Wednesday, 3 February 2010, 10:00 am Press Release: Federated Farmers
Media Release
3 February 2010
Reasons to farm weka
Federated Farmers is backing entrepreneurial farmer, Roger Beattie, in his quest to secure trial approval to supply farmed weka.
“Here’s a true Kiwi entrepreneur who ought to have every policy encouragement to see if a new market can be created,” says Donald Aubrey, Federated Farmers game spokesperson.
“Mr Beattie firmly believes that the weka can be domesticated and if that’s the case, it could well become our version of the turkey. After all, that’s a bird native to the Americas that is now commonly farmed around the world. The turkey was domesticated around 500BC.
“I think the reaction from TVNZ’s Close-Up on Monday evening shows New Zealanders are open-minded to new possibilities. 85 percent of respondents felt Mr Beattie should be given the room to try. We do, too.
“New Zealand is a unique country and it stands to reason that our fauna has the unique potential to be farmed as well. As Mr Beattie rightly points out, no farmed species has ever become extinct. Really, it’s the complete opposite when it comes to farming.
Wednesday, 3 February 2010, 11:52 am Press Release: Department of Conservation
Rodent Detected On ‘Pest-Free’ Kiwi Crèche Island
A large Norway rat discovered in a permanent trap on the ‘pest-free’ island of Motuora in the Hauraki Gulf has sparked a Department of Conservation (DOC) response operation. Motuora, which is jointly managed by DOC and the Motuora Restoration Society and is home to young kiwi chicks and other threatened species, has never had a population of mammalian predators such as rats, stoats or ferrets.
The rat was found yesterday during a regular check, caught in one of the sentry stations designed to detect and trap any invading pests. Based on the level of decay, it is estimated the animal had been dead at least a fortnight. A similar invasion in February 2008 ended with a single rat being caught after several weeks of effort.
The main concern now is the risk that other rodents may be present, prompting DOC staff and volunteers to widen the trapping programme with a large number of extra traps placed over the island. This afternoon a rodent detection dog will be deployed, a tool that has proved effective in the past.
New research indicates the moa may not always have been flightless.
The research, by Professor David Penny, Elizabeth Crimp and Gillian Gibb of the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution, has found that moa were closely related to the tinamou, a breed of South American birds.
The team was led by former Massey student Dr Matt Phillips, who now works at the Australian National University in Canberra.
DNA analysis indicates the tinamou is the closest relative of the moa within a group of birds known as ratites, which includes kiwi and other flightless birds such as the cassowary, ostrich and emu.
Although moa are extinct, it is possible to sequence their DNA from well-preserved bones.
Tinamou, of which there are about 47 species, are the only members of the group that can fly, though only poorly. They are found throughout central and southern America.
“It now appears more likely that the ancestor of the moa flew, or was blown, to New Zealand via Antarctica before it froze over,” Professor Penny says. “There are well over 100 cases of birds becoming flightless on Pacific islands because of the absence of mammal predators.”
Ms Gibb is completing her PhD on the evolution of birds in New Zealand under Professor Penny, which includes this current research.
“We did some more DNA sequencing from kiwi and also new analysis of the data set for the ratites,” she says. “The re-analysis shows that the ratites probably lost flight independently of each other, rather than the ancestor of all ratites being large and flightless, as traditionally thought.
“We’ve known for about 15 years that kiwi possibly flew to New Zealand – escaping from Australia – but no one realised that moa may have too.”
Previous theories pointed to moa being established on the land that would become New Zealand as it broke away from Gondwana more than 80 million years ago.
The research was published in this month’s Systematic Biology, an international science journal.
Thursday, 28 January 2010, 11:12 am Press Release: Department of Conservation
A photograph taken of a baby tuatara on Wellington Harbour’s Matiu/Somes Island this month has confirmed for the first time that the rare reptiles are hatching on the island.
The juvenile, just a few months old and about 8cm long, was spotted by Harriot (8) and Nicholas Lane (10) and their cousin Harrison Vernon (11) while they were walking around the island with their grandparents Bob and Suzanne Vernon.
Tuatara were transferred to Matiu/Somes in 1998 and since then adult tuatara are regularly seen on the island. It has long been suspected that they are breeding, and this was finally proven when eggs were found on the island in 2007 and hatched at Victoria University.
