Puangiangi Restoration Articles – Fauna Recovery New Zealand

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.

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.”

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, 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.

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 Ihi 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.

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.

Forests, Shrublands, Grass and Cliffs

When Peter, Sue and I visited Puangiangi to look at it before buying, we could see the expected forested areas and pasture from the boat, but the landing area was inauspicious. A few big pines, brush wattle, tree lucerne, kikuyu grass and a pohutukawa, weeds or out of their natural range, were near the track from the landing bay. On reaching the edge of the first forest remnant I saw it was eaten out underneath by sheep and contained, groan, what I thought were some olive trees.

Once I’d had a chance to think and observe properly, however, I realised they were adult fierce lancewood, Pseudopanax ferox, something I’d only seen as the distinct juvenile form in gardens. This rare plant was everywhere and the project started to look like not just a restoration but also one where special plants occurred and could be protected. Things continued to improve when we found the forest sheltering the house to be reasonably sound coastal broadleaf forest, with a canopy of kohekohe, hinau, titoki, kaikomako, nikau, P. ferox and another rarity, large-leaved milk tree, Streblus banksii.

IMG_2021_1 — Juvenile *Pseudopanax ferox*, with fivefinger and *Coprosma propinqua*, D’Urville as a backdrop

That day we also had a quick look at the farmed area, where rank grass was being slowly invaded by tauhinu, with not a broadleaved seedling in sight, and at a manuka remnant on one of the high points. A circuit in the boat before heading back to French Pass revealed several forest areas, regenerating scrub, shrublands, swathes of wharariki/flax (Phormium cookianum), cliffs and screes.

One of our earliest priorities after taking over was to do a proper ecological and botanical survey. Geoff Walls, Barbara Mitcalfe and Chris Horne came out in October 2012 for a two-day survey which turned into five when we were caught by a storm. Geoff and his family own land on D’Urville and he is a very experienced ecologist, also having visited Puangiangi as early as 1981. Marlborough District Council part-funded his visit so he could do a Significant Natural Area assessment for them. Sue and I have been privileged to spend time on field trips with Wellington Botanical Society éminences grises Chris and Barbara. The three did the most comprehensive botanical survey yet on the island, putting up with the general topography, rain, having to crawl along ridgelines as the storm hit, and still having the energy to be witty and intelligent company back at the house. Barbara was undeterred despite being high up the waiting list for a knee replacement and Chris’ supply of filthy limericks was inexhaustible.

IMG_1563_1 — Chris and Barbara (note ever-present hand lens), October 2012

The team compiled a list of some 138 indigenous vascular plants and made a vegetation map. The island’s ecosystems comprise:

Coastal broadleafed forest, 15%;
Regenerating coastal broadleafed forest, 10%;
Mixed coastal shrublands with wharariki, 20%;
Pasture with tauhinu, 27%;
Kanuka and Manuka shrublands, 2%;
Salt turfs, 1%;
Cliffs and scarps with scattered vegetation, 25%.

(This is my slight simplification of the information in Geoff’s report and I have also tweaked the area percentages to make them add up to 100 once again.)

The Broadleafed Forest

This forest is typical of many in the Cook Strait Ecological District and Wellington residents familiar with Otari/Wilton’s Bush would feel at home with the mix of common trees given above for the forest around the house (Telecom Bush). The predominant tree is kohekohe. Soon after possum and rat control began at Otari, Sue and I began finding strange black fruits on the ground. I had never seen a fallen kohekohe fruit, as possums ate nearly all the flowers and rats got any fruits that did develop. The kohekohe are a real feature of Otari now pest numbers are way down. Puangiangi has never had possums and no longer has rats, and it is such a pleasure to see the kohekohe trunks in early winter, covered with white flowers, to be followed by copious fruits in summer. The multi-stemmed trees have great character, hanging on on the steep and sometimes mobile slopes, their canopy shorn off by salty gales.

L-R: Kohekohe flowers, June; carpeting the ground; fruit, December

In the northeastern forest, which has stabilised screes, boulders and vertical slabs and must be near the slope limit to have vegetation cover, many of the kohekohe have stopped piles of rolling rocks on the uphill sides of their trunks. They have marched up to gain the ridge in a couple of places and hang on in the 150 km/h gales, making little oases of relative calm. They share the northeastern forest canopy mainly with akiraho (Olearia paniculata), a particularly indestructible giant tree daisy, and fivefinger (Pseudopanax arboreus), the only other Pseudopanax apart from P. ferox on the island, which is a little surprising given the species diversity elsewhere in the district. There are also some karaka, ngaio, Streblus, mahoe, tree broom (Carmichaelia odorata), wharangi, puka (Griselinia lucida) and kohuhu in the canopy. The puka are very large and terrestrial, and their grooved trunks/roots snaking up and down the rocks are a highlight. The kohuhu (Pittosporum tenuifolium) is another Cook Strait special, with its salt-resistant leaves being much more leathery than in the mainland form.

