Advertisement
Published: April 5th 2006
Kia ora! No one ever really uses that greeting. The Maoris do I guess, but not just when you see them on the street usually. But it’s still fun to say. : )
This past weekend I participated in a Volunteer Conservation project on the Coromandel peninsula. It was wonderful! Six of us from AustraLearn, the study abroad program I came through, stayed at a woman’s house in the middle of the bush to help her eradicate introduced plant and animal species so that the native species would be able to grow.
Dell, the woman whose land we were on, has owned the land for roughly 20 years, and has just recently built a house on it. She has a covenant on her land, which says that it has to remain how it is now - nothing more can be built on it, no matter how many owners it goes through. Covenanting land is becoming more common - the goal is to protect New Zealand’s native plants, animals and birds by preserving the bush.
Our help was minor, but it was still nice to know that we were making a little bit of a difference. Our main project was pulling out gorse plants. It’s quite a nuisance - and spiky! It grows quickly and takes over the land to block out the other plants. So by pulling the gorse we were giving the native plants a chance. There was soo much of it! The 8 of us got quite a bit out, though, and we could definitely tell a difference. Hooray! In addition to pulling gorse, we gathered seeds from plants to be planted in other places, planted several flax plants to fight erosion, and set baits for predators, which include possums, stoats, rats, etc. The baits have poison tablets that the animals eat, and doesn’t kill them until about a week later, so that they don’t associate the death with the tablets. Sad, but necessary for the conservation projects.
Dell and Jan (Department of Conservation worker) told us about all the projects going on around the country. The biggest one they’ve been working on is creating an ‘ecological island’ with a predator-proof fence. They’re building it around an entire mountain, Maungatautari. The fence is designed so that animals can’t jump over or tunnel under it. Here’s a little excerpt from the DoC website: “Once the fence is complete, remaining mammalian predators will be removed and species such as kokako, saddleback, kiwi and tuatara will be returned. Maugatautari was a sizeable population centre in pre-European times, with an estimated 5,000 people living on and around the mountain. Its bush cover is now considerably reduced due to pastoral farming on the lower slopes.”
Very rewarding weekend. It was very relaxed, with great food and just hanging out when we weren’t working. The stars were absolutely amazing - there was nothing around us for miles, so no light pollution. The birds serenaded us while we were working - Jan and Dell identified the main calls as a Tui and Bell bird. I wish I had had a recorder or video to capture their sounds - they were beautiful.
I didn’t get any pictures from the weekend, since my camera was out of batteries, but hopefully some of the other girls will email some and I’ll post them later. Hope everyone’s have a great week! Thanks for all your notes - keep them coming!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.051s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 9; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0307s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Lindsay
non-member comment
Hey!
WOw!! It sounds like youre having a blast, we miss you tons here :o) Love, Linz