A belt in the pelt

Forest and Bird, Issue 279, 1 February 1996, Page 7

A belt in the pelt

Alison Henry

IT’S UP AND it’s working, all 9,000 volts of it. Not a lethal dose but, as they say, enough for a hell of a belt, especially if you're a possum. Cape Brett (Rakaumangamanga) is the sacred seat of Nga Puhi and, with its famous Hole in the Wall and brilliant views of the Bay of Islands, it is visited by more than 100,000 visitors a year. But browsing possums and goats have reduced the pohutu-

kawa to skeletons and prevented any natural regeneration. The idea to build an electric fence came from discussions between the two main landowners — DoC and the 3B2 Iwi Trust — following frustration with possum reinfestations in spite of concentrated kill programmes on the peninsula. The end result is a solar powered electric fence, built by local people and DoC, stretching 2.5 kilometres across the peninsula north of Rawhiti. Funding came from Project Crimson, $73,000 from the Lottery Grants Board and $15,000 from Westpac’s Save the Pohutukawa campaign. Forest and Bird, CCS’s Horizon Gardens, inmates at Paremoremo, and locals have more than 3,000 seedlings from the area under propagation. A private trust, with parttime resident Dame Kiri Te Kanawa as patron, has been established to raise the $10,000 a year needed for ongoing maintenance and restorative plantings. The Northland Regional Council and DoC, who will now conduct a major animal control programme in the protected area, hope to reduce the possum population behind the fence by 98 percent in the first year. On 8 December a gathering at Te Rawhiti marae celebrated the completion of this project. The cooperation between Maori and conservationists should see Rakaumangamanga bloom again.