Te Whakarauora Whio

A community-led project aimed at supporting the growth of the iconic whio or blue duck population in the Nelson Lakes and further protecting the area around the Rotoiti Nature Recovery project, which has kaka, kea, and kiwi populations, has been given a boost with nearly $209,000 in funding.

Rātā Foundation has formed a strategic partnership with the Friends of Rotoiti through a $208,822 grant to establish one of the largest trap-lines in the country – over 52 kilometres.

The collaborative project is supported by the Department of Conservation and local iwi Ngāti Apa ki te Rā Tō.

Rātā Foundation, Chief Executive, Leighton Evans says Rātā has been focusing its strategic funding in the Te Tauihu region on the environment.

“This project is a major step forward in bringing back the whio population to the Nelson Lakes area. One of the appeals to us was the community-led nature of this project – the Friends of Rotoiti group are motivated local community members putting in huge volunteer hours to benefit the local ecosystem of Nelson Lakes.”

The project will see the establishment of a new trap network to safeguard the Travers and Sabine Rivers from stoats and other predators, allowing whio to establish territories and maintain a population in the Nelson Lakes National Park. It will also close the gap in trap lines already run by DOC and Friends of Rotoiti, providing protection for the Travers flats and slowing reinvasion of predators into the Rotoiti Nature Recovery Project.

Butch Goodwin, Friends of Rotoiti Trustee, says the funding supports building the traps, their deployment, maintenance, and all the research behind the scenes.

‘It’s a big community effort – with a lot of local people’s time gifted towards it. We also work very closely with DOC. They have supported us by letting us use their workshops to build the traps and providing us with access to a lot of their research and trap testing - DOC do the science, and we’re on the ground getting the traps out.”

Whio is a taonga species that Māori has a strong cultural, spiritual, and historical connection to. Their Māori name is whio in the North Island and ko whio whio in the South Island and depicts the call of the male bird.

Mr Goodwin says that Friends of Rotoiti and DOC worked alongside Ngāti Apa ki te Rā Tō to choose the name for the project – Te whakarauora whio. It means to bring back, protect, and revive.

Ngāti Apa ki te Rā Tō Chairperson, Hinemoa Conner says the Nelson Lakes area is highly significant to Ngāti Apa ki te Rā Tō and whio are an important taonga species.

“We are excited to support, and be involved in, this kaupapa aimed at increasing whio populations and preserving our environment for future generations.”

Dr Melissa Griffin, Senior Ranger, Biodiversity for the Department of Conservation, says whio numbers in the area have steadily declined. They were once abundant in the Travers and Sabine Rivers until the introduction of predators like stoats.

“Whio are susceptible to stoats when they are breeding (on the nest) – when they strike the chicks and eggs are taken, and the adults attacked, and this often happens again when they are moulting”.

“We know from other sites in the Northern South Island that good predator control near rivers is hugely beneficial for the protection of whio.”

The traps at the Southern end of Lake Rotoiti will extend from the trapping network in the Rotoiti Nature Recovery Project on the Western side of the St Arnaud range. This new trap line will provide an additional buffer to protect all our native species, along with the whio, like the Roroa/Great Spotted Kiwi, kea and the Kaka.

Rātā, DOC, Friends of Rotoiti, and Ngāti Apa ki te Rā Tō all have the same goal, says Mr Evans.

“We all want a healthy ecosystem where all taonga (treasure) species can thrive. Being collaborative means, we can pool our collective resources to achieve even greater gains.”

For Butch Goodwin, the goal is simple. He wants to be able to come back in ten years, walk up in the area, see whio up the Travers and Sabine, hopefully camp overnight and hear the sound of the kiwi.

Thank you to the Air Rescue Services who gave Friends of Rotoiti a grant to pay for communication equipment for use on the back country lines.

It means we will have three radios, a GPS and long reach communication phone.

We very much appreciate the equipment in this beautiful but remote environment.

Te Whakarauora whio – Friends of Rotoiti project

Milestone reporting

Friends of Rotoiti have been very active since receiving the initial Rata Foundation funding 26th

August 2021. The first milestone reporting was due on the 1st December 2021 but as this was a short

period between receiving the funding and the first required report ( three months ) we were not in a

position to report on all requested milestones so below I will detail progress to date and the

requested milestones will become better clarified in future reporting once we have the total trap

line boxes deployed in the field, only then can we provide catch statistics and monitoring reports.

26th August 2021 - $156,310.00 funding received.

Early September 2021 Friends of Rotoiti met and a decision was made to approach DOC to see if we

could use the DOC workshop to build the five hundred trap boxes required for the project. Doc was

accommodating and gave FOR free use of the workshop and equipment. Starting September to midNovember volunteers built and completed all 500 trap boxes, installed, and tested all one thousand

doc200 traps with a total of 1319 volunteer hours.

27th November Friends of Rotoiti and DOC organised a community deployment of seven kilometres

or seventy box traps at the head of Lake Rotoiti which involved carrying in boxes and placing them at

one hundred metre intervals along the track. There was so much interest in this community day that

we had to limit the number of people and public volunteer hours totalled 304 hours for the day. This

Lakehead / Coldwater loop section was completed late Dec 2021 and a week later was checked with

four stoats and one rat recorded.

As we have been working around helicopters, and the wasp season DOC has been supportive in

allowing FOR volunteers to undertake training for helicopter safety and the use of epi pen.

February and March 2022 FOR completed the total proposed stage of the Travers valley of 212 traps

all firmly secured to a good sound base, calibrated tested and are in full operation with the goal to

clear and record all traps monthly beginning in April 2022.

Volunteer Deploy Hours

Lakehead – Swing bridge LH 1 – 52 (DOC 1-30) 155

Coldwater – Swing bridge CW 1 – 50 482

Travers – John Tait TV 1 – 55 246

John Tait – Swing bridge JT 1 - 85 252

Currently having voluntary built the trap boxes and Gold-pine’s donation of all their ply offcuts we

have made considerable savings from what was budgeted. Flying hours as estimated at $20k will

most likely end up in the vicinity of $40k by the time we complete the Sabine and I note that working

in together with DOC has been cost effective for both parties.

The original goal was to complete all trap deployment during summer 2022, but realistically we

probably underestimated the labour required in the field to forfill that obligation and therefore

propose to start deployment of the Sabine in Oct – Nov 2022.

It is rewarding to know that when the kiwi translocation happens in May, we have the Travers line

operational and checked on a regular basis.