Puangiangi Restoration Articles – Fauna Recovery New Zealand

From Milly’s Prominence to First Christmas Point (and some other names)

Last year we were dealing with some tree lucerne infestations on the less gentle eastern slopes of Puangiangi. Peter and I headed off to a gully we had previously traversed, which made the terrain slightly less daunting than it was for volunteer Greg, who was looking at it for the first time. Peter went ahead to do the steepest bits and I pointed out the route to Greg, but he figured “f*** that!”. This was a very prudent response, but said gully instantly became known to me at least as “F*** That Gully”. This accurately describes a specific small location and so is a useful name for the moment. Consultant On Many Things, Chris Horne, recommended we apply to the New Zealand Geographic Board to formalise it.

This kind of got me thinking: how do names arise, why do some persist, and which ones get onto official maps?

The Topo50 map series shows only two names associated with Puangiangi- the island itself, and the southern high point, Mistaken Mount. More on those later, but what about some of the informal and superseded names that have been used?

If you look at Google Maps at the right magnification, one name only stands out in the Rangitoto group: Milly’s Prominence, on Wakaterepapanui (which has lost an “h” in the relatively recent past).

MillysProminence

It didn’t take me long to work out that Milly’s Prominence is a photo point, placed by Milly’s person, Scott Sambell. Milly is a rat detection dog and she gave Wakaterepapanui a sweep for rats recently. Good job, Milly!

The photo point is the place on the main ridge where you arrive after climbing out of the gully above the landing site, and the panorama gives a great look at the regenerating vegetation on Wakaterepapanui.

I’m guessing Milly’s Prominence has relevance to only a few people. Hopefully, similar photo points from unauthorised visitors will not pop up on Puangiangi.

In the absence of an official name for Puangiangi’s high point, Ross Webber referred to it as Hill Sixty. This is a name from the fighting around Ypres in 1915 and fits with Ross’ interests in all things military. We aren’t so inclined and refer to the point as the Summit, or Spot Height 150. These are unambiguous enough for us, as are places like Robin Bush (where we let some robins go), Telecom Bush (near the Telecom Hut), the First Bridge (there aren’t any others, although The Crossing Where The Second Bridge Used To Be is certainly useful when giving directions to first-time visitors), the Southern Forest, the Northeastern Forest, Hinau Gully, the Salt Turf, the Striped Gecko Release Site, the Sooty Colony (despite there being three), the Finger Post and so on. Also useful are names like Boatshed Gully (the gully that doesn’t have a boatshed at the bottom), Woolshed Bay (the bay that doesn’t have a woolshed), the Gannets (where there aren’t any gannets), the Frog Bank (where there aren’t any frogs) and Dam Gully (well, you get the idea). Archipelago Rock is off the northern tip of the island and was named by ecologist Geoff Walls so that we didn’t feel left out of the club by owning only a single private island, but rather a chain of them. These names all work for us, and will last about as long as we do.

Moving on from the relatively ephemeral, I was interested in the names given to the Rangitoto group over the years. The name clearly arises from the name of D’Urville Island, Rangitoto ki te Tonga. Because there is also a Rangitoto near Auckland, it causes some confusion, and there’s a group of photos lurking on Google Maps that haven’t been elevated to prominence like Milly’s, um, Prominence, pointing at the Cook Strait Rangitotos. Some of the photos are of Rangitoto near Auckland, as indeed photos purporting to be of Tinui are of that locality in the Wairarapa. Air New Zealand looked pretty stupid when their feature on the northerly Rangitoto in their in-flight magazine some years ago, had as the cover picture the bottom of Puangiangi’s Boatshed Gully (the one without the boatshed, which is actually a freezer shed from Ross Webber’s fishing days). They were guilty of lifting a picture from a library without checking it. The photo started life in some real estate publicity.

Cook named Admiralty Bay in which the Rangitotos lie. He did not explore Admiralty Bay directly as he considered it a bit too choked by islands for safety, and depending on where he was when he decided that, you can see his point. He named the slew of islands the Admiralty Isles:

CookMapTeAra — Detail from Cook’s map published in Sydney Parkinson’s *Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas* (1773), taken from Te Ara.

A later chart of Cook Strait published in about 1780 is a bit unclear as to whether the Rangitotos are included in the name Admiralty Isles, but a Dutch edition of Cook’s Journals is more convincing:

Cook1785 — Detail from Chart of Cook’s Strait in New Zealand, published by Alexander Hogg in London, c1780. A copy is at the National Library.

CookDutch — Detail from a map in a Dutch edition of Cook’s Voyages.

Both maps show that Cook took soundings to the south of the Rangitotos; this will be from when he took on water near Whareatea in March 1770. I know little about Cook’s story and I was amazed that so many slightly different charts survive from the time. The above are only a selection, and others were kindly provided by Jerry Simonsen and Chris Stephens at Land Information New Zealand (LINZ, which incorporates the Geographic Board). The name Admiralty Isles hasn’t stuck and the various islands have long since reverted to their original names.

What of the name Puangiangi itself? This was one of many names around the country that until recently had escaped formal adoption by the New Zealand Geographic Board. They had a big catch-up in 2018 when many hundreds of names in common use, Puangiangi among them, were promulgated officially. The name acquired a macron over the “u” at the time, as it is given in the Ngati Koata Treaty Settlement documents.

(If you are wondering why I’m not using macrons in these articles, it’s not to make any kind of point- it’s simply that the wordpress.com editor I am using does not offer all of the vowels with macrons and I figured it was better to leave them out. The Geographic Board moved swiftly to remove a freshly-minted macron from the beginning of “Ohakune” this month after complaints from iwi Ngati Rangi, who described the introduction of the macron as “ill-informed”. If you would like to hear “Puangiangi” being pronounced by the late Turi Elkington, refer to http://ingoa.nz/old/contents.html [scroll to No. 144 Western Sounds; Mr Elkington also pronounces Wakaterepapanui with an “h”].)

It’s long been fashionable to break down Maori names into their supposed constituent parts and ascribe Europeanised meanings to them. For example, the article about the region in New Zealand Geographic (1992, No. 16), also part of the Geographic Board correspondence files, says that by one translation Puangiangi means “to be exposed to the wind”. It may well be, but I’d like to quote Sir Apirana Ngata, as set out by H A H Insull in Marlborough Place Names (Reed, 1952): “If I analyse the word ‘category’, in the same way as some of the pakeha have Maori place names, we get ‘cat-e-gory’, so ‘category’ means ‘sanguinary tom-cat’”. Insull says that one should not engage in guessing games with these names, and meaning should only be ascribed if people can be found who have access to whakapapa books or are prepared to recount the oral traditions around names. Sound advice. Insull’s book made no mention of Puangiangi.

I found in the National Library, card indices by two noted researchers of place names who were active in the first half of the 1900s. Reed’s Place Names Index does not include a card for Puangiangi. Johannes C Andersen’s does, but it is fairly generic with no derivation given, as opposed to many of the other cards which are full of interesting notes:

AndersenCardIndex — Andersen’s Card for Puangiangi (and Mistaken Mount). The cross-referenced card for Rangitoto Islets adds nothing further.

The Geographic Board folk say that they made no fresh analysis of Puangiangi when it was made official in 2018, and that no value judgement was made of any material in their old correspondence files.

Fortunately, help seems to be at hand. The Ngati Kuia Treaty Settlement documents mention Puangiangi in a few places, this time without the macron (although the occurrences are italicised and it might be that the documents had the same limitation on special characters as I do). This whakapapa was the most interesting:

Tumatakokiri = Moeawhiti

Pani = Puangiangi

Hautai

This could be the fullest version of the whakapapa that survives, or it might be an abbreviated form, representing just the links to very important tipuna or iwi. Tumatakokiri was founder of the Kurahaupo iwi Ngati Tumatakokiri, who arrived in Te Tau Ihu from the North, possibly around 1600. This was well before Ngati Kuia and the other iwi of their alliance. They lived in the region for about 200 years and were eventually driven out to the west. The iwi was all but wiped out around 1810, but there are people today who whakapapa to Ngati Tumatakokiri. Ngati Kuia also have Kurahaupo ancestry and this could explain how the whakapapa given above has been absorbed by Ngati Kuia.

It’s said that the nearby island Nukuwaiata was named for a grandson or granddaughter of Tumatakokiri, so it’s reasonable to suppose that somewhere else might have been named for Tumatakokiri’s direct offspring. As a placeholder pending further information, may I suggest that Puangiangi might well have been a daughter (?) of Tumatakokiri, founder of the iwi Ngati Tumatakokiri.

I have no idea where the name Pani as husband (?) of Puangiangi has come from. The only early Pani I have come across was from the even earlier time of Kupe. Features at the northern end of D’Urville commemorate Pani’s story.

And what of Mistaken Mount, the southern high point of Puangiangi? It’s not in Insull’s Marlborough Place Names and Andersen’s index card pictured above is not informative. My first guess was that it might have been from when Cook circumnavigated the South Island. Perhaps near the end of the circumnavigation he missed his reference point Stephens Island in the fog, ended up near Puangiangi and then realised his Mistake. Unfortunately there is no such reference that I could find. Chris Stephens at LINZ says that they have been going through all of Cook’s material in preparation for the 250th anniversary, and they have not found Mistaken Mount either.

I also had a look through what material I could find of the European explorers who came after Cook, and early local pakeha residents, but drew a blank. It’s also not mentioned in J O’C Ross’ comprehensive book This Stern Coast- The Story of the Charting of the New Zealand Coast (Reed, 1969), which I borrowed from Ross Webber’s library on Puangiangi. Sheila Natusch’s The Cruise of the Acheron (Whitcoulls, 1978), from the same library, is similarly silent on Mistaken Mount. However, the name clearly appears in Stokes’ chart of 1849-53 produced as a result of the Acheron survey. I understand that this survey gave many new names to features around the coast, so for now I will conclude that the name was conferred by Stokes.

AcheronLegend — Title detail of chart produced from the Acheron and Pandora surveys, 1849-53. From a copy in the National Library.