Under the canopy and in open spots, kiekie forms swathes which slow progress for those intrepid enough to explore the forest. The rockier areas have gardens of rengarenga lily, which of course also extend to the open cliffs. Lara Shepherd at Te Papa has been doing a DNA analysis of rengarenga from around the country, and a specimen from Puangiangi has the same provenance as others from the northern South Island area, likely deriving from early Maori plantings of material brought from the North. There are a few lianes, with Metrosideros perforata adding some colour to proceedings. The forest floor is populated with a typical array of ferns- Asplenium, Blechnum, Microsorum, Polystichum, Adiantum,and one of Sue’s favourites, Lastreopsis velutina. Also on some of the slabs is the little Peperomia urvilleana.

KohekoheCompo — Kohekohe forest without an understory save for the unpalatable *Polystichum* (photo courtesy Geoff Walls), and vigorous regeneration in the prolonged absence of sheep (photo courtesy Roy Grose)

The other main areas of mature forest are Telecom Bush and a large area at the south of the island. Both are on slightly gentler ground, and Telecom Bush in particular was more affected by sheep. Now the sheep have gone, there is slow but gratifying regeneration of the understory. These forests have all of the canopy trees of the northeastern forest and add hinau, nikau, tree ferns and a few tawa. Peter and I have had a fair amount of time letting gravity take us round the southern forest, looking for sooty burrows, and we were pleased to find the tiny group of adult tawa that eluded the botanists. A brief survey in 1996 by Nelson Botanical Society had however recorded a seedling tawa, so we had been hopeful of finding its parents. Summer 2016 brings several tawa seedlings to the forest with regular though light rain helping them hang on. One has even popped up in Telecom Bush and we think the kereru may also be bringing the seeds from Tinui where there is an extensive grove.

MPerf_Nikau — L: Nikau inflorescence coming out, last year’s fruit behind; R: *Metrosideros perforata*; both photos January.

Apart from the areas of mature forest, there is substantial regeneration afoot, especially between the southern forest and the central pasture lands, and on the southwestern slopes of the island high point down to Boatshed Bay (part of the area covenanted with QEII National Trust by Ross Webber in 1999 and retired from grazing then). These areas are dominated by fivefinger, akiraho, ngaio, mahoe, kawakawa, kohuhu. P. ferox, Coprosma propinqua, C. robusta and the hybrid between the two coprosmas. C. propinqua, tree broom, mahoe, mingimingi and tauhinu play host to the mistletoe Ileostylus micranthus, which is quite uncommon on the mainland because of selective possum browsing among other insults. It has also colonised tree lucerne, introduced around the house and slowly spreading elsewhere. On the non-native, leguminous host the Ileostylus can reach 3 m across in a lush, dark green as opposed to the often more “natural” pale yellow-green on the native hosts. Most of the forest trees are beginning to make an appearance, with the first kohekohe having just shown up in the covenanted area. The regenerating forest is extraordinary in its diversity and productivity, the abundant fruiting of the fivefinger being of special note to us and I expect the birds. It has come back quite quickly as the accompanying photos from 1981 and 2012 show.

19812016South — Looking south to north, 1981 (above) and 2016 (below). Broadleaf forest regenerating at right. At far left, pasture finally retired in 2013 reverts to tauhinu. 1981 photo courtesy Geoff Walls.

Barbara and Chris are strongly of the view that this regeneration neither needs nor wants human assistance. Their philosophy is perhaps derived from the project at Hinewai, where nature is left to take its course no matter how long or short that might be, and they certainly don’t recommend the more extreme replanting interventions which Chris recently likened in a Letter To The Editor to little more than “gardening”. I share their view for the Puangiangi project, where unassisted regeneration is doing very nicely thank you. We might however temper this with a little bit of moving of kohekohe seedlings around the edges of Telecom Bush, which have been planted with shelter trees native and exotic and gardened in the past, and which might benefit from a bit of evening up of the species present.

