It’s NZ Music Month but apart from Radio New Zealand nobody’s giving our favourite band any airtime.
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Hannah Sinclair, painted by BodyFX as a kakapo for the event.
Words on a Wing was launched at the Wellington Zoo and Auckland Museum on 22 May 2010 (International Day of Biodiversity). Words on a Wing is something we thought up here at DOC, featuring two giant steel and mesh kakapo and 20,000 cardboard feathers. Over the coming months as the birds go on tour, students all around the country will have the opportunity to write messages on the feathers which will be used to cover the kakapo from beak to toe. The messages will then be collected and taken to Japan in October, for the Convention on Biological Diversity’s 10th Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting.
Children attach cardboard feathers to the giant kakapo.
At the Wellington event an estimated 200 people celebrated the launch, which featured music by drum troupe Nimba, face painting by Body FX and comedy by the Improvisors. Felicity Lawrence, General Manager – People and Organisation Development, launched Words on a Wing with a speech during the event. Also, we didn’t pull this together by ourselves. WWF-New Zealand, Forest & Bird, and Wellington Zoo were our partners in this event. Thanks guys!
Dance troupe Nimba play their drums at Words on a Wing.
Links
- International Year of Biodiversity Events on the Doc website
- Forest and Bird’s website
- WWF New Zealand’s website
- Wellington Zoo’s website
Preparations are really cranking up for the opening of the first stage in the new Ruapehu – Whanganui trails cycleway.
The Hapuawhenua viaduct, with the old viadict in the background. Photo: Natures Pic/Rob Suisted.
DOC staff from around the sheer awesomeness that is Mount Ruapehu, plus a few colleagues from far and wide (cheers Connie and Erana 🙂 ) are furiously planning for what we hope will be one of the peaks of the local calendar. We’ve even managed to encourage Prime Minister John Key to come along, as well as the Minister for Conservation, Kate Wilkinson, so we are looking to have a great day.
DOC staff installing one of the many interpretation pieces to be found on the track.
The cycleway is part of Nga Haerenga, the National cycleway project, and is the first of the quick-start projects to open, so we are bigging it up to the local DOC trackies, and their teams who have made it happen. When the first cyclist rubber hits the track, (and by that I mean their tyres not their trousers!) they will love the experience that awaits them. The Ohakune Old Coach Road section of the track will open on July 2, and offers a great family ride back through one of the most significant sites in the history of the New Zealand railway. That’s not to say it’s only for the train-spotters either, everyone can enjoy the scenery, stories and sounds of Southern Ruapehu.
One of the tunnels on the trail which can be explored by visitors.
It’s going to be a huge community day, so come and celebrate with us. Bring your bike and your lycra and get on it!
Links
1 Comment | Auckland, Raoul Island, Volunteers | Permalink
Posted by raoulislanderdoc
Raoul Island diary by Lachlan Wilmott
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A kereru flies perilously close to the top of my head leaving a whorl of air spinning in a vortex. A tui in a nearby kowhai coughs and chortles and calls to it’s neighbour in the adjacent tree. A small flock of waxeyes chirp their way through the canopy of the scrub accompanied by a cheeky fantail and a warbler trills sweetly from not far away. A bellbird was around earlier in the day, just after the morepork stopped calling. I bend down and delicately remove a weta from in front of me.
Waxeye. Photo: Herb Christophers
Its March on a Saturday morning, I am on the deck in my suburban backyard and I am enjoying weak autumn sun. My half-gallon, ¼ acre, pavlova paradise doesn’t have a lawn to speak of and I refer to it as my ‘regenerating jungle’. Less informed people like my wife, call it a pile of weeds. – I suppose she is half right. Still, with not much lawn to mow, I can indulge a while longer as the native world according to suburbia, spins around me.
Tui in my Silverstream garden. Photo: Herb Christophers
Suburbia
Pest control on the edge of suburbia has benefits that are there for all to see and hear.
It’s amazing what committed local authorities and community groups, can do to reduce the scar of human impact on the natural world. The Wellington Regional Council, The Upper Hutt City Council, Forest and Bird and other people working in specific reserves around the area have ensured that at least in the upper Hutt Valley that we can live alongside native biodiversity.
Sure, we get flocks of sparrows, finches, Eastern rosellas, spur winged plovers and starlings, but it’s almost a level playing field for the native species. Get rid of the mammalian pest species from the bush and the natives can mix it with exotics in some places. I’m not just talking about birds here. You should see the rata in summer. Since the pest management work in Keith George Memorial Park and along the ridgeline between Whiteman’s Valley and Silverstream and in many little pockets of native vegetation, the rata are blooming magnificently!
Big Country
So its off into the scrub for Easter. The South Island beckons. Rain, hail, sleet and snow does not deter the weka and once the sun comes out, the bush is alive with robin, tomtit and warbler and all the usual suspects. A rifleman here, a bellbird there and a falcon soaring above the valley. Too late for cuckoo. And anyway, how the hell do they know how to get back home?
Whio, our native torrent duck. Photo: Herb Christophers
Duck for cover!
The real coup on this trip was to encounter whio – blue duck that inhabit the faster flowing currents in the clear mountain rivers of Kahurangi National Park. Their numbers have been declining and without management, they may slip away forever and I don’t mean downstream. The pest control on the river edges keeps the stoat, ferret and rat numbers down and this allows enough whio chicks to get clear in the summer so that populations have a chance of long-term recovery.
DOC 150 trap on Whangapeka, protecting Whio from rats and stoats. Photo: Herb Christophers
Maybe one day, we will have them in the upper Hutt Valley?
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