But this is the first confirmation that young tuatara have hatched on the island itself.
A thousand pohutukawa trees are being made available for planting on the Coromandel as part of efforts to get more of the iconic New Zealand trees flowering on the peninsula.
Regional council Environment Waikato and the Project Crimson Trust are partnering up for the project which will see the 1000 pohutukawa distributed to Coromandel landowners next winter.
“The aim is to get more pohutukawa established to help this much-loved species survive, and to ensure that future generations can enjoy the red Christmases the Coromandel is well known for,” said Environment Waikato land management officer Matt Highway.
“These trees will also support Peninsula Project soil conservation initiatives, improving biodiversity, water quality and soil stability,” said Mr. Highway.
EW will distribute the seedlings to landowners via the Peninsula Project soil conservation programme. They will also collect local pohutukawa and rata seed, which will be ready for planting in three years. This eco-sourcing ensures the distinctiveness of Coromandel plants and ecosystems.
Project Crimson Trust executive director Bridget Abernethy said: “We like partnering with organisations like Environment Waikato. We can take comfort that these trees are going to go to the most appropriate locations, that they will be planted by caring communities and that they will be protected for future generations.”
The Project Crimson Trust, set up in partnership with Meridian Energy and the Department of Conservation, is dedicated to the protection and enhancement of New Zealand’s pohutukawa and rata trees. Project Crimson Trust is celebrating 20 years this February 2010.
In 1989 around 90 per cent of the original area of pohutukawa in New Zealand was thought to have been lost. Much of what remained had been ravaged by possums, with very little regeneration evident. Since 1990, Project Crimson volunteers have planted almost half a million pohutukawa across New Zealand.
DOC has managed to breed two kakapo using artificial insemination in what’s being hailed as a world first and a boost for critically-endangered birds everywhere.
Kakapo are notoriously slow to reproduce, and DOC hopes the breakthrough will now ensure the birds’ survival.
There are only 124 kakapo in existence, but with the help of artificial insemination, or AI, they may just be able to claw their way back from the brink of extinction.
“It’s just a fantastic tool for us to protect the future population of kakapo against further inbreeding, and also hopefully improve fertility rates,” says DOC’s Deirdre Vercoe.
“It’s a real breakthrough, a scientific breakthrough to achieve AI in a wild bird like this,” says Forest & Bird’s Chris Todd.
With more than 50 percent of kakapo eggs infertile, associate professor Ian Jameison says AI is a revolutionary tool in the fight for their survival.
Climate change increases value of Kiwi native plant
The golden sand sedge – pingao – has won the New Zealand Plant Conservation Network’s 2009 favourite plant poll, and could be a valuable defence against climate change effects.
The pingao topped more than 100 species in the annual poll. Network President Philippa Crisp said that pingao would become increasingly important in combating the effects of climate change, particularly as an increasing number of coastal homes came under threat
“If the global plan to fight climate change stalls and sea level rises occur, pingao will become even more important to New Zealanders because it plays an important role in stabilising sand dunes and creating a beach contour that is not so vulnerable to storm events and sea level rises,” Dr Crisp said. “Pingao may be our only sustainable hope for coastal protection”.
2010 – pivotal in seeking to secure world night sky reserve for New Zealand
Next year is pivotal to the success of New Zealand seeking a world heritage night sky reserve for Tekapo Aoraki-Mt Cook
A UNESCO World Heritage meeting in Brasilia in June will be crucial to New Zealand’s chances, leader of the Working party bid former Cabinet minister Margaret Austin says.
“We are launching a nationwide campaign in the lead up to the Brasilia conference next year, so we can tell the public people this project has real and exciting potential particularly in the lead up to the Brasilia conference.’’
Austin says there has been a reluctance to acknowledge that the stars and starlight are significant to human heritage under UNESCO conventions. But there is a groundswell of public concern at the extent to which people no longer see the stars in so many parts of the world and we need a source of income to achieve our goal of world heritage and international support.