The Stable Shrublands and Salt Turfs

The northern end of Puangiangi and some of the other ridgelines are a delight. Here the winds are too extreme for the broadleaved forest to take over any time soon, and the land is covered with a waist-high biodiversity treasure trove.

CookStEndemicsComposite — Clockwise from top left: Cook Strait kowhai flower, August; kowhai *in situ* (photo courtesy Geoff Walls); *Melicytus sp*.

The Cook Strait endemics shine, with three little mahoe relatives to the fore, Melicytus aff. obovatus “Cook Strait”, M. aff. novaezelandiae “Maritime” and a hybrid between them (identifications courtesy of Peter de Lange from specimens provided by Barbara). Here we also find P. ferox, Coprosma propinqua, taupata, ngaio, prickly mingimingi, wharariki, and clumps of dark green which we were excited to find was Cook Strait kowhai. It not only grows in the tangle of the more mature shrublands, but dominates some of the cliffs of harder rock down to within 20 m of the sea. Last winter I took the kayak out in the late afternoon and I could look up and see the kowhai flowers glowing yellow on the cliffs. If I had to pick one botanical standout on the island it would be these shrublands with their thriving populations of rare Strait endemics.

At and around spot height 120 m in the middle of the island is an area of manuka. Outliers have colonised the surrounding pasture on the western side down to near sea level. This part of the island is of gentler contour, being merely steep rather than precipitous. It would once have held the broadleaved forest we see elsewhere today, perhaps supplemented by a few missing trees such as matai and miro which occur on some other islands in the area. The forest cover might have helped the relatively large catchment there to have held water nearly permanently instead of ephemerally as today. The number of young manuka popping up and the relative absence of competing broadleaf seedlings (which were eaten by the sheep) might mean that the area of manuka shrubland expands and dominates the central third of the island for many decades. We need only look across the channel to Tinui to see how effectively manuka can come back on retired pasture.

Tinuicomposite — Tinui from summit of Puangiangi, 1981 (above) and 2016 (below). Tinui was stocked and periodically fired until maybe 1960s, now clothed in manuka. Note succession from tauhinu to fivefinger and *P. ferox* on Puangiangi. 1981 photo courtesy Geoff Walls.

An area of kanuka dominates the 128 m summit of Mt Mistaken above the southern broadleaf forest and is spreading down the western slopes. Some of the kanuka at the very edge of the forest are large and old, and their copious litter makes great robin territory. The lower plants on the very exposed areas are festooned with the rare mistletoe Korthalsella salicornioides, its stems blending very well with the kanuka foliage. I was aware that it might be around, but still managed to walk past the main colony about eight times before Chris and Barbara spotted it on their first outing. It’s likely that kanuka will be the dominant species here for a very long time.

KanukaComposite — Kanuka spreads out, Mt Mistaken. *Korthalsella salicorniodes* at right.

Another rare plant found in the shrublands and open spots is wind grass, Anamanthele lessoniana. It was also obviously a favourite of Ross’, as he planted it around the house for low shelter and ornament, with its lovely showing of the wind through its blades and its seed-bearing tillers up to 2 m long. It’s fair to say that Puangiangi is also a national stronghold for Anamanthele.

IMG_0785_1 — Salt turf assemblage. Photo courtesy Geoff Walls.

At the southwestern corner of the island is an area of salt turf relatively unmodified by sheep. If Ross Webber or earlier farmers had ever had cattle it might have been lost. Here in the spray zone is a big area of silver tussock, native iceplant, glasswort, Samolus repens, Selliera radicans, Senecio lautus, and the two native daphnes Pimelea prostrata and P. urvilleana. These plants also occur sporadically around the shore and on open ridges. A monocultural salt turf of the little buttercup Ranunculus acaulis is at Woolshed Bay, by an archaeological site containing argillite, human-transported stones, charcoal and small bones. This area is more degraded by heavier grazing.

Cliffs and Scarps

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — The eastern screes and cliffs. Photo courtesy Geoff Walls

Most of Puangiangi slopes very steeply away into the sea. Although Ross told me he used to muster one of the very steep eastern faces on foot, we confine our interaction to views through binoculars or at the end of a rope drilling and poisoning some of the more easily accessible coniferous weeds.

The mobile scarps of scree and softer rock may once have held a forest of sorts, but at the moment they are limited to a few patches of grey scrub. From below, the largest scree looks devastated, the shoreline littered with boulders which appear recently arrived and a more or less constant stain of sand and mud in the sea. On a gentler bit, an island of forest hangs on- or has colonised, I don’t know which.