AcheronRangitotos — Rangitoto group with Mistaken Mt., shown in the 1849-53 chart. The legend near Puangiangi’s 150 m summit merely says “Cone”.

Mistaken Mount is shown on modern maps as also being a survey mark. LINZ records show it is a lowly 9th Order mark these days.

MistakenMt — Mistaken Mount seen from the North.

Although the top of the hill is covered in kanuka/manuka now and would not these days afford much of a view for triangulation, the survey mark is still there in the form of a two-inch driven steel pipe, as is so common around the country.

Jerry Simonsen at LINZ provided several early survey maps, and it looks like the mark was put in by Morgan Carkeek’s survey team in 1907-1909.

Nelson-SO 7117_Part1 — Detail from a 1911 map by Ledger, attributing Survey Mark G to Morgan Carkeek. Courtesy LINZ, Ref. Nelson- SO 7117.

Nelson-SO 7117_Part2 — From the 1911 Map, showing Survey Mark G “Mistake” on Mistaken Mount. Courtesy LINZ.

Nelson-SO 6931_Part — Another, possibly earlier, map showing that the mark on Mistaken Mount was used to fix points along the D’Urville coast also. Courtesy LINZ, Ref. Nelson- SO 6931.

The Carkeek survey dated from the partitioning of D’Urville Island which has been mentioned in another article in this series. The outline of Puangiangi on the survey maps is little more than a rough sketch. Olive Baldwins’ book Story of New Zealand’s French Pass and D’Urville Island (Vol 1) (Fields, 1979) quotes a letter from Rex Mercer of Nelson to the effect that Carkeek’s survey was much more difficult and expensive than anticipated because of weather, access and terrain, and that it was terminated before being entirely complete. A drawing of the Rangitotos to the level of detail seen in Stokes’ chart of 60 years earlier might have been a casualty of that. At any rate, it’s a sketch that persists on the title documents, as does the resultant gross inaccuracy in the area of Puangiangi.

Title1927 — Detail from the 1927-9 Partition and Title documents, showing persistence of the “sketch” outline, albeit with differences from Carkeek’s survey drawings. Purchased from LINZ.

Fun fact: Morgan Carkeek may have been the last person to see a live North Island takahe, in the northern Ruahines in 1894.

To conclude this meander, I have a vague memory of Ross Webber mentioning that there is supposed to be a memorial to Abel Tasman somewhere on the coast of Puangiangi. Others have discounted this and we haven’t seen one. What Ross might have meant is disclosed in a 1969 letter provided by Chris Stephens, where L W Field, a founder of the Nelson Historical Society, suggested naming the southwestern point “First Christmas Point”, to commemorate the celebration in December 1642 when Tasman anchored in the lee of the Rangitotos to ride out a storm, the extremity of Puangiangi likely being the closest land to where he anchored.

FieldLetter — Portion of a letter by L W Field, suggesting the name First Christmas Point. Courtesy LINZ, Ref NZGB Correspondence, Vol 40.

The main feature of the southwestern point is a heart-stopping drop-off marking the boundary of the little salt turf we have. A well-preserved salt turf might be the best memorial.

-Sincere thanks to Jerry Simonsen and Chris Stephens at LINZ for material used in this article.

Slowing, or Speeding, Climate Change?

OK, so as a middle-aged person, I am supposed to spend my days stealing houses from Millennials, misinterpreting their profound social media posts as self-entitled whining (Dang, got sidetracked onto Millennnials again. Must. Focus.), consuming more than my share, and generally not caring a jot as the planet cooks.

But a chance remark got me thinking: is the Puangiangi restoration project 100% wonderful in every respect, or is it an insidious little contributor to climate disaster dressed up as something else?

I already knew that the single biggest thing an individual can do to halt anthropogenic climate change, is not travel internationally (thank you, SEWTHA) (Ref. 1). It was a pretty short leap to imagine what using chartered helicopters on the island project might be doing, but where does short-haul travel on a 50-seater plane and use of cars, ferries and water taxis come in?

I made a list of things we are doing on the project that might be hurting, and a list of things that might be helping. Then it was a matter of looking at each one and deciding if they were significant, and adding them up.

I figured that it would be best to look at the incremental effects of the project, over and above what I would otherwise be doing with my time. So I’m looking at: the extra travel; the extra resource consumption, beyond just living a normal and hopefully not too impactful life back in town; and on the plus side, considering any CO2 that is being sequestered as a result of the project. If you like, this is by way of a voluntary report based on the guidelines for corporate greenhouse gas reporting published by the Ministry for the Environment (MFE) (Refs 2 and 3). Throughout, I will be referring to CO2-e: Carbon Dioxide equivalents, measured in kg or tonnes of CO2 per unit of activity. So, here goes:

Travel

The project involves about 12 visits a year: 10 by plane from Wellington to Nelson, car to French Pass, charter boat to Puangiangi, and return; and 2 by ferry from Wellington to Picton, car from Picton to Rai (and Peter driving out from Nelson to Rai), then to French Pass, boat, and return. The harshest interpretation is to say that all this travel is incremental. So although, for example, we aren’t using our cars in the city while we are on the island, I’m saying we would be saving up the trips we would otherwise have taken and doing them on our return.

Air New Zealand publishes a calculator (Ref. 4) that says a trip for one passenger on their Wellington-Nelson flight produces 19 kg CO2-e (38 kg for the return trip). I’m taking the following figures for petrol and diesel to work out the car and charter boat side of things: 250 g CO2-e per km driven for a medium car over a windy road (extrapolated from figures in Ref. 3), and diesel consumption of 40 L/hr on the charter boat (one hour one-way) at 2.72 kg CO2-e per litre (Ref. 3). For the ferry, I’m using a published figure for smaller roll on-roll off vessels of 60 g CO2-e per tonne-km (Ref. 5) which, allowing 2 tonnes for the weight of my vehicle, me and freight, and a distance of just under 100 km, gives 12 kg CO2-e for a one-way trip.

This all adds up to a CO2-e of 316 kg for a return trip using the plane, and 352 kg for a return trip involving the ferry (which has extra car travel). That gives an annual travel CO2-e of 3.9 tonnes, with the boat charter constituting nearly 70%. The best thing we could be doing to lower the travel footprint is to try to take charter boat trips when the skipper is using his boat for something else at the same time. When several people are coming from Wellington on a trip, and of course if a lot of freight is being carried, the ferry route would be a good idea.

Helicopters

Sometimes we need to use helicopters, such as for weed spraying on the cliffs, or for moving animals on or off where their welfare requires the less time in boxes the better. I’m guessing about 4 hours of helicopter time a year. A twin-engined Squirrel uses 180 L of avgas an hour (Ref. 6), which makes for a CO2-e of 1.8 tonnes per year.

Living and Working On Site

In looking at the emissions resulting from working on the island, I identified LPG use for cooking and hot water, wood for heating, petrol for scrub bars, chainsaws and the like, solar panels and batteries for power, and we have a fridge. Most of this is incremental usage as our houses back in town are still occupied while we are away.

We use an 18 kg bottle of LPG in about 3 months. At 3.03 kg CO2-e per kg of LPG (Ref. 3), that’s 0.22 tonnes per year. We use about 10 L (7 kg) of petrol every two months. At 2.36 kg CO2-e per kg (Ref. 3), that’s a further 0.10 tonnes per year. We burn perhaps 200 kg of firewood a year, which at the published 0.0795 kg CO2-e per kg (Ref. 3) is only 0.02 tonnes CO2-e. I can’t get my head around the derivation of the firewood numbers.

Standard domestic fridges are held to lose 3% of their refrigerant per year (Ref. 2). Taking the 100 grams of refrigerant to have 2000 times the global warming potential of CO2, that makes for 0.006 tonnes CO2-e per year.

The MFE guidelines for reporting don’t address life cycle analyses, but I also wondered what the effect of the solar power system might be. A solar panel array, the inverter equipment and the aluminium racking are thought to have a footprint of about 500 tonnes of CO2-e per MW of installed capacity (Ref. 7). Our system is 2.28 kW, so over a lifetime of say 15 years and assuming it doesn’t get recycled, that is a burden of 0.08 tonnes per year. The lead-acid batteries are held to have a footprint of 1.14 kg CO2-e per kg (Ref. 8). I think this allows for the lead to be recycled but I’m not sure. For 800 kg of batteries and a ten-year life, that comes to 0.09 tonnes CO2-e per year. Our special situation requires the spent batteries to be flown off for recycling (and new ones on at the same time), and a 1.4-hour helicopter trip once in 10 years will add about 0.06 tonnes CO2-e per year.

These living and project work components add up to 0.6 tonnes CO2-e per year.

In summary, the biggest burdens are travel to and from the project site, and helicopter use on the project. The sum of the identified emissions is 6.3 tonnes CO2-e per year.

Sequestration: Forest Regeneration

Capture — Plot of CO2 sequestration in tonnes/Ha/year against age of native forest since establishment (Ref. 9)

What of the offsets inherent in the project that we can use to balance up the emissions side of things? I have used the lookup tables published by the Carbon Farming Group (Refs 9 and 10).

Puangiangi has about 10 Ha of mature coastal broadleaf forests. We could assume that they are now only maintaining themselves rather than actively growing, or at best storing about a tonne per hectare per year.

Sheep were excluded from both ends of the island in around 1996, and the 20 Ha of shrublands and developing forests could therefore be said to be at Year 23, sequestering 11 tonnes CO2 per hectare, falling to a bit over 3 tonnes per hectare in 15 years’ time.

We removed the sheep entirely about 6 years ago, and if the 17 Ha of regenerating pasturelands are therefore said to be at Year 6, they are currently sequestering about 4 tonnes per hectare.

So, for the current year, CO2 is probably being sequestered in the newer forests and regenerating pasture at about 288 tonnes CO2-e per year. In 15 years, say when the need for active intervention in the restoration, and associated CO2-e emissions, is much less, offsetting would still be around 250 tonnes per year.