The key milestone this year was getting the Tekapo Aoraki/Mt Cook starlight reserve working party up and running so the bid could demonstrate their commitment to the project. With the backing of the Mackenzie District Council there is a belief that astro-tourism, education and awareness of the significance of the dark sky and appreciation of the cultural history for Maori can be realised in the next few years.
New Zealand’s top predator makes spectacular return to the capital
Conservation staff at the groundbreaking ZEALANDIA eco-sanctuary in Wellington believe they have found the first New Zealand falcons to have hatched in the city since the species disappeared as a breeding population in the Seventies.
“It’s an extremely significant discovery,” said ZEALANDIA conservation manager Raewyn Empson
“Although there are quite a few breeding pairs in the Hutt Vally and Eastbourne, they haven’t bred in Wellington city for decades! And they are hanging around right next to the main track, so it really is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see these powerful predators up close and in their element”
This time last year, ZEALANDIA staff found the capital’s first ever recorded nest, very close to where this year’s fledgings are hanging out. Unfortunately, the nest had been abandoned before any eggs were laid. A second nest, this time with eggs in it, was found in July – incredibly early for falcons – but that also failed.
Wednesday, 9 December 2009, 9:44 am Press Release: NIWA
Draft NIWA MEDIA STATEMENT 9 December 2009
Catch me if you can! Scientists play tag with whitebait species
New Zealand’s iconic whitebait species are disappearing from our waterways, but help could soon be at hand for the threatened giant kōkopu. Scientists are carrying out a trial involving ‘tagging’ of individual farm raised fish as part of a plan to reintroduce them to our waterways.
The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) and Mahurangi Technical Institute (MTI), who will be providing the fish, have been engaged by the NZ Transport Agency and its Northern Gateway Alliance (NGA) partners to undertake a project as part of the mitigation programme associated with the recent construction of the Agency™s SH1 toll road. Together they aim to repopulate a stream in Orewa with giant kÍkopu. The giant kÍkopu is one of five galaxiid fish species which, in their juvenile form, make up the whitebait catch and is classified by the Department of Conservation as nationally vulnerable.
Kakariki breeding on Motutapu for first time in 100 years
They’ve been gone for more than 100 years, but last week, a family of red-crowned parakeets was spotted flying down from the trees in a peaceful gully on Motutapu.
Luis Ortiz-Catedral, parakeet specialist and Massey University PhD student, says one of the birds was clearly a recently fledged juvenile that must have hatched on the island.
“I estimate it fledged about two weeks ago considering the size of the tail, the colouration of the beak and also because it was still being fed by its parents,” he says.
Red-crowned parakeets — one of five main species of kakariki — were recorded on Motutapu in September by the Ornithological Society of New Zealand (OSNZ). The OSNZ conducts bird surveys for the Motutapu Restoration Trust every year. Mr Ortiz-Catedral joined them last week to look for signs of breeding parakeets.
Only the male of the pair was banded, and had been released on nearby pest-free Motuihe eight months ago.
Motutapu and Rangitoto are on their way to becoming pest-free after the Department of Conservation began a two-year campaign to rid the islands of seven remaining mammalian pests in June this year.
Just minutes out of the nest and the terrified chick found himself having two feathers pulled out, a microchip inserted and numerous measurements taken.
Yellow Mauve Lime, named after his leg band colours, was the first kaka chick of this year’s breeding season to be banded at Zealandia wildlife sanctuary in Karori on Thursday.
The 538-gram native was a “brave frontrunner” which underwent the experience calmly, Conservation officer Matu Booth said.
As Mr Booth inserted almost his whole arm into the heart of Yellow Mauve Lime’s nest, the mother bird and five other kaka squawked overhead but eventually calmed down.
The chick also settled down, and Mr Booth said banding kaka was much more enjoyable than banding other birds, partly because kaka chicks were relatively big and easier to handle.
Bird watchers have long waxed lyrical about the benefits of listening to birds, but now a recording of their tweets has led a Kiwi ecologist to a scientific breakthrough.
Murray Efford, of Otago University, and American ecologist Deanna Dawson have developed a world-first technique that enables scientists to measure how many birds are in an area by recording them, instead of simply counting them.
Dr Efford said the discovery could be used in the future to help measure dolphins, whales, and other animals that lived in areas which made them difficult to count.
