Saving Our Birds

Forest and Bird, Issue 310, 1 November 2003, Page 3

Saving Our Birds

Haruru Falls,

Bay of Islands

LAURENCE GORDON

As an ordinary New Zealander, | have been fortunate to witness what few of us ever have — the dramatic revival of our native birds. These include threatened species; kiwi, kokako, weka, brown teal and New Zealand dotterel in over 7000 hectares of diverse protected habitat in Northland and central North Island. May 2003 kiwi ‘call counts;’ on six sites monitored around Russell Peninsula, Bay of Islands were up an average 170 percent over 2002 counts. All this has been achieved with a good dollop of community support and tiny pest management budgets. I have become increasingly concerned of late at our inability to halt the decline of our biodiversity and the remedies proposed. I attribute success protecting native birds to the unglamourous mantra of

sustained, effective diligent, rat control. The black ship rat is the driving force behind the destruction of our forest ecosystems (with possums chipping in) directly through predation of nests, and indirectly by competing for food and most seriously by ensuring a healthy food supply for stoats. Ignoring rats will fail the birds miserably as stoats are notoriously difficult to trap. (Okarito and the plight of kiwi there are a prime and recent example of this.) Project Nest Egg, hugely expensive predator fences and relying on offshore island havens are symptoms of defeat. We should not give up on the mainland. The Russell Peninsula shows it can be done.