Living World Archives | New Zealand Geographic

Colourful catch-22

Nearly 500 songbird species have been flagged as targets for wildlife poachers thanks to their unique plumage. Among them are three New Zealand species: the popokōtea/whitehead, mohua/yellowhead, and kōkako. Like their parrot cousins, songbirds garbed in eye-catching colour palettes attract more human admiration. But bright colouration is a double-edged sword: it also makes birds highly sought after in the pet trade. In turn, this means that populations dwindle as poachers snaffle birds from the wild—a fate that currently befalls around 30 per cent of songbirds, especially in the tropics. Colourful birds in the “perching bird” (passerine) family are more likely to be both traded and threatened with extinction, according to a new analysis. Surprisingly, white is a popular hue in captive birds—exemplified by the Bali myna, which tops off its snowy plumage with a crisp black tail-tip and zingy blue eye-liner. The myna is critically endangered due to poaching for the caged-bird market. As populations of desired species decline, poachers shift their efforts to birds with similar qualities. “Most of New Zealand’s birds are not too colourful—although the hihi and kōtare offer obvious exceptions,” says study co-author James Dale from Massey University. Nonetheless, New Zealand is pinpointed as a place that could see a drop in both colour diversity and uniqueness among birds. Without conservation efforts and proactive trading regulations, the future for our feathered friends could be decidedly drab.

Geo News

Mussel building

One day in 2008, marine science student Kura Paul-Burke was diving in Ōhiwa’s murky waters when the grey-brown of the sea floor suddenly gave way to a brilliant orange. At first, she was struck by the beauty of it. Then she realised she was looking at hundreds of thousands of 11-armed sea stars—pātangaroa, a native species—stacked five or six layers deep. Behind them, the seabed was littered with empty green-lipped mussel shells. In 2007, the Bay of Plenty harbour was home to an estimated 112 million mussels. By 2019, only 78,000 were left. Paul-Burke’s Ngāti Awa elders had noticed signs of decline well before then. No-one knew why the mussels were dying. Was it overharvesting? Sedimentation? But they knew there used to be more mussel beds, and in 2006, they urged her to investigate—then helped her to map the old mussel beds using both traditional landmarks and scuba surveys. Researchers are still confirming the starfish are to blame, and figuring out what is causing the ecosystem imbalance in the harbour. In the meantime, Paul-Burke—now a professor of mātai moana (marine research) at the University of Waikato—wanted to see if it was possible to save the mussels and the harbour. The project wove together four iwi (Ngāti Awa, Te Ūpokorehe, Te Whakatōhea and Waimana Kaakū [Tūhoe]) and three councils, kaumātua and young people (pictured below, L-R: Megan Ranapia, Te Waikamihi Lambert and Cameron Phillips), mātauranga Māori and marine science. Together, they built four restoration stations where baby mussel spat could attach and grow. Instead of using commercial plastic spat lines, they experimented with natural fibres. The strongest were made from fallen tī kōuka leaves woven into rope by master weaver Rokahurihia Ngarimu-Cameron and her students. In late 2018, the team hung them on floats in midwater, out of the reach of clambering starfish. It worked. Mussels began growing in such numbers that they dragged the floats under the surface. When the tī kōuka lines eventually degraded, young mussels fell to the bottom “as a whānau”, Paul-Burke says, before reattaching to the sea floor. As the researchers describe in a new paper, by 2021, three new mussel beds had formed close to the restoration stations, and the mussel population had increased ten-fold—showing what can be accomplished, says Paul-Burke, when several knowledge streams and communities pull together.

