.

Here is half the group with leader Kathyryn at the bottom of Lemon Tree Gully. The last group for the year arrived on October 30th. Spring time is tree releasing time – definitely not the most exciting job in the world but the boys put in a good effort to get about 2/3rds of the main planting area released. (Julie, Kevin and I finished this off last week and we are delighted with the success rate of the planting.)

(Thank you again to the very large number of you that came to planting day.)

The group split into two and one group went to a site on the northern end of the farm, the Omaumau Stream, which we will be fenced off this summer,

(Thanks to the assistance of the Auckland Councils Rodney Natural heritage Fund who have given us

$10,000 towards this project.)

The boys and their leaders helped to dig out arum lily which has spread down the wetland. This is a very mucky job as you can see below. The rhizomes need to come out too.

Three Year 10 boys from Kings College digging out arum lilies The boys put in a good days work here but sadly there is still more to go! We were delighted to receive an email from Rod, the organizer of the Yr. 10 camps for Kings College – he wants to bring 7 groups out next year. WONDERFUL!

And yet another amazing volunteer opportunity that has come out way. In partnership with Cue Haven, we will be hosting two groups of International Student Volunteers. They will come to both Cue Haven and Mataia for a week each in June and July 2015 and they love to work hard. After two weeks of hard work they then spend the next two weeks travelling around New Zealand doing adventure tourism.

Visitors:- In October we hosted lecturers and students of the Environmental Studies course at Unitec. This included Ben Barr with a group of students from Northtec. Aside from sharing his knowledge of ecology it was great to catch up with Ben who grew up on the family farm at Kakanui – now the Gibbs Sculpture Park! A few weeks later a group of lecturers organized by Di Frazer visited for lunch and a walk and talk about how we can assist each other. During Conservation Week November 1 – November 9 Tom and Mahrukh Stazyk held an Open day at Cue Haven. Clea Gardiner of Kiwis for kiwi, was there with volunteer, Julie Alach, to help spread then kiwi conservation message. Check out the day in Tom’s Blog here:-

http://cuehaven.com/2014/11/09/community-open-day-8-november-2014/

In early October we were delighted to host a group of students from the Carpe Deum program from the United States. The Nahi families from Puatahi ensure that these students have a wonderful learning experience while they are here in New Zealand.

The Carpe Deum group take a break at the bridge at the bottom of Peach Tree Gully And just this month we have met with Jacob Tahi, an Occupational Therapist who works with the Waitemata District Health Board. Jacob will be bringing some of his clients to Mataia to see if they would like to help out from time to time.

What else has been happening? In March this year an opportunity that was “too good to miss” came up.

The Community Conservation Partnerships Fund was announced by the Department of

Conservation with applications opening and closing within a month. On behalf of Ngati Whatua o Kaipara, Kevin and I applied for money to intensively trap Atuanui Mt Auckland, 600ha of beautiful mature native forest 500m from Mataia’s northern boundary. This is to follow the Auckland Council’s possum control operation with cyanide this summer. We were delighted to be successful with this application especially since Atuanui falls within the 10,000ha zone we wish to have pest and predator controlled by 2023. Now the hard work starts! In September a group of us went up to place acoustic recorders in the bush in an effort to determine a baseline for bird calls. The bush was very quiet – too quiet, sadly quiet. We will turn this around. A mainland island in the making!

Fortunately there is enough money to pay someone to do the trapping work and this will start in February after the possum operation but first we will have a management plan written so we know the best way to approach the job. This will be done in a way that ensures that everyone with an interest in Atuanui determines what happens there. There will still be jobs for volunteers, especially with monitoring, so watch this space Lastly our apologies for not keeping you up to date via Nature Space, Facebook or newsletters over the past few months. We have been pouring our time into developing an initiative to help support farmers between the Kaipara and the east coast who have native flora and fauna on their properties that they would like to protect, but have the no means to do so. The Forest Bridge Trust will hopefully be off the ground by March 2015. More about this next year.

We hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a great New Year. Thank you for taking the time to read this newsletter. We very much appreciate your support.

Gill and Kevin and the Mataia Restoration Project Team

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