A trust set up in 2013 to "bring back the birdsong" to the Routeburn and Dart Valleys is hatching a plan to expand its predator control efforts into a new habitat. Guy Williams talks to the trust about a project that will take its work — and fundraising — to a new level.
To amateur bird observers they may lack the melodious calls or charisma of New Zealand’s most famous native bird species.
Their names are familiar — wrybills, black-fronted terns, banded dotterels, black-billed gulls and black stilts.
If you are lucky, you have spotted them as you stood on a wide, braided riverbed - a seagull-like aviator squawking overhead, or the eep-eep-eep of a solitary wading bird in the distance.
But they are all officially only one or two steps away from extinction. Two of them - the black-billed gull and black stilt - are as rare as the kakapo.
That is where the Routeburn Dart Wildlife Trust comes in. In a partnership with the Department of Conservation (Doc) and Air New Zealand, it already raises funds to boost predator control efforts in the Routeburn and Dart Valleys.
But it now has a bold plan to expand its efforts into the braided riverbeds of the Dart and Rees Rivers as they spill out of the mountains and into Lake Wakatipu.
Last August it took on a part-time executive officer, Geoff Hughes, to help it formulate plans for setting up and maintaining more than 1000 traps in the area.
Dr Hughes said by expanding its focus to the braided river habitat, the trust could target predators across the alpine, forest and river zones, linking up with its own and others’ predator control work in the Routeburn and Hollyford Valleys.
The vision is a "whole landscape that’s predator-free, extending from Martins Bay to Glenorchy".
"This project is big, it’s long-term and has the potential to have a significant impact."
The upshot of that vision was raising a lot more money - up from the tens of thousands now into the hundreds of thousands.
It would soon begin targeting new sources of funding - charitable trusts, corporates, philanthropists and money arising from the Government’s "Predator Free 2050" goal, he said.
Doc Wakatipu operations manager Geoff Owen said the department did not have the resources to carry out predator control in the Rees-Dart delta, and the trust had taken a "leap of faith" in upscaling its work so dramatically.
The trustees were highly motivated, and were taking a business-like approach to planning the project, Mr Owen said.
"They’re certainly going about it the right way."
Trust chairman and Ultimate Hikes general manager Noel Saxon said there was a gap in predator control in the river delta, and trustees had always wanted to "grab something we could call our own".
A predator-free river delta would serve as a buffer zone for the control work already happening in the mountain valleys above.
Its proximity to Glenorchy and several busy commercial tourist operations meant there was a strong community of interest in doing more to protect the birds, Mr Saxon said.
Although the birds did not have the public profile of their forest cousins, their numbers were critically low.
"All of our native birds are worth saving."
Dr Hughes said an initial feasibility study - with input from a Doc specialist in braided river birds - found a large-scale predator control programme was doable in the area.
A detailed scoping report on the project’s practicalities was about a month away from completion, and he had just prepared a business plan that would serve as a template for applications to funding organisations and pitches to companies and philanthropists.
Fundraising efforts would be stepped up this autumn, and a baseline survey of bird numbers in the river delta carried out in the spring.
The expectation was to begin trapping some time next summer, in what was likely to be a staged process.
The trust’s nine trustees, many of them Glenorchy residents, had committed themselves to the project in the "very long term", he said.
"It’s been thought through very carefully, and debated very carefully."
The trust already covers pest monitoring and the maintenance of more than 600 traps next to the Routeburn Track in the upper Routeburn Valley and across the Main Divide along the Hollyford Face.
The traps kill rats and stoats preying on declining populations of forest and alpine species: mohua (yellowhead), whio (blue duck), kea, kakariki, kaka, riflemen, robin and rock wren.
Over time the trust expects to fund more of Doc’s control work in the Routeburn and upper Hollyford as commercial sponsorships expire.
Its patron, former prime minister Helen Clark, was flown into the Routeburn in January last year to see its operations.
Miss Clark even mentioned her involvement with the trust during an interview with American news website The Huffington Post during her tilt at the United Nations’ top job.