I’m not sure how much of this CO2 being put away is down to the project and how much might have happened anyway. If we hadn’t become involved, the island might have remained uninhabited and the 20 sheep present in 2012 might have persisted, say for 10 more years (they had already managed 8 by themselves since 2004 when Ross Webber left). Or indeed someone might have taken it over as a lifestyle block and run 20 sheep, 15 alpacas and a pony. To a first approximation, the sheep might have had an effect equivalent to completely preventing regeneration on the 17 Ha of central pasturelands: that 17 Ha would have become populated with the unpalatable tauhinu, which stores CO2 as well as anything else, but the sheep might well have had an opposite effect on the broadleaf shrublands and developing forest (the fencing present in 1996 had been allowed to fall into disrepair by 2012, and gates had been left open, so if things had just carried on the sheep would have been in the regenerating areas more and more as the tauhinu took over the pasture). The lookup tables say that if regeneration of 17 Ha pasture were prevented by the sheep for 10 years, then a total of 40 tonnes CO2-e per hectare (680 tonnes total, or about 10 rising to 130 tonnes CO2-e per year from year 1 to 10) would not have been stored.

On top of that would be the effect of methane emissions from the sheep, of which there were about 20 in 2012 when we arrived. Methane has 25 times the long-run global warming potential of CO2 (Ref. 11). Sheep methane emissions are in the range 9-35 grams per day per sheep (Ref. 12). Let’s say the island sheep were right at the low end of that range. That still adds up to 1.6 tonnes of CO2-e per year for the time the flock persisted.

Conclusions

It’s hardly surprising that our activities are easily offset by forest regrowth, if a bit harder to say how much of the forest regrowth is incremental because of our actions, but it’s worth the exercise to set it out on paper. I wouldn’t have guessed that simply removing the sheep would have had such a benefit. So I’m somewhat reassured, even given my simplistic calculations. The value for readers might be in having a look at the references and thinking about their own situation. Millennials: do factor in the effect of having your Uber Eats delivered (Dang. Almost made it).

References (all links accessed June 2019)

Human History: Part 2

RossWebberWoolshedKerryWalker — The King-Turner whare, sheep dip in the foreground covered by timber. “Ross Webber’s Woolshed”, oil on canvas 71x91cm, 2006, by Kerry Walker, kerrywalkerartist.com, used by permission of the artist.

…(Back to Part 1)…

The owner of Puangiangi from 1929 was R J W (Bismark or Biz) King-Turner, who was farming at Hamilton Bay. In 1888 his parents were among the first pakeha to settle in Waitata Bay, taking 18-month-old Bismark with them from his birthplace of Portage. There was no school and he was able to read and write by 16 only through private study. He also travelled to England for further education for a short time in the early 1900s.

Granddaughter Adrienne King-Turner writes that the four boys of the family would row from Waitata Bay to Havelock for provisions every few weeks. They would stay at the boarding-house, find a drink and perhaps a fight for entertainment, and row home the next day.

The younger Bismark King-Turner worked as a shearer and bushman. He was also farm manager for eight months at Port Hardy, earning two pounds a week and board, and had a stint as a commercial fisherman from 1920, around which time he was leasing Puangiangi and basing his farming at Hamilton Bay. In 1911 he had married Rose Reilly. Rose was out of an orphanage in Wellington, sent to the Sounds in the early years of the 20th century as a schoolteacher.

He was confident, clearly ambitious and is described by a descendant as free-spending and devoting a fair bit of time to “sucking up” in Wellington. It appeared that middle son Lewis left school at 12 because there was no money for boarding school as a result of his father’s spending.

KingTurnerLocationMap — L-R and Top-Bottom: Waiua, Puangiangi, French Pass, Hamilton Bay, Waitata Bay.

As early as 1922, Bismark had applied to become a Justice of the Peace and was recommended by Member of Parliament Harry Atmore. JPs were very useful people especially in out-of-the-way places. The application lapsed for a few years but eventually Police enquiries were made into Bismark’s character. Mounted Constable F H Healy of Blenheim wrote in 1925 that the “Turner brothers” were suspected of sheep-stealing with the aid of a launch. Right at Ministerial level, the Department of Justice decided not to appoint him as a JP despite there being no proof of any theft. Officials wrote that they had no obligation to provide a justification for the non-appointment, and that as long as the reason never came out, there was no risk of a claim for damages arising. It doesn’t look like King-Turner was best friends with Percy Douglas Hope after their contretemps with competing flocks on Puangiangi, so perhaps there was a pool of candidates to make sheep-stealing allegations, true or not. Daughter-in-law Elsie went on to become a JP in the area. Bismark did not miss out on public office either, later serving on the French Pass Road Board and the Marlborough Hospital Board.

Puangiangi was clearly only a small part of the wider King-Turner farming operation. Even for established families like the King-Turners though, times were becoming hard. Already they were farming a long way from where their wool and sheep needed to end up (Bismark’s eldest son Irwyn and brother Bert were recalled as driving sheep from French Pass to Christchurch by way of Molesworth Station during the 1930s). Then the Great Depression came along to make things harder.

RJKingTurner1960NelsonPhotoNewsCClicence — Bismark King-Turner, right, in 1960. Photo credit Nelson Photo News, used under Creative Commons licence.

Puangiangi went in a mortgagee sale in 1939, as the after-effects of the Depression were still being felt. I don’t know if this was just one of the dominoes to fall, if it was sacrificed to save the better farming assets, or whether the timing had nothing to do with hardship. Perhaps it is significant that Bismark had moved from Hamilton Bay to farm at Waiua (possibly the Block IX mentioned in Part 1) a year previously. The strange thing was that the mortgagee (a company- the old title is very hard to read) sold the island to Bismark’s son Lewis Verdun King-Turner. I presume the mortgagee was under no obligation to conduct an open sale if they had been lending their own money, or perhaps there was and the son was the highest tenderer. Arguably the company name on the title reads as Lewis and Company, and that may point to this just being part of complicated intra-family transactions. Adrienne King-Turner says her father Lewis and grandfather Bismark did not get on, and maybe that is relevant. Lewis’ nephew Ray King-Turner recalls the mortgage being in the region of 70 Pounds.

Lewis’ daughter Adrienne King-Turner recalls that “my dad was apparently a dreamy child, yet intelligent and imaginative, who distinguished himself at school, yet had to leave at 12. Dad, like so many of earlier eras, simply ended up doing the only thing he knew. He was knowledgeable, opinionated and knew about mending and erecting fences to keep those wily sheep in, yet I suspect his inclinations were to be an advocate for others. He was passionate about injustice, no matter where it was found. He loathed big business, admired independent politicians, small businessmen and family-run operations, yet couldn’t work with either his own dad nor his father in law…”

If Puangiangi was peripheral to Bismark, it was central to Lewis. His son Tony recalls that Lewis talked of the island often and had loved it there. The War intervened, however. Lewis volunteered and served in the Western Desert. Father Bismark looked after Puangiangi.

LewisKingTurner — Lewis Verdun King-Turner in the Western Desert. Photo credit: Ray King-Turner

Nephew Ray recalls: “as a gunner, [Lewis] was the loader on the gun crew. He was stocky and broad shouldered and could perform incredible feats of strength and agility when his blood was up. I went to his funeral and met some of his old comrades and they told me he was acknowledged by his peers as the strongest and fastest loader in the 6th Field Regiment. They told me of a time when the regiment was attacked by a German armoured column. The attack was beaten off and some prisoners were taken. As they were marched away some asked to be allowed to see the “Automatic 25-Pounder,” the one gun that was firing faster than all the rest. They were told that there was no “automatic” but they said “that one” and they pointed to Lewis’s gun. I asked a [former] artillery officer about it and he said “oh yes- if they were a very good gun crew and then only for a short time.” I can picture him in the heat of battle roaring and cursing and urging his mates on and showing the enemy how the D’Urville Island breed took care of business. [At one time] he was in action and the rammer broke. The rammer was used to drive the shells into the breech of the gun. Lewis kept the gun in action by using his right arm as the rammer and sustained severe burns to his arm in the process.”

At the end of the war, Lewis Verdun King-Turner returned to the area and on Puangiangi carved his initials into his new concrete sheep dip on 17 April 1945. The dip is still there and holds water, which collects off the roof of the adjacent “woolshed”. I can’t tell if the building is from that time or whether the sheep dip was a later addition.

The yards, building and dip are a few metres from the sea, and on the rocks at water’s edge are some remnants of concrete, and some bigger chunks that have broken off and can be seen at low tide. This would have been to provide a better landing point for freight, and stock from the barge.

LandingBlock1

LandingBlock2 — Remnants of landing block, presumably from the King-Turner era although arguably later.

Ray King-Turner recalls assisting uncle Lewis and father Irwyn in landing stock some time after the end of the war. Bill Webber of French Pass recalled that Irwyn was closely associated with Puangiangi along with Lewis. Lewis never lived on Puangiangi. The one thing he didn’t like there was the colonising shrub tauhinu (universally referred to by farmers as tawinnie, usually with a preceding adjective) and I expect many hours were spent on the end of a slasher or grubber.

IrwynKingTurner — Irwyn Bismark King-Turner. Photo credit: Ray King-Turner

By the early 1950’s, Lewis was living in Nelson with his wife Doris. Daughter Adrienne recalls that in 1954-5 Puangiangi was at least a day’s journey from Nelson, initially by coaster to French Pass (the road was completed only in 1957). Lewis, Doris and little Adrienne (who had whooping cough), stayed in the whare while Lewis sheared sheep: “…no electricity. We three slept in the whare, which has corrugated iron walls and a bed in a corner. All the studwork for the corrugated iron was used as shelving for candles, condensed milk and so on.”

“I was extremely weak and recall sitting, propped up against pillows with a colouring book, whilst the wind whistled around the shed. To encourage me to colour-in, my mother completed one of the pictures. I was so impressed with the uniformity of her shading and ability to stay within the lines, that I asked her to colour another and another. At some point I was well enough to walk outside and my memories are of steep slopes, sheep, Dad mustering them into a yard nearby and very strongly, Scarlet Pimpernel, a wildflower. Years later, I wrote to Ross Webber (after having read an article on him in the [New Zealand] Geographic magazine), mentioning this cheerful flower and he kindly sent me a dried, pressed sample.”

