Kararehe Kino - Vertebrate Pest Research, Issue 20
June 2012 — Community Conservation
In this issue
Working with communities and sanctuaries – an introduction
Community-based conservation is a growing phenomenon globally, and New Zealand is no exception. Sustaining and restoring native biodiversity in New Zealand is increasingly being undertaken by private citizens.
Can possum fur harvesters both make a living and help protect forest biodiversity?
Can the apparently conflicting outcomes of an economically viable harvest and biodiversity protection both be accommodated in native North Island podocarp forests?
National sanctuary workshops
In the absence of a national sanctuaries agency of some kind, Landcare Research has, since 2004, hosted both a website and an annual workshop for sanctuary practitioners.
Restoring tūī in Hamilton
Tūī are are scarce in Hamilton and nesting success is poor – only around a quarter of all attempts succeed – due to predation by pest mammals, especially ship rats, possums and stoats.
Mokomoko dryland sanctuary
In 2005, the Central Otago Ecological Trust was established to restore lizard communities and the indigenous dryland habitats in which they once thrived.
New Zealand Garden Bird Survey
Monitoring the population trends of bird species nationally is an enormous task, but one that is possible with the public’s help.
Data collection and use by community-based pest managers
Why do volunteer pest controllers keep records? The most likely reason is to demonstrate to themselves and others that they have made a difference in suppressing pests and reducing the damage they cause.
Monitoring invertebrates in community-led sanctuaries
With the rapid increase in community-led conservation projects trying to reduce mammal pests to zero or near-zero densities, there are many more opportunities to investigate how the native invertebrate fauna responds to pest control.
The re-establishment of a customary harvest of kuia (grey-faced petrels) by Ngāti Awa, Bay of Plenty
Scientists from Maanaki Whenua, in collaboration with Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Awa are studying kuia to determine the population size, adult survival and breeding rates on Moutohorā, and what an annual customary harvest would mean for the population.
Developing user-friendly techniques to monitor arboreal geckos
How arboreal and nocturnal geckos respond to pest control is poorly understood, largely because no user-friendly monitoring method currently exists for these geckos.
A new approach to biodiversity protection: local to landscape scale
Wendy Ruscoe and colleagues have been investigating how concepts from metapopulation theory can be used to improve management for native biodiversity.
Recent publications
Some recent vertebrate-pest-related publications.