Profile

The critter made me do it

The origin story of Orokonui Ecosanctuary’s environmental educator, Samuel Purdie

Books

Secrets of the Sea: The story of New Zealand’s native sea creatures

On the surface, this is a straightforward book of fish facts. On another level, it’s a story about gorging and slurping, about human nature, about waste, about greed. There’s a bit near the end about how the hagfish (or “bloody snot eel”, as Dad would call it) will patiently rasp itself inside softening corpses on the seafloor. If that doesn’t work, the hagfish will force its body against the rotting ribcage, or belly, or whatever, writhing until it gives way. Gross, but not as gross as the human appetite. The reading experience reminded me of being a kid and watching, horrified, as my uncle ate a whole bucket of prawns. Robert Vennell fillets his beautiful book into five sections, from fresh water and shorelines to the deep seas. Within each he covers just a handful of creatures. Bold choice, quality over quantity—and undoubtedly the best one. Each chapter is deep and rich. Māori perspectives, stories and histories are centred. Taxonomy and etymology, aptly, are broken out into little boxes. Vivid illustrations (some of which are reproduced here) flicker and dart throughout. Vennell is very good at writing about abundance. He conjures an Aotearoa where dogs lap up whitebait from rivers; the piper fish swim in shoals three kilometres long; kids walking home from school stop off at the rockpools, picking up a crayfish for each family member. His language is plain: eels are “gigantic tubes of meat”; pāua “thick, meaty chunks of protein”. But the numbers are obscene. Twenty thousand eels served at a feast in 1838. Eighteen million crayfish tails shipped to the US in 1949 (the tails were often snapped off, the crays dumped at sea). One weekend, 50,000 people turned up at a beach near Dargaville to dig for toheroa. They took home more than a million shellfish, leaving what they couldn’t eat at the tip. There are small numbers, equally grotesque: Vennell writes of a Dunedin hotel serving up flounder less than five centimetres long, and of blue cod for sale, weighing less than 100 grams. There’s a chapter about upokororo, the New Zealand grayling, last seen in 1923. Māori had stealthy methods of catching these particularly skittish fish. Pākehā simply dynamited the rivers, “causing entire shoals to float to the surface, where they could be scooped up and collected”. How on Earth have we managed to drive only one fish extinct? The true secret of the sea is that we ate it all.

Features

Let there be dark

The glare and babel of tourism have left the Nelson cave spider with precious few footholds.

Features

The big blue banquet

At sea, the feasts are grand and impromptu—and everyone’s invited.

Geo News

Clicky cliques

Sperm whales are tribal creatures—and they avoid interacting with those from other clans, even when they share the same waters. But how do they identify each other?

Geo News

Cats are unpredictable. Who knew?

Finding patterns in cat behaviour would help us to stop feral cats from chewing their way through native bat roosts and bird life. And so a group of New Zealand researchers pored over 36 studies from around the world in an attempt to understand the size of feral cats’ home range—where they hunt, mate, and nurse their young. “Are there similarities between cats?” they asked. Surprising nobody, the answer is no. The study, published in the New Zealand Journal of Ecology, found no discernible patterns to the cats’ behaviour, even when taking into account the effects of season, habitat type, cat size, and competitor animals. One male cat roamed 3232 hectares, its home range the area of Gisborne. The most adventurous female cat roamed 2078 hectares; another stayed within 10 hectares. As any cat owner might tell you, every feline has a different idea of home.

Geo News

How did penguins get so great?

Penguins traded in their wings for flippers more than 60 million years ago, long before there were icesheets in Antarctica. But aeons of evolution turned them into supremely adapted marine hunters, capable of diving deep and withstanding extreme cold.

Features

Killer algae

The invasive seaweed Caulerpa brachypus was discovered in New Zealand just over a year ago, and it promises to ruin everything. On Aotea/Great Barrier Island, people are sacrificing their way of life in an attempt to contain the weed—and stop it reaching the mainland.

Features

The big bird ban

Six parrot species are set to be banned in the Auckland region due to the dangers they pose to native wildlife. Is this fair?

Just so

What’s the point of all that singing?

What does birdsong mean? Do other animals also sing? Or is song a uniquely human invention?