WebberWoolshed2012RoyGrose — The whare in 2012. Inside, fold-down table, Shacklock stove remnants. Photo credit: Roy Grose

Lewis King-Turner, like so many who returned from the war, struggled with his health, and eventually on his doctor’s advice decided to sell up. Adrienne: “I recall my mother saying [in 1957] she felt like the richest woman alive, walking up Trafalgar St with £1,000 in her handbag from the Island’s sale. Later that year they bought approximately 50 acres near Nelson and the ‘Rabbit Island’ (refer to Part 1 for Puangiangi being referred to as Rabbit Island by another person) money paid for more than half its cost. Dad transported the island’s sheep to the Nelson farm…but he said many of them did not acclimatise well and died.” Peter recently lent me Ian Atkinson and Rowley Taylor’s 1991 report on mammals on New Zealand’s islands, and Puangiangi is listed as having formerly held rabbits, but that they died out or were eradicated some time before the report was compiled.

Puangiangi’s new owner from 1957 was William Ross Webber, who will be the subject of Part 3.

Robert John William (Bismark) King-Turner retired to Nelson in 1950, and established the Nelson Senior Citizens Old Folks Association in 1951. He was the group’s president until he died in 1966. Rose had died in 1955.

Lewis Verdun King-Turner died in 1993 and is fondly remembered by his family. After Lewis’ death, son Tony visited Puangiangi and stayed with Ross Webber. Doris King-Turner died just last year. She acquired fame later in life when she married New Zealand’s oldest immigrant, Eric King-Turner (no relation), who was 102 when he arrived.

The whare and sheep dip are still standing- only just in the case of the whare. A macrocarpa fell through it a couple of years ago and it is sitting at an odd angle. Birds like to bathe in the sheep dip, despite having a shiny new water supply nearby. We assume the dip chemicals have long dissipated. The bloody tawinnie continues its march and is now sheltering bird-dispersed broadleaf saplings and even providing robin habitat.

Thanks to: Adrienne, Philip, Ray, Tony, and Gabriel King-Turner.

Other sources:

http://www.theprow.org.nz/society/old-folks-hall-nelson/#.WmAilnnRXIV (Biographical notes on RJW King-Turner).

“For appointment of RJW Turner of D’Urville Is., French Pass, as a Justice of the Peace”, National Archives, Wellington, Ref J11018, Record 1922/1232, Container Code C466285.

I A E Atkinson and R H Taylor, “Distribution of Alien Mammals on New Zealand Islands”, DSIR Land Resources Report 91/50, 1991.

Cook Strait Giant Weta

IMG_0316_1 — Female Cook Strait giant weta, *Deinacrida* (“terrible grasshopper”) *rugosa*, Mana Island

What should a restored invertebrate fauna look like? Should we be fussed, or should we just be concerned that there is enough biomass of- whatever- to support more interesting higher animals? Is an obsession with charismatic macroinvertebrates a thing, and is it unhealthy?

Inverts have been short-changed in many ways: they are little studied, little-cared-about, sometimes actively disliked by people. It’s highly likely that many incredibly interesting insects, spiders, slaters, snails, slugs, velvet worms and centipedes have been lost for all time from New Zealand, before they were even known to science. We can’t fix that, but we can consider from within the extant taxa what invert biodiversity would be appropriate for Puangiangi.

If we can maintain the predator-free status of the island, prevent incursions of foreign insects like Argentine ants, and ensure that the native vegetation does not become any less diverse, and that its area expands, then we can protect inverts that are already there or that might be able to fly in, be blown in or float in. We are left to think about the ground-dwelling, flightless animals that might have been hardest-hit or extirpated by rats, and inverts that are known from the ecological district that could be expected to be there. So, I think that steers us towards the well known and interesting macroinvertebrates as a matter of course, rather than as a result of an obsession with making a bug zoo. Weta, Cook Strait click beetle, ngaio weevil, flax weevil, Mimopeus beetles, large snails, Peripatus, stick insects come to mind.

Puangiangi already has extremely strong numbers of tree weta; cave weta are present; ground weta might well be but given how cryptic they are, we don’t know. Cook Strait giant weta haven’t been recorded. Mimopeus beetles have recovered rapidly after rats were removed. Flax weevil were confirmed soon after we took over, and their feeding sign is everywhere. It’s interesting that they have little effect on the flax plants they feed on, given the mess the translocated population on Mana may be making. Ngaio weevil and Cook Strait click beetle we haven’t spotted yet, and they could be future targets for translocation. The divaricating shrubs are alive with mating stick insects during the late-summer nights. We have seen a peripatus and some centipedes; Powelliphanta snails are not there, and possibly never were.

As for Cook Strait giant weta, we know they are naturally present elsewhere in the ecological district- on Takapourewa, Kuru Pongi and Mana. They would also be worthy candidates for translocation as they are endemic to the region, and classified as range restricted and vulnerable. They have been translocated successfully to Maud and Matiu Somes (from Mana), Wakaterepapanui (from Takapourewa), Titi and Long Island (from Maud).

The population with the ideal combination of commonness, genetic diversity, closeness and accessibility is on Takapourewa and so, beginning in February 2014, the rangers on Takapourewa began night searches to capture suitable animals. Polly Hall and Andre de Graaf aimed for a range of ages of animals, rather than all big ones, as it is thought that they might only breed once and we did not want to move senescent animals.

Polly and Andre made a holding pen out of a mussel float and stocked it with soil, sticks and branches, topping it up with fresh taupata, tauhinu, carrot and courgette every few days. The animals were held for up to several weeks between supply boats, and batches were packaged up in modified tackle boxes and dropped off as the boat went back to Havelock past Puangiangi. Peter had selected a piece of country similar to their preferred habitat on Takapourewa, which just happened to be right by where the DOC boat could nudge on to the beach. Over three years, 300 weta (52 adult males, 110 adult females and 132 juveniles) were caught, and all but a few were taken directly to Puangiangi in ten trips finishing in September 2016. A few pairs were bred up at Eco World and Tui Nature Reserve, for the 17 progeny to be taken out to Puangiangi too.

WetaReleaseSite — The release site. Tauhinu, *Olearia* *solandri,* *Coprosma propinqua*, low shrubland and pasture. Photo: Peter Gaze

The transfer was acknowledged by forty-odd Ngati Koata, project reps, friends, neighbours and DOC staff during a ceremony on 31 March 2017, which was also the 5th anniversary of purchase of the island. This was the easiest and cheapest project I’ve been involved in where DOC was a major participant. Polly and Andre would get in touch with us when something was happening, rather than us having to follow up, went out at night to catch the animals, looked after them and arranged to have them delivered and let go, wrote it down and reported on it, without any sweat at all being raised by me.

We have been out at night to look for them quite a few times. Numbers seen have been incredibly low, but are perhaps just starting to pick up, with one or two able to be found sheltering in the daytime also. Other translocations that have worked have also had very low encounter rates for several years and we are unconcerned, unless of course predators arrive.

A book everyone should have: Andrew Crowe, Which New Zealand Insect?, 127 pp, Penguin Books, 2002.

Human History: Part 1

CarkeekMap1909 — Detail from Morgan Carkeek’s D’Urville survey of 1909. Block IX in green, Puangiangi to the far right.

In these articles on the human history of Puangiangi, I’m going to concentrate on things directly related to the island. What plays out on Puangiangi is just a sidebar in the tumultuous events of the time, but there are plenty of good reads on the bigger picture available, some of which I refer to in this article.

This portion of the history of Puangiangi starts with some fragments about earliest settlement and goes through to the island’s alienation from Ngati Koata collective ownership. As I’m not a trained historian, and as I’m working from old papers which will never tell the whole story, I would be very keen to get more material from readers, especially descendants of those who appear in this article, and to add or correct information as required.

PaSite — Pa Site Near Spot Height 120m. Drawing courtesy Geoff Walls

PaPhotos — Pa Site in 2012. Photos courtesy Geoff Walls

Consultant ecologist Geoff Walls made a brief archaeological survey of Puangiangi in 2012. He, Chris Horne and the late Barbara Mitcalfe also identified the plants karaka, ti kouka and rengarenga, all well established on the island today, as highly likely to have been brought by early settlers or visitors, as they were in many other places. Geoff identified several sites of occupation, including a pa site on one of the high points, which would have given a terrific view. People were relatively close by at Wairau from almost the earliest times of settlement in Aotearoa, and the pa might date from near to then, or right up to the Kurahaupo peoples of the 17th Century, or beyond.

Adzes1

Quite a few stone adzes have obviously been picked up on the island over the years. On arrival in 2012 we found some on a shelf in the house, and even one incorporated into the fireplace. The stone would have been quarried from nearby on Rangitoto Ki Te Tonga/D’Urville (I’ll largely use “D’Urville” to distinguish the main island from the modern-day Rangitoto group, which includes Puangiangi). At Woolshed Bay an exposed soil profile contains charcoal and burnt stones. Argillite flakes are in that midden and on the beaches, indicating that material was brought from D’Urville and worked there. Small rounded stones possibly suggest that the site at Woolshed Bay was gardened.

It’s possible that when Puangiangi was fully forested, it held water for most or all of the year, and so might have been settled. It may instead have been the focus of seasonal foraging trips. We just don’t know. We are not aware of any caves, and certainly no burial sites are known. Ross Webber told me once that he had been asked not to build at a particular site, but the significance of this is not known.

The Kurahaupo alliance mentioned above is shorthand for Ngati Apa, Rangitane and Ngati Kuia, and also incorporates the “original peoples” found when the three iwi first arrived in the 17th Century or earlier. The 1600s to the early 1800s were a period of relative stability in the region. Ngati Kuia had a main settlement at Ohana, at the southern end of D’Urville, while Rangitane were at Bottle Point on the western side. (For a comprehensive account of the waves of settlement and conquest which came to the northern South Island, refer to Te Tau Ihu o te Waka, Volume 1, by Hilary and John Mitchell, Huia Press, 2004.)