IMG_1429_1 — Wharariki in the salt exposure zone

Where slope, soil or aspect allow, the steeplands in the spray zone have extensive fields of low vegetation, dominated by wharariki (Phormium cookianum), silver tussock and with patches of rengarenga lily and linen flax (Linum monogynum). The latter two add a splash of white during flowering in spring. The shrubland species described earlier also make inroads. There are a few areas of hard rock cliffs, sometimes hosting rengarenga and Cook Strait kowhai.

Pasture

P1010274_1 — Claire Gaze sets off for the butcher’s, January 2013. Photo courtesy Peter Gaze

The central third of the island has gentler slopes and more shelter and it’s logical to see the influences of past farming lingering there the longest. When we took over we were nonplussed to find a flock of some 20 sheep, left to their own devices for some years. It was obvious from a restoration point of view that they had to go, but having established that they weren’t suffering through disease burdens, lack of water or sweltering in their enormous fleeces (which they were shedding), we decided to shoot them at the rate we could eat them. Sue’s family and our friend Jan from Toronto would be among the few to say they have had a Christmas dinner of the now-extinct Puangiangi sheep. Some of the older rams took a bit of cooking but I think it showed respect not to waste them. I also sent up a choicer lamb cut to Ross in Auckland.

By 2012 the pasture had become rank even with the sheep that were there. Tauhinu was all but the only coloniser, the sheep leaving it alone in favour of any broadleaf seedlings that came up. I bought from Television New Zealand some archival footage of a visit one of their journalists paid Ross as he was preparing to leave in 2004. Even at that stage he had the journalist out grubbing tauhinu.

WoolshedBaycomposite — Pasture at Woolshed Bay reverting to tauhinu from 2012 (above) to 2016 (below), in the face of extreme winds funneling up the bay. Note demise of macrocarpa at right.

By the time we arrived, the tauhinu was extensive but we could still walk anywhere in near enough a straight line. Now it is all but impenetrable in many places, manuka is spreading from the high point and broadleaf saplings are showing in the shelter of the tauhinu. We recently cleared some grass and tree lucerne at the edge of Telecom Bush and were surprised to find healthy kohekohe seedlings under the rank grass.

Weeds

At the start of this article I implied an initial negative impression of the island’s botany, formed by a weedy landing but since fixed by exploration and experts. Really though, we are pretty lucky having only the weeds we do. There is no gorse, Darwin’s barberry, hakea, climbing asparagus, old man’s beard, and so on. The ones we do have are isolated and controllable, and this influenced our decision to totally eradicate them apart from tree lucerne, pasture weeds (which will eventually die out as the forest grows) and probably kikuyu grass which is stabilising land at the two beaches for the time being.

P1010158_1 — Macrocarpas colonise the eastern cliffs, 2012. If left they would eventually take out the Cook strait kowhai in the central background. Photo courtesy Peter Gaze.

A shelter belt of macrocarpa protected the country’s smallest woolshed (3 x 2 m) and its yards, dating we think from the King-Turners’ 1929-1957 tenure. The shelter belt itself was benign but seed was blowing on to the adjacent rock pavements and cliffs, and some sizeable trees had taken hold. Lest the island end up like coastal northern California, we engaged Marlborough Sounds Restoration Trust to spray the macrocarpas from the air with metsulfuron methyl, as they have been doing successfully with pines in the Sounds for some time now. We drilled and poisoned the accessible trees, one of which got its own back by blowing over and flattening the woolshed. Some of the trees are not dead yet after two visits from the helicopter and there are plenty of seedlings coming up, but we will persist. The house area held several large pines, presumably for shelter and firewood, and they have also been poisoned. Many have blown over now and some took out the access track when they did so. We have cut a hundred or so saplings from the covenant area, where the seeds appear to blow and take hold, and we are seeing only a very few now.

A single pohutukawa, presumably an ornamental planting, and an isolated pocket of European broom have also been dealt with, apparently without any ongoing seedling germination. An infestation of brush wattle around the house was cut down. The main area of wattle has now been taken over by regenerating shrubs and it is too shady there for any wattle seedlings. Further down-slope, the long-lived seeds mean regular attention is required to pull out seedlings, a thousand at a time if this month is anything to go by.

Outlook

All said and done, this is a botanical restoration that is proceeding very quickly with minimal effort from people, and it is reasonable to think that Puangiangi will be weed-free, and have at least developing forest over the former pasture lands, in my lifetime. The broadleaf forest will have a resilient structure with a diverse understory, and the island will become more widely known as a national stronghold for its astonishing range of rare endemics.