News

Light it up with Ledlenser

Whether you need to light up the hut on a Great Walk, or light up the trail on a night-time mission, Ledlenser has you covered. Since the company started in Germany in 1993, it has developed a reputation for producing some of the world's best LED headlamps and torches and New Zealand Geographic has two of those fine headlamps to give away. All you need to do is email partnerships@nzgeographic.co.nz with the subject line 'Ledlenser giveaway' and we'll put you in the draw to win either the H7R Signature, worth $350, or the H5R, worth $200. Entries close at 11.59pm on September 4th.

Documentary

Primeval New Zealand

A place where wild meets weird - and nothing is quite what it seems. Presenter Peter Elliott unravels the ancient past of New Zealand revealing astonishing new facts about the origins of our iconic animals. Be prepared to be shocked.

Documentary - Wonders of the Ocean

Predator or Prey

Life in the ocean is a constant battle to eat but not get eaten, to find a mate, to pass on your genes to the next generation...to survive.

Documentary - Wildlife Rescue New Zealand

Summer’s End

At the Dunedin Wildlife Hospital, Dr Lisa needs to urgently assess a pair of unwell kākāpō, and Lizzie must convince a traumatised shag that it can swim. Many other animals are reaching the end of their rescue journeys as the southern summer draws to a close. The yellow-eyed penguin chicks brought in after an oceanic famine are finally old enough to be released into the wild. So too the four kākā chicks that were hand-reared by the Wildlife Hospital. The rascally parrots make an epic journey to the dazzling wilderness of Abel Tasman National Park, where a bright future awaits.

Documentary - Wildlife Rescue New Zealand

Malaria Storm

At Dunedin’s new Wildlife Hospital, the team have been thrown a curve ball! Some yellow-eyed penguins have tested positive for avian malaria, and what’s more terrifying is they’re not alone. The team must jump into action to prevent an all-out epidemic. But the penguins aren’t their only patients. At two months old, the kākā chicks have become quite the handful, and need a new home quickly! In the quarantine wing, the population of kākāpō chicks is steadily increasing, but four new-borns have developed a potentially deadly disease. Lisa and her team will have some long nights ahead of them to save these precious babies.

Documentary - Wildlife Rescue New Zealand

Purple Rage

It’s mid-summer in Dunedin, and the city’s wildlife rescuers are in a flap. Eight newly-hatched kākāpō chicks have landed at the Wildlife Hospital, requiring Dr Lisa’s expert care. Lizzie and Emily need to deal with a very angry Fiordland crested penguin (who they soon nickname ‘Purple Rage’). And nurse Gina can’t help but laugh at the antics of the naughty kākā foursome. Out on the Otago Peninsula, the search for a mother sea lion and her pup goes to the dogs, literally, while a penguin researcher lives out her worst nightmare, and Purple Rage goes to rehab at Penguin Place.

Documentary - Wildlife Rescue New Zealand

Penguin Tsunami

Its early summer in southern New Zealand, and the Dunedin Wildlife Hospital has been inundated with wave after wave of starving penguin chicks. Dr Lisa Argilla and her team pull out all stops to save the hungry youngsters. Add to this a clutch of endangered kākā parrot chicks that need ‘round-the-clock care, and a kiwi that’s refusing to eat; the results are bedlam. The hospital is being stretched to its limits. Meanwhile, out on the Otago coast, Pete investigates the arrival of a rare leopard seal, and Rosalie helps get an ex-hospital patient back into the wild.

Documentary - Wildlife Rescue New Zealand

Year One

The new Dunedin Wildlife Hospital provides a second chance for injured native animals. Every day, Dr Lisa Argilla and her small team of wildlife vets give their all to save our precious fauna – from kererū pigeons with internal injuries caused by flying into windows, to a yellow-eyed penguin chomped on by a shark. Not all the arrivals survive their trauma, but thanks to the dedication of Lisa’s team and a network of local wildlife carers, most are successfully rehabilitated and finally released back into the wild. In an era where every animal counts, these are the precious moments that wildlife rescuers live for.

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