Up north at Kawhia from the late 1700s, some Tainui iwi were finding the going tough, with sufficient conflict that in about 1821 Te Rauparaha had to lead a heke of some 1500 Ngati Toa, Ngati Koata and associated hapu away from Kawhia, south to Taranaki. Te Rauparaha went further south the following year, conquering Kurahaupo lands right down to Te Whanganui-a-Tara, and settling on Kapiti. The Kurahaupo remnants made plans with relatives living in the Sounds and on D’Urville to extract utu.

In 1824-5, the warrior chiefs Waihaere, Kerengu and Tutepourangi (Ngati Kuia) led a party of 2000 in the battle of Waiorua at the northern end of Kapiti, but they were beaten. Tutepourangi was captured by Te Putu, one of the principal Ngati Koata rangatira. Tutepourangi threw his patu into the sea, but Te Putu made him dive down and get it. It was then discovered that Te Putu’s young brother-in-law Tawhe had been taken by the retreating remnants. Two waka set off in pursuit, and Tawhe was eventually found safe and well at D’Urville by the party in the waka Kapakapapanui. On Kapakapapanui were Ngati Koata rangatira Mauriri II, Te Putu, Te Patete and the captive Tutepourangi. In return for his life and that his iwi might live in peace among Ngati Koata, Tutepourangi stood up in the waka and ceded Ngati Kuia’s lands to Ngati Koata. The lands included D’Urville and the Rangitoto Group (special thanks to George Elkington for relating this to me). In subsequent years marriages were arranged to cement the bonds of Ngati Kuia and Ngati Koata. Tutepourangi became greatly respected by both iwi, but met his end during later raids by Te Rauparaha.

On Rangitoto Ki Te Tonga, Ngati Koata settled at Te Marua (where Turi Te Patete, son of Te Putu, signed the Treaty of Waitangi), Moawhitu, Manuhakapakapa, Ohana, Haukawakawa, and also on Tinui. European settlers were present from the 1830s and Port Hardy became a place for ships to regroup before discharging settlers, including my ancestors, into Wellington.

The New Zealand Company acquired the entire northern South Island in 1839. The fledgling government subsequently reduced the amount of land involved in this highly questionable purchase, but settler pressure for land led to official government purchases in the 1840s and 1850s. D’Urville and environs were excluded from these sales.

The creation of the Native Land Court led to a mechanism whereby traditional ownership might be force-fitted to the new template of land titles. This process came to D’Urville in 1883, when 79 Ngati Koata owners were identified and given undivided title to the island and its surrounds. Ngati Koata pre-eminence was recognised by the Court, by virtue of Tutepourangi’s gift.

It took a further 12 years for D’Urville to be partitioned further, but in 1895 it was divided into 11 blocks. Each block had a list of owners- a subset of the 79- in undivided shares. Each owner of 80 acres on the main island also got one acre of the surrounding 55 islands (including Puangiangi), islets and stacks, again undivided.

The owners were prevented from selling a block or their individual interest in it. They could only lease it on a 21-year term. The idea was that this would prevent the owners from being dispossessed of their lands, but in reality it served more to stymie them from getting on with life. They had already seen in the last decade their potato crops fail due to blight and drought, their sheep killed because of an 1885 outbreak of scab, forestry and mining ventures fall over, and many had been part of the general exodus from the region around 1890. Rents were not enough to develop land wherever the owners might have been living by then, and indeed were often not enough to live on. Those who stayed on their land were often not generating enough income to improve their farms, and there was precious little labour around given the general depopulation.

Amongst those who had stayed in the rohe, Hoera Te Ruruku is listed in the annual Sheep Returns to the House of Representatives as running a flock of 45 on Puangiangi in 1886 and 42 in 1887. Te Ahu Pakeke (Joe Hippolite) had a similar flock on Tinui. Anthony Patete’s 1997 report to the Waitangi Tribunal has Hoera Te Ruruku taking over Tinui in 1889 from the Hippolites, then farming at French Pass, and then back on Tinui in 1911. Descendants of Hoera Te Ruruku identify him more with Tinui than Puangiangi, and indeed his parents lived on Tinui. Hoera Te Ruruku was a prominent rangatira within Ngati Koata and brought the LDS religion to the region (H Morrison, L Paterson, B Knowles and M Rae, Mana Maori and Christianity, Huia Press, 2012).

The Patete report refers to some colourful old stories about Hoera Te Ruruku, not all flattering, and a couple of photos of a very distinguished man can be found easily online. His daughter Wetekia is if anything even more well-known; the book Angelina by Gerard Hindmarsh contains a marvellous account of Wetekia and her friendship with the Moleta family, European settlers at Waitai, across from Puangiangi on D’Urville.

The Patete report later has Messrs Fuller and McCormick leasing Puangiangi, possibly informally, in the 1890s. Several letters from Fuller and McCormick are in the National Archives and their letterhead says they were General Storekeepers in Seddon and most likely Picton. They also farmed Patuki on D’Urville, directly across the channel from Puangiangi.

There is no physical trace, apart from the now-reverting pasture land, of Hoera Te Ruruku or Messrs Fuller and McCormick on Puangiangi. Mr Ruruku’s descendants are very prominent in the area today though, and it’s especially appropriate that we travel to the island most times courtesy of Roma and Lindsay Elkington, great-grandsons of (Roma) Hoera Te Ruruku.

By about ten years after the 1895 partitioning of D’Urville, the Native Land Court Act 1894 was being used to allow land to be sold, if at least a third of the owners agreed, and if all owners retained enough other land to make a living from. So, for example, in 1907 Hugh Gully (Barrister and Solicitor from Wellington, a founding partner of Bell Gully) was leasing Block IX at Port Hardy on D’Urville. In 1908 he had died and his Estate bought out some of the owners and on-sold those shares to Robert John William (Bismark) King-Turner. Mr King-Turner bought out the minorities in 1918-19.

The aforementioned R J W King-Turner, in another letter in the Archives, states that he was leasing Puangiangi from 1920. The letter gives his postal address as Hamilton Bay, near Te Towaka, so it’s reasonable to conclude that Mr King-Turner was farming in several locations, perhaps with a base in Hamilton Bay.

By 1927, sales on D’Urville had been happening for 20 years or more, accelerated by the Native Land Act 1909, which allowed meetings of owners to be called to vote on selling any property where there were more than 10 owners. Such meetings had a quorum of only five owners, regardless of the total number of owners or the proportion of the shares owned by those present. The Native Land Court came to be known disparagingly as Te Kooti Tango Whenua, The Land-taking Court.

The small islands were among the last on the block because they were effectively a single, widely-scattered, parcel owned by all of the original 79 and their successors. In March 1927 though, the islands were partitioned by The Native Land Court on application by Mokau Kawharu. The owners seemed to want partition so that they might also get on and sell, doubtless encouraged by the various lessees including R J W King-Turner.

PartitionOrder1

PartitionOrder2 — Partition Order for Puangiangi, part of the original title documents for the island. Purchased from LINZ, Christchurch.

The owners agreed among themselves who would get which island. The Ruruku whanau became substantial shareholders in Tinui.

The owners of Puangiangi became, in varying proportions: Ani Hamuera, Arihia Rei, Te Hahi Kawharu, Haimona Te Patete, Haromi Kiharoa, Te Hawea Te Ahu, Hiamoe Hamuera, Hira Pene, Huria Tekateka, Ihaka Tekateka, Kata Kawharu, Ihaka Rei, Mokemoke Te Ahu, Patara Pene, Te Rangitakaroro Rei, Tara Wirihana, Tarawere Hare Katene, Teoti Tekateka, Tiemi Haromi and Wharehuia Rei. At least 6 of the owners were dead by the date of Partition and only a few lived locally- Te Hahi Kawharu at French Pass, Teoti Tekateka and Tiemi Haromi outside the rohe but nearby at Okoha, and Tara Wirihana in Canvastown. The others were scattered widely, but with many minor shareholders being in Manaia.

In December 1926, before partition was completed, R J W King-Turner (Turner in most documents, but I’m using the name used by family today) applied to the Native Land Court and later the Maori Land Board to call a meeting of owners of Puangiangi to vote on the proposal that Mr King-Turner either buy the island at 5% above the Government Valuation, or formalise its lease at £10 per year. Mokau Kawharu and Te Hahi Kawharu were working with him in March 1927 to get the meeting called.

In May 1927, a somewhat perplexed Mr King-Turner wrote to the Registrar of The Native Land Court. He had signed an informal lease with two owners, but became aware that Percy Douglas Hope of French Pass had just signed a one-year lease with three owners, which also gave Hope the right to a 21-year lease or to purchase. Both men were running small flocks on Puangiangi and King-Turner wanted to know if he had the right to impound Hope’s sheep. Further, he was concerned that his investment of £20 to date and the prospect of a valuation fee of £7 to come might be wasted if Mr Hope got in first.

C V Fordham, the Registrar, wrote back within a week of the date of Mr King-Turner’s letter. This is a recurring theme in the records- not only are replies from Government Departments timely, but the postal service is quick. Times have changed. But I digress. Fordham pointed out that neither of the leases was valid because they were not executed by the Board, which would also require a valuation in support of the lease amount. He cautioned against King-Turner impounding Hope’s sheep, or vice-versa. Later, King-Turner was asking if he could at least muster his own sheep into the yards that he had built. Although sheep yards evolve over time, I can therefore be confident in saying that the yards now on Puangiangi date back to the 1920s.

