Fairy terns flourish after pines axed for golf course

Te Arai Beach, where an international-class golf course, Tara-iti, is being built on dunes cleared of pines. Photo/Greg Bowker

The hapu behind a coastal land development at Te Arai says its preparation work is having a beneficial impact on the critically endangered fairy tern.

Te Uri o Hau chief executive Deborah Harding said data from the adjacent Mangawhai Wildlife Refuge showed the current season had been the most successful since records began being kept in the early 1990s.

The season experienced a record nine fairy tern chicks hatch and survive to fledge. As well, a record nine shorebirds species were observed nesting in the refuge.

The results were welcomed by Forest & Bird, the organisation strongly supporting Te Uri o Hau's involvement in the fairy tern recovery programme which includes trapping predators at Mangawhai and Te Arai.

"Fairy tern recovery will only succeed if we all work together to protect this unique taonga," said Mark Bellingham, Forest & Bird's Fairy Tern Project Manager.

Ms Harding said Forest & Bird, DoC and volunteers from the Ornithological Society, Dotterel Care Group, About Tern and the New Zealand Fairy Tern Charitable Trust, all played a vital role in protecting the shorebird populations, and had done so for many years. The good weather was also important. But the single major difference between this breeding season and past years has been the changes which have occurred at Te Arai over the past 18 months - where a 616-hectare pine forest is being transformed into a world-class golf course, Tara-Iti, and small scale development."

Ms Harding said the removal of 150ha of pine trees significantly reduced the cover for pests and predators, like stoats, rats, hedgehogs and cats, which threatened the shorebirds in the adjacent Mangawhai Wildlife Refuge.

The development had also helped fund hunting, trapping, and poisoning operations to the tune of $70,000. In 2003 Te Uri o Hau, a hapu of Ngati Whatua, paid $5.2million for the return of the 616-hectare Mangawhai North Forest, former ancestral land, as part of its Treaty of Waitangi grievance settlement.

Last November the hapu got the green light to develop 46 house sites in exchange for giving 172ha of beachfront land, sand dunes and high-conservation-value parts of the forest to the Auckland Council.

Last year the Overseas Investment Office approved American financier Ric Kayne paying $10million for 230ha of the forest to create a championship golf course.