A camera set up by conservation volunteers to monitor a grey-faced petrel burrow near Ōakura shows how vulnerable the seabirds are.
Restore Ōakura is a group of local volunteers aiming to trap predators in their backyards and around the coastal community.
The volunteers’ collective effort can be traced back to 2019, when Toby Shanley from Restore Ōakura heard the distinctive call of the grey-faced petrel and did some investigating, subsequently finding several of the seabirds and a burrow.
This week is Te Wiki Tūo ā-Motu, National Volunteer Week, in which those who give their time to the community and environment are recognised - like the Restore Ōakura volunteers. Shanley, with other volunteers from Restore Ōakura, set about protecting the birds by installing traps around the area.
Proof of the birds’ vulnerability came when the group installed a trail camera to monitor the burrow. What they saw came as a shock: a ferret, stoats, a dog and, most recently, cats visited the borrow with the nesting adults inside.
In 2022, a ferret killed a chick in the nest before it could fledge.
“All these different visitors to the same burrow show just how in danger these birds are”, said Shanley.
A donation from Ōakura local Norton Moller allowed the installation of further traps to protect the burrow and a section of the coastal walkway from Ahu Ahu Road to the Ōakura campground where the seabirds were seen.
Toby Shanley on a trapline he checks in the Pouākai Range.
Grey-faced petrel colonies are dispersed across coastal North Island, but Taranaki’s only other confirmed mainland colony was at Rapanui, a predator-fenced area near rural Tongapōrutu, with the birds spending most of their time at sea, said Shanley.
“Returning to land, they are clumsy and slow and nest in burrows, so they are really vulnerable to predators”.
Every two weeks, a volunteer checks the approximately 2km trapline. The hard work paid off when a chick successfully fledged in 2023.
The increase in trapping through the local Ōakura and region-wide Predator Free Taranaki programmes meant mustelid numbers are being knocked back, which could result in an increase in the number of coastal birds coming back to the region, he said.
“We are doing further monitoring around the coast to see if birds are coming in at night, and it’s looking promising.”
But the protection needs to continue and grow: “They need ongoing protection in order to help them survive and thrive.”
He’s asking people to help by keeping their dogs in sight and under control when walking them along the Taranaki coast.
Cat owners can have their pets spayed and keep them indoors at night.
People can get involved by setting traps in their backyards or volunteering for a local trapline.
