Editorial: First Impressions

BARRY SCOTT

As the new Editor of Environmental News a little about myself. I recently retired from Massey University where I taught Molecular Genetics and carried out research on Plant-Microbe symbiosis. I am a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand/Te Apārangi and was a founding Board Member of the Environmental Risk Management Authority. I have been actively involved in Conservation work in New Zealand for around 50 years, first in Dunedin, then in Palmerston North where Christine and I have resided since 1980. My main conservation activity in PN has been forest restoration and predator control of two PNCC reserves in Aokautere. After a visit to Aotea in 2016 we decided this would be a great location as a base for adventures with grandchildren to keep them connected with Nature. We settled for a property at Awana, which is an ideal spot for me to pursue my conservation interests post-retirement.

What struck me most when I arrived at Awana in the summer of 2018 was the lack of birdsong. At our home in Aokautere we have magnificent birdsong with abundant tui, bellbird, kereru, ruru and many other native and introduced birds. At Awana there were a few fantails and grey warblers, and tui when the pōhutukawa or flax were flowering, the occasional squawk of a kākā overhead and the ubiquitous pūkeko in the paddock below, but during the day it was mostly silent. One consolation was seeing for the first time banded rails around the house, dotterels on the beach and pāteke on the nearby estuary. My biggest shock was to discover that bellbird were extinct on Aotea Great Barrier, which along with kōkako and several other birds were abundant 50-100 years ago. The reason for the lack of birdsong became apparent when I started trapping rats around Awana – never have I seen so many rats not to mention the feral cats.

But the community is fighting back to restore the birdsong. The landscape level predator control being carried out at the Windy Hill sanctuary across an area of ~800 Ha is impressive. Predator numbers are also kept low in Glenfern sanctuary, helped by the presence of the predator proof fence across the peninsula. But it is the groundswell support for restoration and protection of the environment at a community level in Tryphena, Oruawhero, Okupu, Awana and Okiwi and the island wide advocacy by Aotea Ecology Vision that is the most heartening. Those involved in these projects came together in November 2020 to participate in the Aotea Conservation Workshop to review achievements for 2020 and arrive at a list of top five priorities for collaboration in 2021. This was a great opportunity to meet the individuals involved in these projects and to share the collective enthusiasm for protecting the biodiversity of the island. But what is the way forward for an island that is 28,500 Ha in area? That became apparent at the Ecology Vision Pestival held in April of this year. What a great lineup of presenters from Auckland Council, Predator Free 2050, The Cacophony Project, Predator Free Rakiura, Project Island Song in the Bay of Islands and the recently announced Tū Mai Taonga. I think most of the around 80 participants came away from this workshop with a strong sense of optimism for the future of Aotea.

This shared purpose/kaupapa to restore the biodiversity of Aotea underpins Tū Mai Taonga, which has recently received up to $3 m from Predator Free 2050. Tū Mai Taonga can be translated as standing up for our precious treasures. It represents our collective vision of “Te Oranga o te Ngahere”, a healthy forest and ecosystem. Kate Waterhouse, chair of GBI Environmental Trust and a Trustee on Tū Mai Taonga provides more detail on this exciting project in this issue.

No one shared this vision for Aotea more passionately than Emma Waterhouse, former GBIET trustee and editor of this newsletter, who sadly died in March of this year. She very much wanted to be part of Tū Mai Taonga and the pathway leading toward a predator free Aotea. It is fitting to reflect on Emma’s accomplishments and share tributes to Emma from her friends and family in this issue. Emma’s presence and impact on Aotea will be sorely missed.

As the new editor of the GBIET newsletter I have tried to meet the exacting and high standards Emma previously set.

References:

1. Sourced from Maori values and native forest (Ngahere) by Harsworth et al. Manaki Whenua Landcare Research.