New Wildlife Sanctuaries in Fiordland

Forest and Bird, Issue 313, 1 August 2004, Page 4

New Wildlife Sanctuaries in Fiordland

$7 million project to create two giant island sanctuaries for wildlife in Fiordland has been announced by the Government. It is expected to take eight years to transform Secretary Island off Doubtful Sound and Resolution Island off Dusky Sound into safe havens for endangered wildlife. At 20,860 hectares, Resolution Island is 10 times larger than any other island sanctuary around our immediate coastline. Secretary Island is around four times larger than the other sanctuaries, at 8140 hectares. ‘By restoring Secretary and Resolution, we are writing New Zealand an insurance policy against the extinction of signature species, according to

the Minister of Conservation, Hon. Chris Carter. "Their size, and the terrain of Secretary which rises to 1196 metres, offers a critically important opportunity to nurture larger

and more diverse populations of native wildlife than can possibly be accommodated on island sanctuaries at present. ‘Resolution Island is so big that it may enable us to locate the endangered whio (blue duck) on an island sanctuary for the first time. Until now all of our existing island sanctuaries have lacked the large river systems necessary to support a whio population. The islands are already populated by species such as the Fiordland crested penguin, New Zealand falcon, western weka, kaka and kea, but they also have the potential to become homes for the threatened kakapo, mohua (yellowhead), rock wren and robin. The restoration of Secretary and Resolution will cost $7 million with annual maintenance costs of up to $1 million. It will involve two enormous pest-control programmes, among the biggest the Department of Conservation has ever attempted. Resolution Island is populated by mice, deer and stoats, and there is a historical record of rats. Secretary Island is also populated by stoats and deer but has never had rats.

‘Pest control on both islands will either seek to eradicate these pest species completely or control them to very low numbers where they do not impact on native species, Chris Carter said. "Because of the scale of this project, we are going to start with Secretary first, as the smaller of the two islands. Lessons learned on Secretary will then be applied to Resolution Island. ‘The biggest challenge in the project is not how to eradicate the pests but how to keep them from reinvading from the mainland, Chris Carter said. ‘This is the kind of bold initiative Forest and Bird wants to see the Department of Conservation doing and is great news for New Zealand’s native birds, according to Forest and Bird’s conservation manager, Kevin Hackwell. ‘Long term, the challenge is to restore wildlife on the mainland, but restoring wildlife on Secretary and Resolution islands is a bold step along the way. These two islands will add to a list of important island sanctuaries including Little Barrier, Kapiti, Maud, Codfish/Whenua Hou and our subantarctic islands,