Seabirds

Fifteen years ago I was very ignorant indeed about seabirds. When Sue and I helped with our first of I think 11 chick translocations, the first thing I learnt was that seabirds were not all just “seagulls’. Eventually I came to learn from the likes of Colin Miskelly and Helen Gummer that seabirds really are and ought to be pre-eminent in the New Zealand story.

New Zealand is still the centre for seabird endemism: 38 species breed nowhere else and 86 species breed here in total, out of 360 species worldwide. Populations-wise, however, they would once have been a much more dominant feature, before they were all but extirpated from the mainland by predators such as rats, stoats and pigs. Now we think of seabirds as perhaps belonging on rock stacks and little islands, despite a few happy mainland exceptions such as Hutton’s shearwater. I suppose this is yet another example of the shifting baseline idea expounded so well by George Monbiot in his book Feral: in our lifetimes we have thought of seabirds as breeding on islands, sometimes scarce; therefore it was always thus. In the recent past though, there would have been clouds of all sorts of seabirds, circling mainland high points, their nesting and burrowing and bringing food in from the sea and being eaten and dying and decomposing, having the biggest effect of anything on the ecology of the mainland.

We can see what it would once have been like by looking at their island strongholds today- vegetation modified by fertility changes, shrubs destabilised by burrowing, a profusion of life making use of their burrows and their leftovers. It’s no accident that there’s 300 mm of fertile topsoil across the formerly farmed piece of peneplain that is Mana Island, making it easy digging for today’s revegetation teams. A hundred thousand years of seabirds can do that. Ross Webber wasn’t confronted with barren rock on Puangiangi when he established his vege garden and orchard, rather a deep, free-draining, moisture-retentive soil.

Now, I see twenty-something Miss Canterbury on Petone beach (she is a red-billed gull banded red-black at her natal site in Kaikoura on the day of a big Ranfurly shield challenge by a naturalist with a sense of humour), resplendent in perfect plumage on a sunny winter’s day, standing aloof from the lesser of her species who eat chips, and reflect that even “common red-bills” have moved into the Vulnerable category now they have so few breeding sites left. And I’m well aware that there aren’t any petrel colonies on the windy hills around my home in Wellington, the last one possibly having gone about 60 years ago.

The present mainland colonies, natural and translocated, are often reliant on expensive predator management, including fences. We have an opportunity with the Puangiangi project to intervene inexpensively to create another seabird island, with its natural fence.

Puangiangi As a Seabird Island

There’s no doubt that Puangiangi would once have been a smaller version of Takapouwera/ Stephens Island, which even today holds two million fairy prions to name but one species. It was almost not even a discussion point to make seabirds the focus of our restoration efforts, but that decision does come at a cost and does limit what else we can do. Take weka (please): let’s say there were 500 weka on Puangiangi twenty thousand years ago, and 5 million of a mixed mega-colony of fairy prions, fluttering shearwaters, diving petrels, white-faced storm petrels, flesh-footed shearwaters and sooty shearwaters, with sundry outcroppings of half-a-dozen shag species, gannets, red-bills, black-billed gulls, terns, mollymawks, little blue penguins. The 500 weka would be very well-fed through grabbing unattended eggs, nestlings, weakened adults, but they wouldn’t make a huge difference to a population of 5 million birds. Contrast that with the situation in 2012. I estimated the population of weka on Puangiangi as 20 (that was a gross underestimate as it turned out, but 20 will suffice here). Let’s say we were able to re-establish a colony of 20 pairs of sooty shearwater. If we left the weka there, it’s likely they would get many or all of the chicks each season. Weka are inquisitive with a good sense of smell and are constantly patrolling for new opportunities. Such a seabird colony would not go unnoticed.

Weka at sooty burrow, April 2014. It can just be seen at the end emerging with a piece of down.

If the burrow-nesting petrels lose an egg or a chick, there is no time to re-nest, and of course they can only afford the energy input of one per clutch. Sooties take several years before reaching breeding age also. Therefore, more or less any weka predation would send a nascent colony spiralling towards functional extinction, with only a few pairs of unsuccessfully breeding adults hanging on for any time. So if we were to have a go at re-creating Puangiangi as a seabird island, the weka would have to go. Weka are worthy of protection in their own right and ironically we have funded a project to re-introduce weka to an area of the upper south, so it’s not actually a no-brainer to choose seabirds over weka. However, there are more areas where weka are safe than there are islands where seabirds are safe, so we chose seabirds. Peter was able to secure a permit to catch weka and relocate them to the mainland, so the project was under way from our point of view.

