'Mainland Islands'

Forest and Bird, Issue 300, 1 May 2001, Page 3

'Mainland Islands'

What happens to the birds when they leave the safety of a ‘mainland island’? asks Keith Chapple, in his editorial in Forest & Bird of February 2001. Anyone who has spent time in New Zealand’s forests knows full well the paucity of birdlife there compared with that on predator-free offshore islands. Birds in mainland native forests away from ‘mainland islands’ are hard-pressed to survive. Increasing populations of birds in ‘mainland island’ areas have to spread further afield into untreated forest remnants where predators run rife. However, this no longer need be the case for we now have the fence. Thanks to the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary Trust. and people like businessman/farmer David Wallace of Cambridge and a few others who are starting to experiment, the predator-proof fence has now arrived and is continuing to be perfected. It is now possible to surround a remnant forest with a fence which will shut out all predators right down to mice. As time progresses new ideas are coming forward with cheaper prices and easier methods of construction on the horizon. With this great advance in predator control the time is now right to do something about "big is good’ and look at preserving as much of our native remnant forests as is possible, not with the seven-wire post-and-batten fence, but the latest model of the predator-proof fence. If this were done, the birds escaping from the ‘ecological sanctuaries’ would then have somewhere safe to go. Stuart Chambers, RD4 Pukekohe