Though the study recorded the warbles of the American ovenbird, a small thrush-like bird, Dr Efford said the technique would now be used to measure numbers of New Zealand’s only surviving native owl, the morepork.
To celebrate NZ’s unique natural taonga, Peter Hayden has curated a highlights collection from three decades of NHNZ productions. Aotearoa’s landforms and its magnificent menagerie of natural oddities – birds, insects, trees like nowhere else on the planet – are showcased in 15 award-winning titles. From Discovery Channel and David Bellamy, to Wild South and Our World classics.
This week’s screening of the BBC’s “Last Chance to See” programme featuring New Zealand’s own conservation ambassador Sirocco the kākāpō, has catapulted kākāpō recovery into the international spotlight.
Department of Conservation staff have been amazed by the response that viewers of the “Last Chance to See” programme, starring Stephen Fry and Mark Cawardine, has evoked from the British public.
“His Facebook page alone jumped from 600 friends to over 2000 friends in the 48 hours following the broadcast of the kākāpō episode of “Last Chance to See”,” said Sirocco’s media advisor Nic Vallance from the Department of Conservation.
“And the Youtube clip of him getting ‘up close and personal’ with presenter Mark Cawardine has resulted in well over half a million hits.”
The show “Last Chance to See” is a remake of the series that the late Douglas Adams and Mark Cawardine recorded for radio and published a book on in 1990.
Many of the comments posted on Sirocco’s rapidly growing Facebook page send words of support and encouragement to kākāpō recovery as well as many offers of donations to continue to increase the survival of the kākāpō.
“The international interest in kākāpō is just fantastic,” said Vallance.
An astrophotographer has discovered a kiwi in outer space from New Zealand’s internationally renowned Mt John Observatory.
It may be 26,000 light years away but a high powered astro-photograph has picked up the distinct image of New Zealand’s national icon in the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy.
The incredible image of the flightless bird was captured by experienced photographer Fraser Gunn. Mr Gunn, who has recently begun astrophotography with Earth and Sky Stargazing Tours at Lake Tekapo’s Mt John Observatory, is delighted with the discovery.
“When looking at the area with the naked eye it’s difficult to locate the kiwi but my camera allows greater light and colour into the image giving it more definition.
“We only started the astrophotography tour six weeks ago to complement our stargazing tours and the response so far has been outstanding. Basically, I provide instruction to anyone with a SLR-type camera so they obtain their own starlight pictures,” he says.
Graeme Murray, director of Earth and Sky Tours, says Fraser has become a leader in New Zealand astrophotography and is fast gaining international acclaim.
About 40 Bar-tailed godwits (Limosa lapponica) arrived on the Avon-Heathcote Estuary yesterday afternoon, to be followed today and over the next few weeks by up to 2000 more. These join a flock of about 190 juvenile birds that had stayed on the estuary over winter.
Christchurch City Council ranger Andrew Crossland confirmed 40 godwits at the estuary this morning. “More are likely to arrive today, with ongoing arrivals through the rest of September and into October,” says Crossland. The ChristChurch Cathedral bells will be rung at midday tomorrow (Wednesday 16 September) to welcome the birds to their wintering home.
A new study shows that New Zealand’s giant – and now extinct – Haast’s eagle ruled the skies until 500 years ago, swooping down on moa.
Scientists have known about the existence of Haast’s eagle since 1871 based on excavated bones, including bones carved by early Maori, but their behaviour was not entirely clear.
Because of their large size – they weighed up to 18kg with wingspans up to 3m – some scientists believed they were scavengers rather than predators.
Earlier research has indicated the eagle had enough strength in its talons to kill a moa weighing 180kg, attacking at up to 80kph, or even to attack a human child.
The latest study throwing new light on this was published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
Researchers Dr Paul Scofield, curator of vertebrates at the Canterbury Museum, and Professor Ken Ashwell of the University of New South Wales used computerised CT and CAT scans to reconstruct the size of the brain, eyes, ears and spinal cord of the Haast’s eagle.
These details were compared to values from modern predatory and scavenging birds to determine the habits of the extinct eagle.
“This work is a great example of how rapidly evolving medical techniques and equipment can be used to solve ancient mysteries,” said Dr Ashwell.