R J W King-Turner supplied the new Government Valuation, of £100, to Fordham in August. Fordham advised that the meeting of owners would require two to be present in person and three others to have provided their proxies. Mokau Kawharu was busy gathering proxies in September. Tara Wirihana (Shadrack Wilson) signed the proxy form in favour of the resolution. He signed with an “X” before a Justice of the Peace. Fordham was unimpressed as Mokau Kawharu was not formally listed as an owner. King-Turner advised that owner Te Hahi Kawharu could attend in person and that he would be able to obtain corrected proxies from Tara Wirihana, Kata Kawharu and Haimona Te Patete. He mentioned that Teoti Tekateka and Tiemi Haromi from Okoha (or Anakoha in other documents; the two localities are a kilometre apart on the shore of Anakoha Bay) were on the other side, having signed the competing lease with P D Hope.

Mr Hope was not idle either, and placed a notice in Kahiti, the te reo version of the Gazette, calling a meeting to consider a sale to him at £125. Tiemi Haromi was holding proxies in favour of selling to Hope, for several owners, including Kata Kawharu and Tara Wirihana whom King-Turner had thought might support his resolution.

The owners were therefore fortunate enough to have at least two competing buyers. In May 1928, Mr King-Turner increased his offer to £140, and the competing resolutions were put to a meeting in Picton on 6 September 1928. Present were owners Tara Wirihana, Teoti Tekateka and Tiemi Haromi, and Te Hahi Kawharu, Tame Patete and Kata Kawharu had given their proxies. Someone made a note in the Alienation File, adding up the interests of the owners present and represented by proxy, and they accounted for the great majority of shares in the island.

Neither Hope nor King-Turner was successful. John Arthur Elkington (Tete Ratapu) came forward as a buyer also. King-Turner upped his offer to £175, but was beaten by Mr Elkington, who was given two months to come up with the purchase price of £195. Mr King-Turner insisted that his cheque for £175 be held by the Board in the event that Mr Elkington was unable to complete, and indeed Judge Gilfedder, President of the Court, was given a mandate to decide what would happen in that event.

John Arthur Elkington was a grandson of Hoera Te Ruruku and he lived nearby at Whareatea on D’Urville. The owners were resolved to accept the highest offer, but might well have been pleased that Puangiangi was to go to a prominent son of Ngati Koata.

The Board was prepared to lend the money to Mr Elkington, secured by First Mortgage over his wife Te Urutahi Manuirirangi’s land at Manaia, accompanied by an assignment of rents. The Registrar advised Mr Elkington by telegraph on 10 October, however, that the loan had been refused. This was apparently because the leases whose rents would be assigned were not formalised. Te Urutahi Manuirirangi wrote back with more detail on the leases and valuation of the land, and Fordham had a change of heart, writing to Gilfedder: “…with due regard to the character of J A Elkington, the applicant’s husband, the security is good for a loan of £300”. Fordham checked with C V Bennett in Manaia (Solicitor, Private Telephone No. 1, Office No. 3- my Dad’s number at the BNZ in Hunterville in the 1960s was 12, which I thought was pretty cool, but 1 and 3 top that) that the rents were being paid on time, as he was collecting them on the Elkingtons’ behalf. Bennett wrote that the lessee was “a good pay” and that there should be no problems.

Fordham also wrote to the Native Land Court in Wanganui to check whether buildings on the property were on Te Urutahi Manuirirangi’s land and so might be used as security. It appeared that she and her siblings had inherited the property and it had only recently been partitioned into individual titles. The valuation at hand covered the undivided property though. The partition order was found, and in it the siblings had agreed that her brother would get the buildings. Another sibling, Akapikirangi, had been bought out by Te Urutahi, subject to a mortgage on Akapikirangi’s portion, securing a loan of £345.

Right on expiry of the two-month period though, Bennett wrote that the loan of £345 was secured over the entire block of land, and that to boot Bennett was Second Mortgagee to the tune of £80. The loan to buy Puangiangi was promptly denied. Mr Elkington visited both the Registrar in Wellington and Bennett in Manaia and was insistent that the loan was secured over only part of the land. Bennett then urgently wired, and wrote, to Fordham to say that the mortgage was indeed only over one parcel. Registrar Fordham wrote to the President of the Court, Judge Gilfedder: “Seeing Elkington’s evident earnestness in this matter and the efforts he is making to complete, perhaps you may consider extending the time for another month from this date, as it appears that Bennett was mistaken and it would be hardly fair to penalise Elkington.”

Things seemed to be back on track and Fordham was writing to Mr Elkington on 19 November to sort out assignment of the rents for the land up in Manaia. The same day he wrote to J J McGrath, Solicitor, in Wellington, asking him to draw up documents for a loan of £250 for 5 years at 8%, reducible to 6.5% for prompt payment.

J J McGrath advised he would need to search the title of the Manaia land in the office in New Plymouth.

Meanwhile, some of the owners were pressing for completion, and word was getting out of the difficulties in raising finance. Douglas Hope’s agent wrote to Judge Gilfedder, offering £182. Teoti Ihaka Tekateka wrote on 16 November 1928 to Gilfedder also, reminding him of the expiry of the two months and his desire to sell to Bismark Turner if Arthur Elkington could not complete immediately.

Interestingly the letter from Mr Tekateka, a reasonably local resident in Anakoha Bay, Pelorus Sound, refers to Puangiangi also as Rabbit Island. Rabbit Island is today an alternative name for Anatakupu, close in to French Pass. An owner who had long moved away- or even whose parents had long moved away- from the district, might use that name in error, but it’s interesting to see it used by a local. Rabbit Island is not an uncommon epithet, though, and it also appears in the next instalment of this story. It’s not unheard of for modern names to be in need of correction, but maybe all we can take from this is simply that Puangiangi at one time held rabbits.

J J McGrath duly completed the title search, and it appeared that the loan was indeed secured over the whole block of Manaia land, but it was something that, given time, could be sorted out by re-allocating the mortgage to only the portion purchased from Akapikirangi Manuirirangi. By then, the extra month was all but up, and Fordham wrote to Mr Elkington on 11 December 1928, denying the loan for a final time.

At this distance it’s hard to conclude whether what happened ought to have happened. From the Board’s viewpoint, they had received instruction to turn down two cash offers in favour of one with a two-month finance clause, had given an extension, and they were under pressure from the owners to call time and sell to the under-bidder, who had offered a good percentage over the Government Valuation anyway. It’s tempting to point the finger at Mr Bennett, the country solicitor, but maybe an error was made in New Plymouth drawing up the titles, despite an accurate instruction. The Elkingtons seem to have been on-to-it concerning the legal complexities, but maybe they would have been overstretching themselves anyway given that the Great Depression was around the corner.

By January 1929 Teoti Tekateka was getting insistent, writing to Fordham: “We have waited long enough for that money, and cannot wait any longer”. On 17 January, R J W King-Turner wrote to Judge Gilfedder, increasing his offer to £185. The offer was accepted by wire on the 19th, and Board minutes show the transfer being executed on 19 February 1929.

TransferToKingTurner1929 — Transfer to R J W Turner, part of the original title documents, purchased from LINZ, Christchurch

Part 2 will follow the King-Turner family on Puangiangi.

Postscript: those closely involved with the project will know that the names Hoera and Kapakapapanui have gained modern-day significance on the island, by kind permission and suggestion of whanau. The wrongs perpetrated against Ngati Koata were settled finally in its 2012 Treaty settlement with the government. John Arthur Elkington went on to serve with the 28th Battalion, and was killed in the Western Desert in November 1942. His name is on a memorial on the Picton-Nelson road, along with that of L B H Hope, son of Percy Douglas Hope.

Main Sources:

Te Tau Ihu O Te Waka A Maui, Wai 785, Waitangi Tribunal 2008 (downloadable from the Ministry of Justice’s website).

Anthony Patete, D’Urville Island (Rangitoto ki Te Tonga) in the Northern South Island, October 1997 report to Waitangi Tribunal concerning Wai 102 (downloadable from Ngati Koata Trust’s website).

Archives New Zealand File AEGV 19119 MLCW2218/7, Record 102, Alienations (South Island)- Puangiangi Island (can be viewed freely in the reading room in Wellington).

Lizards

Our first night on Puangiangi, 31 April 2012, was frightening. It wasn’t the scary 12-volt electrics, which were way dodgier than anything William Heath Robinson might have concocted, or getting to grips with how the water might be directed to the inside tap, but rather the things that went bump in the night.

That day, we had arrived with the locksmith, gained entry and gotten to understand the infrastructure as best we could in the fading light, eaten and went to bed. Soon enough a lot of thumping and scrabbling came from the ceiling and walls of the house. This was frightening as it could have meant that Peter’s hard work in 1999 to eradicate rats had been undone. It turned out though, that this is possibly what walls and ceilings are meant to sound like on the mainland, if they were full of geckos.

Poking around the following day, we discovered that all the geckos were common geckos (now raukawa gecko, Woodworthia maculata), and that they liked the shed as well as the house. There was not a box or a nook that didn’t house a gecko, or several. Our tools and gear in the shed now need a regular clean lest they disappear beneath piles of sticky gecko droppings. They are also numerous in piles of corrugated iron outside, and Ross Webber’s various mussel-float constructions are popular too. It was a bit of a party trick to show visitors the hundreds of geckos gathered under a corrugated iron stack, but Lynn Adams and I got a shock when a robin showed up and began swallowing not-so-small geckos whole when we lifted the iron.They also get into our various rainwater drums scattered about the island to provide water for birds, and often could not climb out and drowned, until we worked out they needed a length of rope coming out the top of the drums to escape by. Dad was quite taken when he visited by the sight of little gecko faces peering over the edge of the spouting on the house, where they would gather at night probably to get a drink of the dew collecting from the roof. A look on tree trunks at night will show them on their way to catch insects, or take nectar and fruit. We’ve also seen them in the house in the daytime popping up from gaps near the windows to try to grab flies on the glass. At this time of year they are pretty torpid on the cool mornings, and they need careful rescuing if we are opening and closing doors and find them in the cracks. They wake up within a few seconds when given some warmth from a hand, and make a break for it. Peter noted only a few common gecko when he first visited Puangiangi, and the recovery since rat eradication has been explosive.

