Mataia Restoration Project Newsletter

July 2015

HELLO family, friends and supporters of the Mataia Restoration Project (MRP)

The Winter Planting Season HAS ALMOST FINISHED The proof:- Four planting days completed the revegetation of middle reaches of the Mataia Stream begun 2 years ago

35 WOPS and 9 International Student Volunteers on their way to planting 1500 trees in the southern end of the block

Their work was continued by 24 School for Field Studies students, and 4 staff from Queensland, Australia

And continued by 18 members of the Hidden Treasures Walking Group

And completed by 7 International Student Volunteers … and Kevin!

But Kevin didn’t spend all his time planting. For the Women’s Outdoor Pursuits planting day he helped “man” the kitchen with Jane. At the Hidden Treasures planting day he was presented with his “certificate of appreciation”, beautifully crafted by group leader Linda! He promises to keep his outfit for next year!

And while we are on kitchen staff, A VERY BIG thank you especially to Jane who was in the

kitchen for all four plantings. Coordinating soup, buns, chairs, water, tea, coffee, cakes, and fruit is

certainly not an easy task! Thanks too to Kevin, Jenny and Carol for their help

Last but not least, was Family and Friends Planting Day. A hideous looking forecast on Sat 5th, (which resulted in not a drop of rain at Mataia,) meant we postponed till Sunday. A few people couldn’t make it but we had about 50 people to plant 2300 trees which they managed admirably. Thanks particularly to Susan Gibbings and Jo Evans for supervising and planting the canopy trees this year. We welcomed the Martin family, and Tonka and Piwi who thought “it was just a fabulous day to meet

people and do such a satisfying thing”. And to Ngaire for gathering her troops from far and wide! We are very humbled to be the choice of place for Ngaire and her family to plant for Louise’s day. This year we began planting the southern riparian margin of the Mataia Creek and this took us down to a paddock close to Kowhai Island where Louise planted trees in 2008.

Here is Louise with Jenny and Shane planting at Kowhai Island 2008

The area a year later ………………..

And February 2013 – the planting beneath tall cabbage trees

And to this year’s planting :-

There are no photos of Ngaire because she took these pictures. But here she is, standing on the left, having driven for 1 ½ hours to help with kiwi catching!

And it wasn’t just big people who helped!

One last planting to go :-

Meadowbank School T.f.S Planting on Tuesday 28th July

Meadowbank School are working steadily down the northern riparian margin of the Mataia Creek and it is looking amazing – just ask anyone who does the Mataia Walk – they get an eyeful!

Volunteers. A further 6 International Student Volunteers and their leader spent a week with us at the beginning of July. International Students Volunteers combine volunteering with adventure travel. ISV operates tours in six countries, including New Zealand. The focus is on conservation and learning about environmental sustainability and over 310 universities around the world recognize ISV projects for academic credit. The team arrived on the weekend when Kevin and I attended a most interesting workshop on nature watching – more about that later. So Shane gave then a quick rundown on the Mataia Restoration Project and when we caught up with the group on Sunday night they had been for a walk out to the coast. On Monday the team completed the planting of the middle reaches on the Mataia Stream Tuesday was pest control day – we filled all the bait stations in the main bush area with Pindone to try to bring our rat numbers down in time for the bird breeding season. The students carried about 100kgs of bait into the stations – a job that would have taken Kevin and I about a week so hugely appreciated. Wednesday we checked and re-baited a trap line and also laid out some new rat traps. Each student carried in a trap. On Thursday the students helped out at the Atuanui Restoration Project, carrying traps into the bush. We were very lucky with the weather during the week as it waited until Friday to turn a little for the worse. After cottage clean up morning, the team moved to CUE Haven to meet Tom and Mahrukh. A good week’s work was rewarded with a visit to the Parakai Hot Pools and fish and chips at Slims Takeaways Parakai (recommended!). On Saturday the students were scheduled to help out at the Family and Friends planting day but went to Tawharanui to explore this beautiful part of the world. And then helped us out the following day.

IVS volunteers enjoying lunch after planting

Another VERY BIG THANK YOU, firstly to the people in the “backroom” of IVS and of course to the

group, and their leader Evan. We very much appreciate the contribution you have all made to our project.

And we must also acknowledge the support that the Auckland Council has given to our project over

the last few years – this part of your rates is being very well spent! With the help of Council funding we completed fencing of the Omaumau catchment this year. We figure it will take 10 years at the rate we are planting to finish this so we won’t fence anything else in the meantime! Auckland Council funding also support the purchase of plants – we’ll keep applying for this!

KIWI The breeding season is underway. Totara had a false start but Ako is underway and we expect the other chaps to be getting down to business in the next few weeks! Kiwi prints and probe holes are clearly visible on tracks at this time of the year here there is a bit of mud. We still have motion sensor cameras out there and there and have some good footage of a Mataia born juvenile. He/she is in Charlie Taranaki territory –for the time being! We still need to catch the two younger supposedly male birds which we received in April. We hope to do that on Saturday, July 25 so……

Once again, if you would like to come to join us to assist with kiwi catching please do let us know as we can take interested observers from time to time.

Pest and Predator Control and Monitoring We have been to several workshops lately.

The first was on Pest Control. This is a yearly one put on by NZ Landcare Trust. There was a great range of speakers and of particular interest to us was new electronic monitoring system called PAWS for both the baddies and the goodies, depending on what is used as a lure. We also got a great resource – a booklet called Pest Control Guidelines. But probably best of all is the networking Many thanks to Ngaire Tyson of NZ Landcare Trust for organizing this workshop

The second workshop was put on by NZ Bio-Recording Network (NZBRN) Trust We were particularly interested in this because it was about monitoring outcomes – i.e. what effect pest control is having. We were introduced to a website called www.naturewatch.org.nz and shown how to upload our observations to this website. There are lots of experts in their field who can help identify what we have found. Check out this website and for “Place” type in Mataia. Have a look at what people have found near where you live too.

Atuanui Restoration Project and The Forest Bridge Trust Just a quick word about these other two projects that haven’t yet got their own newsletters! Traps are making their way up Atuanui in the arms of volunteers rather than helicopters which is saving us lots of money. We are going to use this to money to put in Kauri Dieback Cleaning stations at both entrances to the track. Atuanui is so far free of this disease of kauri trees which is killing some of our beloved forest giants. We want to keep it that way. Stuart Rogers is working steadily at placing the traps in circuits for ease of checking and will soon be finished the south western corner. Hemi Taparau is checking and resetting all the buffer zone traps and will begin checking Atuanui traps as soon as Stuart has each area set up.

Buffer Zone traps between Mataia and Atuanui Special thanks to Kelvin Floyd, a GIS expert who has sourced maps of Atuanui for us to use with our farm mapping programme. This makes keeping track of traps, tracks etc a breeze.

The Forest Bridge Trust is about to embark on an Environmental Education Programme in three

primary schools in our focus area of the Hoteo catchment – Tauhoa, Kaipara Flats and Tomorata. We are very fortunate to have the very experienced Liz Maire to deliver this program for us. In a sentence this programme is about empowering school children and their families to take care of pests in their own back yard.

We have received a great deal of support from the Local Board of the Auckland Council, and we very

much appreciate the support of council staff who have pointed us in the direction of other funds. As a new Charitable Trust we need to be operating for at least a year before the “big” funders such as Foundation North and Lotteries will consider us so we are very grateful to the Council for their support at this stage. We continue to seek funding for fencing bush remnants for landowners who are not in a financial position to do it themselves. Thank you for taking the time to read this newsletter. We very much appreciate your support.

Gill, Kevin and the Mataia Restoration Project Team

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