Burrow-Nesters

Burrow-nesting seabirds were holding on on Puangiangi and on Tinui’s southern satellite Takawhero into the 1980s. Ross Webber was well aware of them, and indeed had found a chick and kept it at his house for a short time, trying to feed it on bacon scraps. Visiting field workers, including Peter, had found remnant sooty colonies in the southern and north-eastern forests and Peter brought out a predator trap for Ross to deploy in the southern colony. We found the remnants of the trap during May 2012. But, as the rats slowly got on top of Ross, they slowly got on top of the sooties. It’s highly predictable that sooties would be the last burrow-nester there: they are bigger and feistier than the fairy prions, fluttering shearwaters and diving petrels that are generally more common in Puangiangi’s latitude, and would be a match for a rat or a weka coming down a burrow, leading with its head. That protection would extend to incubated eggs, but after the egg hatches and the adults leave the nestling for longer and longer periods to go as far as the Polar Front to gather food, then the insidious numbers game of predation begins. That game was over perhaps a hundred years ago or more for the smaller and comparatively defenceless petrels and prions, but sooties hung on longest, before being wiped out or driven away.

Ross was pretty clear in conversation with Sue and me that he considered the sooties to be present to this day, but Peter and I looked for the old southern colony during what would be peak fledging week in May 2012. We should have found the old burrows to be clean, with squirts of bright white droppings away from the entrances, clean beaten ground from all the comings and goings and gardening, and a distinctive smell to the burrows. Instead we found cobwebby burrows, drifts of leaves blocking others, penguins in some others and weka following us around. We were to be starting from scratch, but of course the island was at least rat-free thanks to the efforts of 1999 described in another article.

So, let battle commence. It’s an important job every trip to catch as many weka as we can fit into the pen Dad built for them in the shed. Once in the pen, they get to forage for insects and worms in the leaf litter we bring in, and eat specially prepared meals and our leftovers- cheese, pasta, eggs, blue cod frames. In reality they mainly occupy themselves knocking over their water, trying to escape and staring balefully at us when they jump on to the top of the sacking we have hung as little refuges for the more timid weka to hide from their more aggressive brethren. We try to limit catching to near the end of a trip so we hold them for as short a time as possible, and they are largely very resilient. To start with, we transported them in cardboard or Corflute carry boxes, but after a near miss with one in its box almost being blown over the side of Aston’s barge, and the fact they just would not settle in the boxes, scrabbling around the whole trip into Garne and Saville Scenic Reserve, Claire made up some heavy canvas bags with tie tops. Like most birds, they settle well in the dark of the bags, even travelling two-up without incident if we run out of bags. At the release point they are tipped out of the bags and they orient themselves and run off impressively. We removed the 100th weka early in December 2015 and several times have thought we have gotten the last one. I’m still aware of a very few as I write though.

At the start of this article, I said we have helped with some chick translocations. These are intricate processes developed here by our endangered seabird scientists (ambiguity deliberate). Almost every individual of each species of burrow-nesting seabird returns to nest in its natal colony, often coming back after however many years they spend at sea before beginning to breed, to within a few metres of where they were born. This fixing on their natal colony is thought to be learned during the nights (1-20 or more depending on the species) they emerge from their burrows to exercise wings and shed down and weight before they fledge. Only through over-population at a colony (unlikely these days) or in rare individuals with inclinations for wandering beyond the norm, or through some not-yet-understood at-sea interaction with others, will dispersal occur. The simple act of grabbing an adult and putting it in a hole somewhere else will in no way over-ride this loyalty to the natal site. People have tried- the adults fly back. However, moving chicks before they develop site loyalty, and feeding them until they fledge, might induce those birds to return as newly minted breeders to the new colony.

Chick translocations have been done with many species of petrels in New Zealand, many successfully. People like Brian Bell and Graeme Taylor practised on common species first, refining techniques so that endangered species like taiko and Chatham petrel could be tackled with justified optimism. Realising that canned sardines (whizzed up with water and fed by syringe) were a transportable, non-perishable means of approximating the chicks’ natural diet, expanded the type and remoteness of site which could be considered for the technique. People with attention to detail, like Helen Gummer, came to tailor the feeding regime individual by individual- not just sticking to a species template- by careful weighing and measuring in the field as each project ran its course. Building up the numbers of trained people, such as Sue, means that chick translocation is now mainstream thinking for ecological restoration projects where common petrels are the target, and for work with the endangered ones too.

