Fight to save mohua – the feathered face of New Zealand’s $100 note

For 25 years, the mohua/yellowhead at Haast Pass has actually been a poster bird, not simply on our $100 note, however for the Central Otago branch of Forest & Bird’s effective volunteer effort to bring the bird back from the edge of termination in Mt Aspiring National Park.

Now, thanks to a beech mast summertime and a growing rat afflict, the mohua are quickly “going down the gurgler”, says Wānaka’s Jo Tilson, who has actually been keeping track of Haast Pass mohua for the previous ten years.

“Unless something is done fast, they will all be dead,” she said.

Tilson and F&B’s Central Otago branch chairman Andrew Penniket said volunteers recently gathered 20 big, fat rats from among 12 trapping lines near the Haast Pass.

With a 50 percent rat trap rate on that single line of 40 traps, alarm bells went off.

They are now making an immediate require action to eliminate the coming afflict of rodents.

The worry is the tree-climbing rodents will target nesting women, producing a rapid and “functional extinction” in one season.

Female mohua were most susceptible since they supported eggs in holes in trees, while the males swept about, sang to each other, and preserved primarily empty area, Penniket said.

“Our group has been involved for 25 years. They are not prepared to let these birds disappear,” Tilson said.

“We have to go bigger than what we can do with bait stations.”

Central Otago F&B satisfied on Tuesday to begin overcoming numerous methods with the Southern Lakes Sanctuary, an umbrella organisation/consortium of Queenstown Lakes ecological groups working towards Predator Free 2050 objectives.

Penniket said the Central Otago workplace of the Department of Conservation would be consisted of in their strategies.

Key DoC staff were away on Tuesday and might not concern the conference, he said.

He and Tilson are preparing to launch a regional online campaign, Give a Mohua for a Mohua, by the end of the month.

“But we will accept a whio [$10], a kārearea [ $20], a kōkako [$50] or a hoiho [$5],” Penniket said.

The volunteer mohua job is supported by among F&B branch’s most significant swimming pool of volunteers — a minimum of 65 individuals, the majority of them aged over 60.

The volunteers were already doing whatever they might to think about methods to help, consisting of creating and building model rat-proof nesting boxes, in the hope some mohua would discover them and utilize them rather of holes in trees, Penniket said.

They had actually likewise started increasing the density of traps on each of the lines, cleaning and resetting traps as soon as a fortnight rather of as soon as a month, and would be laying more trap lines on slopes and deals with.

Asked if rat contaminants might be utilized this spring and summertime, Penniket and Tilson said a “multi-pronged approach” was required at this immediate phase.

They did not think there would suffice time to get a spending plan for a 1080 application through DoC channels prior to spring.

The last time 1080 was utilized in the Makarora Valley remained in 2019, which had effectively “disappeared the possums” in the meantime, Penniket said.

“What we really need is a huge dump of snow, just like the skiers. We need a large dump of snow because it will have a huge impact on rats,” Penniket said.

But this winter season had actually simply not been cold enough to eliminate the rats and young rats were already beginning to emerge, Tilson said.

“We have a rat plague right now. At the moment, 30 per cent of our tracking tunnels are showing rats. Some are showing 50 per cent.

“Rats are just pouring down the warm, north-facing slopes, and we are concerned tracking tunnels will be at 90 per cent or 100 per cent by the summer.

“We have data analysis that shows a mohua decline [when tracking tunnels are] at 11 per cent, ” Tilson said.

“If we don’t get on top of the rats this summer, it will get worse.

“Possums only have one offspring a year but rats can have 10 babies every two months,” Penniket said.

“Mohua are our canary in the coal mine … If the rats flourish, they [native birds] are all going to suffer,” he said.