A sunny day early on soon also revealed glossy brown skink (Oligosoma zelandicum), and northern grass skink (Oligosoma polychroma). These common skinks certainly should be there, but we often remark that numbers seem quite low compared with what we have seen on similar islands, and are also a surprisingly low proportion of the known lizard population. Late summer, however, shows good numbers of young skinks in the grass. Perhaps the adults are more circumspect given the moderate numbers of kingfisher around, or maybe sunny skink habitat is slowly shrinking as the pasture becomes more rank and is taken over by shrublands.

What else should be there? Forest gecko would have a similar ability to common gecko to persist in the face of rat predation, and would be expected to recover at the same rate, but so far we have not found any. They are on Maud Island/ Te Hoiere and some of the other Sounds islands, although they were last reported from Takapourewa in 1897. It’s only a few tens of thousands of years since Puangiangi would have been connected to the mainland, so I think they must have been there at some point, if not now.

Marlborough green gecko would be another possibility, although again we haven’t seen any yet. When Sue and I went to Auckland to visit Ross and Jean Webber in 2012, though, Jean said she had seen a green gecko by the island’s house where they sat in 2009-10 contemplating where the interim owner, and their money, might be. Jean is not a lizard expert and I wondered whether she might have seen a dull-greenish common gecko which are, er, common, but when pressed as to the type of green she confidently pointed to a tissue box with an apple-green graphic on the side, the colour of the Marlborough green. They are pretty elusive and who knows if we might corroborate her observation one sunny morning when walking past a kanuka and see one contrasted against the foliage. Other lizards that are nearby and might have a chance of remaining on Puangiangi are striped gecko and spotted and speckled skink. All of these lizards made it into our management plan as candidates for translocation if they were not found in the meantime.

In the 1980s when Peter visited Ross, the party was shown an old photo of a gecko which Ross had kept as a pet. The photo was most likely of a Duvaucel’s gecko. The nearest current population of this threatened species is on Kuru Pongi/ The Trios. Ross was clear in conversation with me that it was the only one of its type on Puangiangi and that he had collected it from a “stack”. Conscious that I might wear out my welcome with my incessant questioning, I wasn’t able to establish for sure that he might have meant, say, North Trio. His reticence might have been because, if he had been allowed pet geckos then, he certainly would not be now without a permit.

When present, Duvaucel’s stand out because of their size and are easy to find after dark when they come out to feed. A careful look around confirmed Ross’ comment that they were very unlikely to be on Puangiangi. I imagine their size and docility would have had them eaten by rats early on if they had been there historically.

Both for our ecological restoration and to assist the species, a Duvaucel’s translocation would make good sense. Peter’s translocation proposal was approved by both Ngati Koata and DOC, and we arranged to visit Kuru Pongi over several nights in early March 2014. Jim Williamson came out from Nelson with Brigadoon and he was to be the ferryman over however many trips it took to get the permitted number of animals. Jim kindly covered all his expenses for his trip and saved us a considerable sum in transport costs.

The weather wasn’t great on the evening of the 3rd, but we made the 7 km trip to Kuru Pongi anyway. Alison Cree in her 2014 book on tuatara quotes Hugo Schauinsland, a museum director from Bremen, who collected in the area with his wife and assisted by George Webber in December 1896 and January 1897, landing on Kuru Pongi- “an undertaking which…could almost have cost me my life”. We were to land on the western side in Jim’s inflatable but just before we were ready to go, a squall blew up. We didn’t want to go one better than Schauinsland and land on the rocks upside down and we were ready to head back to Puangiangi for the night. Luckily though, Jim found a little bay on the northeastern side that was sheltered enough to get to land and that appeared to give access to the top. Peter ferried the catching party ashore in the inflatable and Lynn Adams and Chris Birmingham from DOC, and I, got ourselves and our bins of gear up a tight scree onto the main ridge of the island before nightfall.

KuruPongiCBirm — Gaining the ridge on Kuru Pongi. Squall completely evaporated, Puangiangi in the background. Photo courtesy Chris Birmingham.

The going on Kuru Pongi is very slow, with low, scratchy scrub. On the main ridge there was a hint of a flagged route from earlier parties, of which there have been few, and we found a flat site and sorted out our gear. Lynn gave me and Chris a refresher on how to tell a small Duvaucel’s from a large Common, and males from females (we wanted more females), and we began catching just before dark. Lynn withheld crucial habitat information and established a handy lead in the catch race by grabbing drowsy geckos from under rocks while Chris and I were concentrating on the trees. As it got properly dark we all started to contribute to the steadily growing pile of animals in individual calico bags in their fish bin. The scrub was so impenetrable that there was little point trying to move around much, and we did pretty well by standing still and listening for them moving, and watching for them on the trees. They could be distracted by our head lamps while an unseen hand gathered them up easily without any sudden lunges that might have harmed them or caused them to shed their tails. The island is also home to tuatara and burrowing petrels, and it was nice to see them on their island going about their nightly activities, or inactivities in the case of tuatara.

By midnight it was clear that we could catch the full complement in a single night and so we decided to keep going. By 3:00 we had 51 animals, all with their tails, back at base and Lynn checked each for over-all health, and identity given that I was catching too. We slept for a few hours and dawn revealed that Lynn had ended up uncomfortably close to a drop-off, which two of us found quite amusing. A bit of grunting and heaving got the boxes and us down to the beach and Jim and Peter picked us up at 7:00.

IMG_1775_1 — Being weighed mid-skin-shed, on the kitchen table.

Back on Puangiangi, Peter and Lynn weighed and measured each animal and marked them for future identification using the recommended toe-clipping method. Hugh Blank from Pure Science kindly donated the electronic balance we have for weighing animals. The proportion of females was just right at 70%, but with relatively few gravid, and all were in robust health when examined more closely in daylight. By early afternoon we were able to release them at the chosen site in the northeastern forest. We had chosen a place where there are some solid rock slabs with gecko-sized cracks. They all made for the cracks with little encouragement.

JimWilliamsonCBirm — Jim Williamson releases Duvaucel’s, northeastern forest. Photo courtesy Chris Birmingham.

This was a good moment to reflect on the contribution the late Tony Whitaker made to this project. He gave advice to Peter just days before his untimely death, and the techniques we used, and getting the whole thing done in under 24 hours, owe much to his work on lizards over many years. The kohekohe canopy is reasonably high and we won’t stand much chance of seeing them in numbers for a while. We’ve looked for them twice in the intervening months and have seen a single one, sitting quietly on its rock after dark. I don’t want to disturb any of the animals unnecessarily and the geckos don’t benefit from us knowing their every movement, so checking for translocation success will be of the low-impact variety. The obvious threat to them will be if predators get on to the island, and it will remain important to keep weka numbers vanishingly low, although the northeastern forest is not especially favoured by weka as far as we can work out.

IMG_1786_2 — At the release site, northeastern forest

To my knowledge, this is the first translocation of any species from Kuru Pongi, possibly save for early “collecting” trips for tuatara where the animals were released into a garden or suchlike, or indeed Ross Webber’s pet gecko.

Lizard diversity would be a good marker of ecosystem health, and we wanted to get some more professional advice on what if any other lizards are and should be there. An expert team of Lynn Adams, Sue Keall (Victoria University), Peter, Rod Hitchmough and Ivan Rogers (both DOC) visited for a week in mid-March 2015, equipped with binoculars with torches taped to them, Gee’s minnow traps and pitfall traps. They confirmed what we thought about the state of common gecko and the two widespread skink species.

One evening Lynn rang me and said they had found something significant, and demanded that I guess. I immediately suggested that they had found spotted skink (Oligosoma lineoocellatum), which turned out to be right and they all thought I was very brainy. Lynn doesn’t know that Peter and I had already considered that spotted skink ought to be there and it was probably just a matter of the people with time and the right identification skills showing up. My reputation won’t be punctured by putting this on the internet because that is a great place to keep secrets. After finding the first spotted skink, the team quickly found more and have concluded that it is at least moderately abundant.

LizardSurvey2015 — Peter, Rod Hitchmough and Sue Keall search for skinks, Woolshed Bay. Photo courtesy Ivan Rogers.

The team did not find any forest gecko, Marlborough green gecko, striped gecko or speckled skink, but noted that ongoing survey effort would be needed to say they were not there for sure. In the meantime, they said we should go ahead and translocate striped gecko, a species found on Te Hoiere and Takapourewa and in need of insurance populations. Peter has completed the first stage of the permit application as of last month.

Title photo, common gecko in a corrugated iron stack. Courtesy Roy Grose.

Stating the Obvious

So, you go shopping for an island for conservation purposes and buy one. Why? Then what?

To answer the why,

I suppose we had gained some experience of how species and restoration projects went, and figured that we were capable of taking one on for ourselves.

As funders, we had been happy with the way DOC-led species projects on the public estate had gone, and we were learning something from the people who ran the projects. There were a few outstanding successes. Applications began to dry up though, perhaps because we had taken care of the ready-to-go projects and those remaining were too nebulous or expensive, or both, that they didn’t suit us. I tend to conclude though that DOC had had the stuffing knocked out of it by endless restructuring, and people were too busy polishing their resumes or reapplying for their own jobs to do anything. Whatever the reason, the money we had earmarked for conservation was going unspent.

We were also learning about ecological restoration projects, especially through our involvement as volunteers on publicly-owned Mana Island. The model of a community group working with the government did not suit me though. The volunteer workforce was looked on by some DOC staff as a group which could be used to tick the required community engagement box, but was otherwise just a nuisance to be kept at arm’s length. Conversely the volunteers ranged from brilliant to useless, and those who thought the project was a holiday and the DOC rangers were there to entertain them, annoyed the heck out of me.

Having established that I was too difficult and demanding to fit in anywhere else, and also for positive reasons, we started thinking about our own project. Although I am well qualified in one scientific field, it would be a mistake to think that I could branch out and offer anything in the threatened species area as, say, a captive-breeder, researcher or research manager. However, there were templates available for ecological restorations and we figured it was realistic to attempt one with the right team in place.