Chickfeeding — Sue feeds Chatham petrel chick, Sweetwater Conservation Covenant.

The typical three-year cycle of translocations is costing around $60,000 plus whatever notional price one wants to put on the volunteer chick-feeding labour. The maximum number of chicks that can be handled at a new site is about 240, with a target return rate of about 30% after however many years it takes for the species to reach breeding age. An analysis of the completed translocations around the country, however, indicates that many sites are going to need top-ups to give the new populations a statistically good chance of becoming self-sustaining. Funders and community groups should be thinking of a decent six-figure sum and bulk volunteer wrangling for a completed translocation project. Puangiangi’s remoteness and difficulty of access and getting around suggests that chick translocation would be marginally achievable at best. Also, the community engagement plus of having large numbers of volunteers involved is not relevant for us. We have initially plumped for an alternative:

Speaker systems to attract seabirds are now a reality around the country. We’re up to our seventh I think, installed on the Kermadecs, Wakaterepapanui in the Rangitoto group, and now Puangiangi. A solar panel charges a hefty battery and, at night or in the daytime depending on the species being targeted, the solid-state electronics inside a waterproof case play the tracks on a sound card through 350-watt outdoor speakers. The systems now cost under $2500 and they require little, although not zero, maintenance. If they work, they attract adults, obviating waiting out the 2-8 years for translocated chicks to return as breeders. We thought that Puangiangi would be a good candidate for the speaker method, what with a sooty colony not long gone with perhaps a few adults still alive that were born there, and large colonies of fairy prions to the north on Takapourewa, some of which might be enticed south.

The first site chosen was obviously to be near the bigger of the old sooty colonies, and we put up the speakers at the upper edge of the southern forest. It was a long, hot walk to carry in the heavy and awkward gear from the shed and we were grateful for the help of Roy Grose and Chris Birmingham from DOC, who were visiting us to catch up with Peter and to eyeball me. Sue and I were a bit worried that good intentions by DOC to assist us with the project might become subsumed by other priorities over time, but these immensely capable people gave me great confidence from the beginning of this project. Chris was at the time working nearby on Maud Island but has regrettably left for Te Anau to a dream takahe job along with his partner Linda Kilduff and new baby. Roy is sticking it out through the endless restructuring of DOC and still works in the region albeit with ever larger responsibilities.

Peter and I put in some starter burrows in the grass around the speakers and turned the system on, the sound card carrying recordings of sooty shearwater, fluttering shearwater, fairy prion and diving petrel. We gave visiting botanist Barbara Mitcalfe a demonstration and she thought it an awful cacophony, but it seemed to work for the birds. We also rigged up a trail camera and hooked it up to the cellular network through a big Yagi aerial fixed high up in a nearby akiraho. At 1 AM on 3 December 2012, a month after the system went in, I got the first photo (at the head of this article) sent to my phone back in Wellington, of a sooty shearwater on the ground.

The site saw quite a lot of activity. During March-April 2013 for example, the camera recorded birds on the ground on 15 of 56 nights monitored. We identified sooty shearwater, fluttering shearwater (two on the ground simultaneously several times) and probably diving petrel.

composite — Trail camera stills showing sooty shearwater, fluttering shearwater and diving petrel at the speaker site, 2012-13

One strange observation was a morepork/ruru having a go at a small petrel on the ground next to the speaker system. Did we encourage unusual behaviour or are ruru expected to be predators at seabird colonies?

Ruru attacks petrel on the ground, April 2013.

On the strength of these results we got another two sound systems. One was installed at lower altitude than the active one, at the edge of a tussock/ salt turf area which looks ideal for smaller petrels to dig burrows. The best we managed in two years there was some feathers and, separately, half a diving petrel. There was no sign at all of burrow construction and we have since shifted the speakers to above Boatshed Bay and put in a gannet tape.

A third system has been put in at the north end, within earshot of any of the millions of petrels on Takapourewa that might fly a few km south when foraging. Cameras showed a good rate of visitation by fluttering shearwater, and we promptly added some shearwater decoys to help things along. The initial fluttering shearwater model was beautifully made for free by Richard de Hamel and then a two-piece fibreglass mould taken from that. Peter spent wet evenings in the shed on Puangiangi making resin shearwater halves, which were then glued together and painted. They look great, but to date neither they nor the speakers have enticed anything to occupy burrows at the site.

Decoys — Peter installs the decoys at northern speakers, January 2014.

