Working Weekend on Hauturu-o-Toi | Little Barrier Island

JENNIFER NEADS (AGBET Trustee and member of Oruawharo Medlands Ecovision)

For years now I have gazed longingly through the plane window at Hauturu on the way to my home on Great Barrier Island. Hauturu rises steeply from the sea, darkly clothed in dense forest, rugged and mysterious, its tallest peaks frequently wreathed in cloud. It is the holy grail of New Zealand conservationists. Predator and (nearly) pest free, and most of the forest never touched, it offers a glimpse of the natural heritage of this land before humans arrived. My dream was to visit this beautiful island, but few get this privilege and my hopes were not high.

On Great Barrier I am part of the very enthusiastic Oruawharo Medlands Ecovision (OME) group of dedicated volunteers working to restore a local wetland area with a broader vision to trap predators across the entire catchment behind the wetlands. We are led by Lotte McIntyre - our tireless and energetic coordinator with inspired vision and a sense of humour to match. My husband, Raoul, is chairperson of the group and I am also a trustee of our umbrella organisation the Aotea Great Barrier Environmental Trust (AGBET). 

Just before Easter out of the blue came a call from the Hauturu Supporters Trust - they had three vacancies on an upcoming working weekend on Hauturu. Were we interested? Were we interested! What an understatement! Of course we were. After a very excited few weeks, pinching ourselves to make sure it was real, cleaning and sterilising clothes and gear, scrubbing shoes to an inch of their lives, prepping food for the stay and anxiously checking the weather forecast (as you can’t land on the island in rough weather), Lotte, Raoul and I finally met our group at the Ngāti Manuhiri offices in Warkworth for our cultural induction and then on to DOC for an absolutely stringent biosecurity check. Then we were on our way, a beautiful day and calm sea. There is always the anxiety when going somewhere as special, as Hauturu is said to be, that your expectations will be unrealistic, and that you could be disappointed with the reality, but Hauturu is the opposite. 

As the boat arrives closer and the island rises up ahead it appears even more rugged and more mysterious. Once on land, within a few minutes you are aware of constant movement in the surroundings - birds everywhere - flitting, darting, swooping, gliding, and singing. We had barely arrived at the bunkhouse and Lotte was wandering mesmerised outside where there was a welcoming toutouwai/robin, a pōpokotea/whitehead flitting above and a tīeke/saddleback with its strident call. 

After a welcome and introduction to the island from Richard Walle, the DOC ranger who has lived on the island with his family for 12 years, we set off to clear the tractor path on the land around the boat shed and accommodations of intruding foliage. With a group of 12 it isn’t hard work and we are seriously distracted by all the birdlife. Bellbirds are everywhere, with noisy warning calls as we progress, small groups of red crowned kākāriki fly past with a flash of green and we can hear saddleback in the background. On the beach we marvel at the super clear water and the smoothly rounded boulders (no sand here) and sculptural driftwood. We learn later from the geologists in the group how these boulders start life squared and angular at the top of this mountainous island, and on their passage down the rocky streams over many years they are ground smooth and round.  

On both evenings we have the chance of a night walk, led by Richard and by our group leader Lyn Wade. Lyn is co-editor of the comprehensive book “Hauturu” and has had a close association with the island since her childhood1. She is a font of knowledge about everything on the island. Right on dusk we watch the local long tailed bat with its flitting, erratic flight above us. Later we hunt through the harakeke with our red torches, finding forest and pacific geckos, and then, with some excitement, tuatara. There are sightings of kiwi - more excitement - on the open grassy areas. The night is still and we can hear kiwi calls, and if we listen carefully the softer sound of the grey-faced petrel/ōi and the wheezy growling of the little blue penguin/kororā.

The morning dawn chorus is eagerly anticipated and I am relieved to hear that in winter I am spared the 5.30am wakeup as the birdsong starts closer to 7am. The first morning I am just about to leave the bunkhouse when I hear the clear notes of the kōkako song. It is the melodic sound I have been hoping to hear for years. I laugh at myself marvelling that it sounds just like the soft kōkako toy sold by the Environmental Trust as a fundraiser. Of course it does! The bird is invisible in the high canopy of a kohekohe tree behind the bunkhouse. Standing under the tree, in the soft morning light, listening to the beautiful, haunting, melody is a surreal experience. 

