Brochure fluff masks sad statistics

By ANNE BESTON

A glossy Department of Conservation booklet published last month is filled with happy stories of hut openings and wildlife refuges, tuatara transfers and whale rescues.

With photos of smiling children - and not a few of smiling Conservation Minister Chris Carter - the "Conservation with Communities" brochure is all good news, stories of dedicated DoC staff in fluffy sweaters making the world safer for our most threatened species.

But the big conservation picture is not nearly so rosy.

While some birds have hovered near the top of the critically endangered list for years - takahe, kakapo, black stilt, brown teal - other, less well-known, names are vying for an ever-higher placing, including mohua (yellowhead), whio (blue duck) and the orange-fronted parakeet.

DoC says those last three are victims of an unusual event, "beech masting" years in 2000 and again in 2001, when South Island beech trees produced copious amounts of seed, encouraging predatory populations to thrive.

No one knows what triggers heavy-seeding years or why, once every 20 years or so, it happens one year after the other.

What scientists do know is that during those two summers, the forests experienced a "predator eruption" - far higher numbers of rats and stoats than usual.

Up to three-quarters of some yellowhead populations were wiped out over those two years, but while there are at least eight populations of the birds on off-shore islands, the orange-fronted parakeet is not so lucky.

It is now restricted to two small North Canterbury valleys and estimates put the total population as low as 100 birds.

Before those two beech-masting years, the population estimate was more than 700.

Captive breeding attempts last summer resulted in five chicks from five eggs, taken from nests in the wild.

Just two chicks survived, both males.

This summer, DoC staff will search for more nests but species protection officer Nigel Cotsell concedes the department is also having to consider what will happen if it can't find any.

"If we can't find nests, then the next thing would be to try and trap some of the adults and bring those into captivity, but that's a final straw," he said.

While beech masting has been documented for at least 80 years, once upon a time it simply meant native wildlife in the beech forests thrived.

Now it has a more sinister outcome. Rats and stoats also thrive, and the theory is that while neither will target the eggs and young of native birds when there is plenty of seed about, by the end of the season the seed source disappears and the high numbers of predators turn their attention to the eggs and chicks of native birds.

But the predator food chain is a contentious issue, with DoC being accused of targeting the stoat at the expense of its second-in-command, the rat.

"At the moment, DoC West Coast can use 1080 to target possums but the problem is, possum numbers are down and rats are up and you need to get out there with 1080 but DoC aren't doing it," said Forest and Bird spokesman Geoff Keey.

Instead, he said, DoC was carrying out expensive and laborious stoat trapping when it might not have to.

"Rats are food for stoats. Far better to just poison rats and then let the stoats eat them - cut out the middleman."

Forest and Bird is also critical of the amount of pest control carried out on DoC-managed land, in particular national parks.

It estimates DoC is carrying out stoat control on just 2 per cent of national parks and possum control on 12 per cent, figures it calls "woefully inadequate".

Forest and Bird has backing from Laurence Gordon, a driving force behind a successful conservation project in the Bay of Islands funded by local councils, community and charitable groups, with some help from DoC.

Mr Gordon, involved in three Bay of Islands wildlife refuges for eight years, is disillusioned with the department, saying it puts "enormous emphasis on science and data collection".

It has failed to get to grips with the important role rats, in particular shiprats, play in the food chain.

"If rats are not taken out of the equation, you are set to fail no matter what you are trying to protect," he said.

Mr Gordon said stoats were notoriously difficult to trap and rats should be used as bait through the use of the anticoagulant rat bait brodifacoum.

When Mr Gordon wrote to Chris Carter last month questioning his department's reluctance to use the rat poison, the minister replied that the reduction in its use was "the result of public health considerations".

However, Mr Carter said, the poison would be used "where risks to public health are low" and with signed approval at "the general manager level".

What emerges is a picture of DoC as unwilling to employ poisons, in particular brodifacoum and aerial 1080, because it knows some members of the public are adamantly opposed.

Mr Carter acknowledged this, and said his department had been "cautious" in its use of 1080 but would "use every weapon in the arsenal" to save the now critically endangered orange-fronted parakeet in its North Canterbury beech forest stronghold.

Mr Cotsell heads the South Island Beech Forest Working Group, scientists and DoC staff whose job is to draw up a "contingency plan" for the next beech masting event and, in particular, another one of those successive years when endangered species have no time to recover before the next one arrives.

The plan is to target 25 designated priority areas, "tens of thousands" of hectares of forest, when scientists predict another beech masting year. Mr Cotsell said they should get between six and nine months' warning.

While the plan is to hit predators early and hard before populations explode, it's also bound to be controversial.

Mr Cotsell admits that if beech masting occurs outside the designated areas, threatened birds are on their own.

"You can consider it basically our bottom line. We say these are the 25 sites we would hope to protect and if there's a beech mast in areas outside these, then we may have to make a hard call," he said.

If small, isolated populations of blue duck or yellowhead are outside those areas, they might be lost.

"That's probably the cruel reality of the situation," Mr Cotsell said.

The department would carry out full consultation with private landowners and iwi before identifying the final 25 sites, although much of the land being targeted would be DoC-managed, he said.

"There's still no guarantee we can control predators on the mainland at a scale that will continue to protect some species.

"Unlike off-shore islands, predator reinvasion [on the mainland] remains a critical issue."

Meanwhile, DoC's glossy brochure will soon be supplemented by its annual report to Parliament, due out in December.

It is likely that this will tell a different story.