A mainland sanctuary project was considered and rejected pretty much straight away. Simple preservation of an area of forest through purchase and covenanting did not cut it. In the presence of predators, even mainland ecosystems covered in natural vegetation are little more than biodiversity deserts, despite looking pretty and attracting public attention such as the recent crowd-funded purchase of a beach in the upper South Island, laudable as a statement about land alienation but achieving little for conservation.

The next step up, the predator-reduced, enclosed sanctuaries, have costly chemical or wire fences. Expenses are quite often shifted onto the unsuspecting taxpayer or ratepayer without proper analysis of the value of the spend. In the absence of mainland New Zealand becoming pest-free, fenced sanctuaries will require centuries of commitment so that the gains will not be lost the minute interest wanes, funding dries up and the fence is breached. Any conservation project can also have its detractors, and I didn’t fancy dealing with sanctuary neighbours who might be unhelpful or hostile either. An island project was therefore top of my mind.

To state the obvious, islands far enough from the nearest pest-infested area already have a fence. It’s not impermeable, but we figured that provided a pest-free island’s tenure was impermeable, it would cost little to ensure that traplines, bait stations, tracking tunnels were monitored in perpetuity. The same thinking has many islands in State ownership at the forefront of conservation efforts as arks for threatened species, pending the mythical breakthrough on the mainland.

Having figured an island project might be the one for us, we knew there was a dearth of choice. Many worthwhile islands are already in public ownership, and many are in multiple undivided title based on traditional tenure but stymied from contributing economically or conservation-wise through the paralysis brought by having many owners. Most or all of the easily accessible, fee-simple private islands have become the playthings of the rich (local and foreign), with little or no conservation benefit being contemplated or implemented. The larger ones have usually been subdivided and therefore would be difficult to bring under effective management for conservation purposes.

I was aware of Puangiangi when Ross Webber put it on the market in 2004. It was still in play simply because Ross had kept hold of it for 47 years through waves of island-buying fever, and because the more intelligent well-heeled could see it was a nightmare to get to and build their mansion on. 2004 was not the right time for us though and it didn’t compete for dinnertime discussion on top of everything else in our lives. The government’s Nature Heritage Fund was interested and put up a proposal to buy it, which was ultimately rejected by the then Labour conservation minister. It therefore went the way of the others, in to the hands of a property-developer type who had no interest in conservation, largely financed by Ross leaving money in (I can only hope without the benefit of professional advice).

AirNZ — Photo taken for 2004 sale finds it way into Air New Zealand’s in-flight magazine, in an article about Rangitoto near Auckland. Perhaps the backdrop of D’Urville rather than the Sky Tower might have assisted in getting it right.

Conservation got a second chance though when the interim owner fell over and Ross got the island back for resale. Ross just wanted the mortgagee-in-possession headache to go away, but still preferred the island to go to someone who would make good use of it. After there had been some shenanigans with another local property, he wanted to know we weren’t just a front for offshore buyers, and interestingly he did not think the Government would make the best possible custodian either. Peter knew Ross and gave us a good reference. Our 2012 tender was accepted and Ross was finally free of an island he had left 8 years previously at age 74.

This link http://www.cnbc.com/id/48300484 contains a CNBC video (scroll down a fair way) which evidently passes for news, and says much about the mind-set around islands that we did not want to see continue for Puangiangi. (The numbers in the video are laughably wrong by the way.) It took plenty of effort but the island is now safely held by our Charitable Trust. It must be used for public benefit (conservation) according to the law and to our Trust Deed. Although we take plenty of selfish pride in having got it this far, the asset is strictly alienated from us and is not our personal property. Our intention is that our Trust will become a perpetual one, and we have also been obtaining advice from DOC’s legal people about the best overlying structure to put on the island to further ensure protection. Interestingly they are not currently recommending any of the Wildlife Sanctuary options and the like available under the Wildlife Act, but lean more to the flexible Protected Private Land agreement offered under the Reserves Act. Extending the existing QEII covenant is also an option.

About the third question most people ask about the island (after “how do you get there?” and “can I come too?”) is “how big is it?”. According to a 1991 report by Ian Atkinson and Rowley Taylor, who compiled the predator status of all islands bigger than about 5 Ha, Puangiangi at “69” Ha squeaks into the 100 biggest at about Number 93. They measured areas by cutting out mapped outlines of the islands and weighing them. My estimate using a more modern method was 63 Ha. That is about 2.5 times the size of Matiu-Somes, a fair bit smaller than Mana but a similar length, and within coo-ee of many of the islands with the highest value to conservation.

Then what?

Well, apart from stating the obvious that we had managed to secure Peter’s services and thereby make the project viable, we wanted to get some other experts out for an ecological survey, and to write a management plan. My previous article talks about the botanical survey, you will find one about seabirds and future articles will cover land birds, lizards, and invertebrates. Having got some basic survey information, and with reference to the late Tony Whitaker’s 2002 plan for restoration of the adjacent Wakaterepapanui, from which we liberally stole (the plan, not the island), we got to preparing the plan.

The island is part of the Cook Strait Ecological District- think wind and salt. Islands include: Takapouwera/ Stephens; the Rangitotos- Wakaterepapanui, Puangiangi, Tinui; Nga Kiore/ Jags; Kuru Pongi/ Trios; Nukuwaiata and Te Kakaho/ Chetwodes; Titi; Mana; and Kapiti. Add the northern tip of Rangitoto Ki Te Tonga/ D’Urville, Capes Lambert and Jackson, the exposed headlands of Arapawa and the Port Underwood coast, and the coastline from Wellington to Kapiti. The mainland areas and D’Urville and Arapawa carry pest mammals, but all of the other islands have either always been pest-free or have had pests eradicated. Occasional incursions have been reported on many of them. Puangiangi is important to the ecological restoration of the other Rangitoto Islands, and vice versa given how close they are to one another. Puangiangi’s nearest other neighbours are Takapouwera and Kuru Pongi, which to a greater or lesser extent are seabird islands. I’ve previously discussed the place of seabirds as keystone species and to state the obvious we were always going to see Puangiangi as a seabird island. What level of intervention to achieve this is desirable?

Level 1: doing nothing apart from keeping pests away

The island would be likely to re-vegetate rapidly, but forest development and health would be limited by grazing. Weed species such as pines and macrocarpas would spread out and might dominate except in those areas already with mature forest. New weeds might arrive and establish. The weka would probably prevent seabird establishment and they would limit growth of the reptile population. To state the obvious, we would have only the limited range of birds, lizards and invertebrates that were already there, plus one or two self-introductions. The outcome would be a modified Cook Strait ecosystem.

Level 2: Level 1 plus removing sheep, weka and weeds and keeping it that way

This option would allow seabirds to establish, and the forest would over time regenerate to what it would have been, minus any lost taxa. The populations of the existing animals plus any that could get themselves there would increase as habitat improved. The outcome would be a fully functional seabird island typical of Cook Strait.

Level 3: Level 2 plus restoration and translocation

The reintroduction of species not on the island but which should be, gives an ecosystem rather close to what it would have been before humans and pests came along. If threatened species were included in translocations, it would help their security by giving them an additional site.

Level 4: A refuge

The island could be made available to house acutely threatened species, possibly at some detriment to an ecological restoration intended to provide a typical assemblage of plants and animals.

Preferred Intervention

The island’s size, location, security of tenure and good likelihood of being able to stop it filling up with pests again, convinced us that the highest-cost option, Level 3, was too good an opportunity to miss. We were able to formulate our goal pretty easily and to state the obvious, we propose “to return Puangiangi to a state that most closely resembles a fully functioning, Cook Strait seabird-island ecosystem in pre-human times”.

An earlier article talked about our approach to restoration of the forests and shrublands, and to support this our plan includes how to reduce the risk of a fire, which would be the single biggest threat. Realistically we can’t fight a fire except perhaps around the house, but we have a total ban on open fires and smoking.

Also integral to the goal is having a proper biosecurity plan and all visits involve bag and equipment checks to reduce the chance of assisting pests to arrive. Unfriendly signs discourage trespassers and mitigate the attendant risk of bringing pests ashore. The island’s title extends to the waterline and there is no foreshore reserve or Queen’s Chain, so landing is able to be prohibited.

As for species reintroductions, we have made lists of birds, lizards and invertebrates based on what is found or should be found on the other relatively unmodified islands in the area. Our thinking about seabirds is described in a separate article. Land bird species that were missing in 2012 and might have been expected to be there include tui, bellbird, brown creeper, tit, robin, kakariki, fernbird, kaka and saddleback, not all of which might be a good idea to reintroduce. Lizards initially identified as candidates included spotted skink, speckled skink, Duvaucel’s gecko, striped gecko, and Marborough green gecko. Tuatara and frogs might also be expected to have occurred there. Missing invertebrates could include Cook Strait giant weta and ngaio weevil.

I hope that doesn’t read like a shopping list to establish yet another zoo masquerading as an ecological restoration. The emphasis is on commoner species which would have been present on the island, not some hodge-podge of threatened species based on the “I want” attitude, to which DOC appears to acquiesce all too often.

It’s worth noting that our goal is also consistent with DOC’s objectives for the region, as expressed in their Nelson-Marlborough and Island management strategies. It also fits in with the Department’s aims for management of individual species.

Although we did not look seriously at Level 4, a refuge for acutely threatened species, the island would probably be able to support small numbers of, say, kiwi, takahe or orange-fronted parakeet. We figured however that there were better opportunities to provide a long-term secure site for such animals. For example, although several pairs of takahe would thrive on the pasture lands, we see the grass reverting to forest over the next few decades, thereby displacing takahe. We did see a role for Puangiangi as emergency accommodation though. We made DOC aware of this and indeed the recent discovery of mice on Maud/Te Hoiere meant the island hosted some refugees from there.

We think we can get rid of the weeds and do all of the species translocations in ten years. The other tasks, not requiring large one-off efforts but more steady background work like maintaining the predator-free state, attracting seabirds, catching weka, keeping up biosecurity and fire measures, engaging with the owners and administrators of the other islands in the group, maintaining the infrastructure on the island, reviewing the management plan and keeping records of progress, will carry on, to state the obvious.