In some ways the whole island is a surreal experience. A multi-sensory overload. It comes with a feeling of loss - a glimpse at what New Zealand’s natural heritage once was, how amazingly unique it is, and how much has been lost and degraded following the arrival of humans. With that is also a feeling of hope, that we use this vision to inspire our efforts of restoration elsewhere - our little patch in the wetlands of Aotea and the hope of a predator free Aotea with return of the lush forests and the birds. Groups all around the country follow the same dreams for their own piece of wilderness. 

There are many more special moments, learning opportunities, little surprises and observations on the days we are on Hauturu. Our group of 12 is a friendly one, with a huge amount of knowledge through the group, and all with the dream of restoring some of our natural heritage areas.

We do a long walk, clearing overgrowth from tracks, up the ridge lines behind the flat land that has been the only area for human settlement. The forest here is mostly regenerating mānuka and kānuka forest, with some ancient pūriri, kohekohe and pōhutukawa. Over a hundred years ago it was mostly cleared for grazing and firewood. Higher up there are stands of young kauri, along with some fine older specimens. We are startled to see some young, slender kauri so thoroughly stripped of their bark that they had succumbed - it seems this is the work of kākā with a taste for kauri sap. We see a few of the smaller burrows of the Cook’s petrel/tītī but they have left now on their trans-Pacific migration to the coasts of Hawaii and Mexico. One bird didn’t make it. We encounter the skeleton and feathers of a female tītī that didn’t survive the crash landing to her nest one night - a perfectly formed and unbroken egg still within the skeleton. It seems strange the egg is still there - unpredated - but, we remind ourselves - there are no rats here. I watch a saddleback using its sharp beak to probe for insects under the bark of a tree, with a fantail in close attendance flitting around catching some of the disturbed insects flying out. 

We have a chance to experience older, original forest up the John Drew Memorial track, following the rocky Tirikakawa stream. Here the forest trees are old, reaching high, the undergrowth is lush, the nīkau fronds seem larger than life. In fact, a number of plants seem larger than life. This is the well named ‘gigantism’ of plants found on predator free islands(2). I am confused to see a small orange flower that looks like the New Zealand gloxinia/taurepo I have seen in the Aotea bush. But its leaves seem softer and are ten times the size of the little button like leaves on the Aotea plants. I check it with my new found favourite phone App, Aotearoa Species Classifier, introduced to me by OME colleague Kim. It is indeed the taurepo, but obviously the larger, lusher ‘gigantic’ version. The factors that lead to gigantism will be many, but one important influence on this island, and in this abundant valley, will be the fertilising nutrient cycle from sea to land facilitated by the seabirds(3),(4). 

There are an estimated 2 million or more burrowing seabirds nesting on the forested ridges and slopes of Hauturu(5),(1), the population still rebounding following the eradication of cats (1980) and rats (2004). The majority are the Cook’s petrels, the largest population in the world, with Black petrels and smaller populations of the Grey-faced petrel making a come-back(1). These birds improve soil structure with their burrows and drop copious amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus rich guano into the forest system. Just the Cook’s petrels alone are estimated to drop 50 tonnes of guano every year. That’s a lot of valuable fertiliser for the forest - no wonder the plants do so well! 

Our weekend on the island draws to a close, but not before my dream to see the kōkako is fulfilled. There are two families of three living near the living quarters, one family enjoys “tending” the ranger’s vegetable garden. They are bigger birds than I realised, on long strong legs. Amazingly they “bound” on grassy areas as if they have springs in their feet. Likewise in the trees they fly in low then leap with speed from branch to branch to reach the canopy. 

Our hearts are full as we leave and the boat pulls away, Hauturu receding behind us into its air of mystery. We feel so privileged and lucky to have had the opportunity to visit. Our heads are full of birdsong. The more we have heard, seen, learned on this island, the more we realise what an important place this is for conservation in this country. Not just as a “living ark” and repository of knowledge, but as an inspiration to all of us striving to restore some of this unique heritage to our wildplaces. 

Images 

All images in this article were taken by Jennifer.

References

1. Wade L & Veitch D (2019). Hauturu. The history, flora and fauna of Te Hauturu-o-Toi Little Barrier Island. Massey University Press

2. Kavanagh PH & Burns KC (2014). The repeated evolution of large seeds on islands. Pro. R. Soc. B., https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.0675

3. Fisher ME & Forde ML (1994). Growing New Zealand Plants, Shrubs and Trees. David Bateman Ltd., Auckland.

4. Department of Conservation. Chatham Island Plants

5. Morris B (2020). Where the seabirds go. New Zealand Geographic, Issue 165, Sept-Oct