Conservation Comment: Spare a thought for shorebirds in their breeding season

Oystercatchers cruise the low tide shallows.

Whanganui’s wild west coast doesn’t have a rich variety of shorebirds, but those we have begin breeding soon and need safe refuges.

Shorebirds face a lot of threats - being killed by cats, stoats and rats, humans changing their habitat, high tides, and storms. Added to that are things we do when we visit our beach or estuary: our wanderings, our vehicles, and our dogs.

Some of our activities are hard on shore birds. Grooming of Castlecliff Beach clears away the seaweed that birds search for their food. Vehicles driving the foreshore prevent shellfish from colonising the sand. Our black-backed gull colonies are tucked away in dunes kilometres from town. And no bird would nest in the South Beach dunes that are frequented by dirt bike riders.

But Castlecliff has one or two pairs of variable oystercatchers that breed in dunes near the river mouth. There are another two pairs at Whangaehu Beach and one at Turakina Beach, Whanganui ecologist Peter Frost says. Our river estuaries have pied stilts, gulls, terns, shags, and sometimes wrybills, red knots and spoonbills. A few bar-tailed godwits will arrive around November and stay until March.

It’s important to give the godwits time to feed up before they migrate to the Arctic to breed, Frost says. They’ve got to virtually double their body weight before the flight north. When constantly disturbed they may not get enough time to feed. It takes a while for them to settle down after each intrusion.

Sadly, people tend not to notice their effect on wildlife, Frost says.

Vehicles are banned on many beaches in Auckland, Whangārei, and Marlborough.

At others, including Whanganui, vehicle speeds are restricted to 30km/h. Vehicles are banned from dunes nationwide, though this is seldom policed.

Other places in New Zealand look after their shorebirds better than we do. The few remaining fairy terns in Northland are under 24-hour watch during the breeding season. Along the Whangārei coast parts of some beaches were roped off last spring, to allow shorebirds to nest. Dogs were sometimes completely banned. These measures bring rewards. At Pakiri Beach, I got to see two oystercatcher parents feeding their chick. A rare sight.

Forest & Bird wants vehicles banned from New Zealand beaches, except where they are doing a rescue or launching and retrieving boats. There was a lot of talk about vehicle damage to beaches at the Coastal Restoration Trust conference in Auckland in March.

Vehicles on beaches are a touchy subject, everyone agrees. A Marlborough iwi is asking for a judicial review of a vehicle ban on a local beach, saying it will restrict access to wahi tapu and prevent the iwi from exercising kaitiakitanga. On the Whanganui coast, driving allows fewer mobile people to get to fishing spots, and it gives frisky people a chance to hoon around.

Nobody seriously thinks about how else we can accommodate those frisky people, Frost says.

“They’re on the fringes of society. They tend to use the beach to tear up and down and feel free.”

In 2019 a petition by two Castlecliff Coast Care members asked for a vehicle ban on Whanganui beaches. It got 418 signatures and was only successful in instituting a 30km/h beach speed limit.

So, what to do when you visit the beach and estuary?

■ If you must drive a vehicle, stay on the hard sand below the high tide mark. Don’t drive fast and avoid people and birds.

■ If you take a dog, keep it on a lead.

■ Steer clear of birds, especially if they let you know they are distressed by attacking you or by pretending to be injured.