Erratum

Forest and Bird, Volume 18, Issue 1, 1 February 1987, Page 30

Erratum

Wildlife Scientist

Murray Wiillams,

Biologists, some unkind people have said, are those who cannot handle the mathematics of other scientific disciplines. Well, it looks as though I have added fuel for their points of view. Astute readers of ‘‘Native bird management"’ in the November issue of Forest & Bird will have noticed that, in the script alongside the graph showing the number of native bird species in forests of different size (page 9), | refer to Little Barrier Island as being 30,000ha in size. In fact, Little Barrier Island is 3,000ha, not 30,000. When I wrote the article, the figure of 30,000ha was firmly in my mind. It led me to draw the conclusion that, for North Island kokako, there are no single tracts of forest remaining in which they are likely to survive long-term. That remark should now be qualified, and the emphasised sentence in the first paragraph of page 8 should read ‘‘For North Island kokako, there may be no such areas leh. I use the words ‘‘may be’"’ deliberately. Present forest tracts like Pureora (24,000ha) and Whareorino (30,000ha) are large enough to sustain kokako on the evidence of island biogeographic studies. However, the presence and effects of introduced competing animals are enough to suggest that the minimum area required to sustain kokako long-term is much larger than island biogeographic studies predict. One simply cannot be confident that remaining North Island forests are large enough. Apart from this point, my conversion error does not impinge upon other statements within the article. I hope that readers will accept my apology with a knowing smile and a tut! tut! and further ponder the questions my article sought to raise.