Success continues for mainland kokako management

Forest and Bird, Issue 280, 1 May 1996, Page 6

Success continues for mainland kokako management

KOKAKO IN the "mainland island" reserve of Mapara in the southern Waikato have doubled in numbers in four years. The latest kokako census in the 1,400-hectare forest puts the

number of adults at 86. Only banded birds were counted and many more were sighted by DoC staff. At least 17 chicks have fledged this year. Mapara is the first of DoC’s "mainland island" experiments in conservation management. The concept involves treating a discrete but critical environment as an island reserve, with intensive control of exotic predators and competitors as well as habitat restoration. The success of the Mapara programme since 1989 in rebuilding a kokako population has spawned other such managed sites around the country for kokako populations and other threatened species. In Northland, where kokako were considered close to regional extinction two years ago, the protection of all known kokako nests last summer led to each one producing at least one chick, while at Mangatutu in the Waikato at least three chicks fledged from six nesting pairs. Although kokako are doing well in the managed reserves, populations continue to fall in other areas. The supposedly strong Urewera population, for example, has fallen from 620 birds to 400 in only four years. The lesson is that without active pest management, many threatened species will continue to be pushed closer to extinction on the mainland. In Mapara, intensive management of the reserve will continue. "But the mature and

responsible conservation approach is to ‘pulse’ the management," said Philip Bradfield, manager of the project. "Once the population is in a healthy state as it is now, there are enough females to keep it ticking over." After next season, DoC plans to reduce the intensive trapping and baiting for about three years although it will still carefully monitor the population. DoC’s kokako work is supported by the Threatened Species Trust, a joint arrangement between the department, Forest and Bird and the sponsor, State Insurance.