In early December 2013 we returned to the original speaker site and found breeding sooty shearwater. There was a newly-refurbished look to the old natural burrows, and we found a couple of occupying birds at great cost to Peter’s arm. We installed some trail cameras on likely burrows.

A pair of sooties at their burrow entrance. Egg-laying season December 2013.

In January we went back with a burrowscope, courtesy of Nicky Nelson at Victoria University, and found 16 incubating birds.

After the chick hatches, the parents alternate between incubating and heading to sea to get food for themselves and their chick.

Adult sooty arrives presumably with food, March 2014.

As it grows, the chick is left by itself for longer periods. At the colony we recorded the longest time between feeds as 10 days.

First emergence, April 2014. This chick obviously survived the weka intrusion shown near the beginning of this article.

A few minutes later- had enough. Chick at maximum weight, fortunately.

The number of active burrows dwindled away during summer and autumn though, and three chicks got to the stage where they came to the surface at night-time, exercised their wings, shed down, lost weight and eventually took off in early May.

Exercising wings on a rainy night, April 2014. Most down has been shed. (The date on the camera was wrong).

Helen Gummer points out that this might be the first successful example of acoustic attraction of sooty shearwater which have gone on to (re-)found a breeding colony. The colony looked forlorn during 2012, and we first noticed adult sooties in December 2012, a month after the speaker system was installed. The burrows were obviously active the following season (beaten earth, smell, clear burrows and so on) and I don’t think I would have been so stupid as to miss such signs in 2012. In possible support of this claim, we also found an old sooty burrow grouping elsewhere on the island away from any speakers, and there has been no activity there, despite weka pressure all but vanishing island-wide.

The 2014-15 season gave a similar low fledging rate from about as many nesting attempts. We can only speculate on the reason- inexperienced breeding birds seems likely, as they should be the ones pulled in by the speaker system. An undetected predatory animal on the island would surely have left a mess, which we did not ever see. At-sea factors may have also influenced the fledging rate; poor results have been seen elsewhere when possible changes in sea temperatures, say, have caused food supplies to dwindle or move to different areas.

As the 2015-16 season starts we can report 16 birds on eggs, from a total of 28 GPS-mapped burrows which have held birds at some point over the last three years.

We plan on disturbing the colony as little as possible and are not intending to band the chicks or the adults. We do want to know the fledging rates each year and to get an idea of the population trend. I guess we are also not completely certain that they are all sooties. Many of the larger petrels seen at sea nearby are flesh-footed shearwater, which breed at the same time, so a mixed colony may be possible. Either will do just fine. They are easily told apart but burrowscoping is limited to confirming that a sooty-sized petrel and not a penguin is in the hole.

Other Seabirds

Red-billed gulls live in the area seasonally, feeding on schools of small fish and concentrations of crustaceans. Once we saw a little bay on the eastern side with red-bills all but walking over one another to feed on some crustaceans which had filled the bay. Red-bills don’t breed on Puangiangi and we don’t have any idea which breeding colony they come from. They have contributed to the nesting success of the resident pair of karearea though. Their 2014 nest was littered with the beaks and feet of red-bills, the only pieces they didn’t seem to have eaten. Red-bills are not far short of the size of the smaller male karearea and if they had caught them close to the sea, it must have been a feat to carry them to the nest site at about 60 m altitude.

Black-backed gulls are quite common. A pair of reef heron is often seen, as are white-fronted tern, the occasional Caspian, and various shags such as king, little, pied and spotted. There is a thriving breeding colony of spotted shag, spread out from the northern tip of the island and along the eastern side, nesting adults and young being seen from the sea in crevices in the cliffs.

Little penguins seem to be common, and they are encountered at the sooty colony and all around the island. They also nest under various man-made structures such as Ross’ house and one of his old pottery kilns, which is housed in a converted mussel float.

None of these birds seems to need human interference, but we are trying to establish a breeding colony of gannets. Their regional breeding colonies are thought to be full and thriving and they are often seen fishing in the area. A grouping of generic fibreglass boobies, sourced commercially and painted up in Australasian gannet colours by Peter, has been set up above Boatshed Bay, on what we hope is an attractive, clear site. A speaker system broadcasts the sounds of a gannet colony from dawn to dusk, and indeed we did seem to have some early success. Peter was checking the speakers and I was looking down from the spur, frantically signalling to Peter that he should look behind him. A gannet was there and unconcerned at being a metre behind Peter. We took it as a sign that the decoys were good ones, on two counts. A gannet was also filmed staying overnight but there has been no nesting so far.