October 2004 - Margaret Suman

With summer rapidly approaching we are spending more and more time at the nursery. The longer daylight hours will also speed up growth of our germinating seedlings. So far we have been potting on some of last years slower growing plants and keeping constant vigil on the seed trays. It has been a late spring, so everything is a little late so patience is required.

Using our different skills we also found time to be involved in producing the Trust newsletter, design a conservation display for a Coastal Environmental Management Conference, help Port Chalmers School with planting at one of our habitats, assist with developing a pingao area in the dunes at Tavora and give a presentation on our work to a community group…AND we also had our best Nursery visit yet to the DOC plant nursery at Motukarara in Christchurch.

The Trust has recently received funding from the Banrock Station Wetland Restoration Fund to extend the Pikao area in the dunes at the Tavora reserve. With the help of the landowner, Tavora Committee, DoC Conservation Corps and our regular Wednesday YEPT Nursery volunteers, we were able to plant over 1200 Pikao in the dunes to replace the marram grass. The Trust Projects Officer and Ranger coordinated the project, and it was great for us to be “workers” rather than organisers for a change. Many of the plants came from our Nursery, but as the project was organised at very short notice we also had to buy plants from another local nursery to help fill the space.

Next years supply of Pikao for the site is assured as seeds planted at the Nursery almost a year ago are finally coming up. As a contingency measure we also sowed fresh seed in March 2004 and the trays are already bursting at the seams. Just goes to show you that you can’t push Mother Nature.

We have finally started work on a remembrance garden where we want to plant trees at our nursery to honour loved ones who have died. Many people involved with the Trust have lost family members or friends in the past 2 years and a few people have approached us about wanting to do something special.

One of our major sponsors, Mainland Cheese Ltd, put together a competition to all the schools around the nation with the grand prize being “a day with the Yellow-eyed Penguins”. The winners were drawn in September and on October 11 over 25 kids came to one of our reserves, Omihi, and helped us plant the last of our 2004 season plants. Over 350 plants were put in place. The kids in Room 8 had a wonderful time.

The highlight of our year has to be our visit and work experience at the DoC plant nursery at Motukarara outside of Christchurch. We were able to co-ordinate a time we could visit with Jorge Sanchez and Nicky who produce over 100,000 of what must be the best native planets in New Zealand. We were given the opportunity to come and work at their nursery for 3 days and pick up some propagation tips from the “experts”.

We are totally in awe of what they do. We can’t say enough about how generously they gave their advice and time. They will never know how much it meant to us, but it was what we really needed to see and hear. It has inspired us to change a few things at our own nursery and look forward very positively towards the future. We intend to keep in touch and it was truly a privilege to work alongside them. Needless to say that the whole trip would not have been possible without our Vodafone Foundation Funding and when we were up there it really seemed to make sense what the whole year has been all about.

At present preparations are underway for a trip to Stewart Island. One of us will be piggybacking on an existing research trip sponsored by the Trust to determine why so few chicks raised on Stewart Island are surviving. This poor survival rate is puzzling particularly since here yellow-eyed penguins nest in native forest and there are no ferrets or stoats. The Trust has committed itself to a 5-year study of selected penguin breeding areas and will monitor the birds and chicks from egg laying (Oct-Nov) through to fledging (Feb). One of us will visit the sites to study the types of vegetation the birds are nesting in to help with our mainland restoration projects.

The bad news is that one of us has to stay back and look after our precious seedlings. Thankfully we have a willing volunteer! Again it is another example how job sharing has really worked for us. It has enabled us to take advantage of opportunities like this but still manage to keep our core work ticking along.

Until next time,

Regards
Anita and Margaret

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