In this issue:
- Kakariki breeding programme begins
- Google trekker
- Hunting for historic photos
- Kahikatea forest restoration underway
- Deer and goat control
- Stoat on Adele
- Pāteke update
- Calling in the birds
- “Virtual” visitor centre for park
- Stoats should be scared
- Update on proposals for rat and possum control
- Help us survey blue penguins
Kakariki breeding programme begins
The release of kakariki parakeets back into the Abel Tasman National Park is now a step closer.
Project Janszoon is working with Marlborough’s Lochmara Lodge Wildlife Recovery Centre who are breeding the yellow-crowned parakeets on our behalf. DOC has approved us providing Lochmara with wild birds so in September Devon McLean went with Bill Cash and Pete Gaze (pictured) went to Long Island in Queen Charlotte Sound to collect some birds.
The birds were transferred to Lochmara and they are using their purpose built aviary to breed them with a view to us releasing the offspring to the Park either in autumn 2014 or 2015, depending on numbers.
The breeding programme will continue over the next five years and hopefully we will be able to release a dozen birds a year in time. Kakarariki are prolific breeders raising two to three clutches of up to six birds a season so the re-introduction could make an impact on bird numbers very quickly.
Like an expectant father our ornithologist Pete Gaze is excited by the prospects. “It’s a slow start with just a few breeding birds so far but that will improve over time. It is great to have this sort of facility available to us and there is lots of potential,” he says.
Lochmara Lodge initially provided a facility to house injured wildlife in conjunction with DOC but is now also breeding native endangered species like kakariki parakeets and gecko.