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Waiatarua Reserve wildlife protection

• Project background
• Vision and objectives
• Volunteer activities

Project background

Waiatarua Reserve is a 40 hectare reserve in Meadowbank, East Auckland. It contains New Zealand's largest urban wetland.

After losing much of its ecological value and water purification abilities due to farming and urbanization, the wetland was restored in 2003/2004. These restoration efforts resulted in

• significantly improved water quality
• an increase in diversity of native plants (through planting efforts), and
• an increase in diversity and abundance of native birds and insects.

Waiatarua Reserve has since been named as a bird sanctuary. The Waiatarua Reserve wildlife protection project started in 2007 with the aim to build on the success of past restoration efforts by reducing animal pests within the reserve. This provides a healthy habitat for New Zealand's native birds and insects.

Vision and objectives

Vision

To create an ecological jewel as well as provide a recreational sanctuary and educational resource within the heart of urban Auckland; to make the reserve a place where wetland and forest habitats provide year-round food for native birds and insects.

Objectives

• to carry out a baseline survey of wildlife and animal pests to determine presence and population density in 2008, and every 3 to 5 years to monitor progress
• to promote the project to the wider community and encourage animal pest control on private neighbouring properties
• to carry out rat and possum trapping: reduce animal pest populations to less than 5 and 20 per cent respectively in 2008 and to 1 and 5 per cent respectively in 2009
• to include trapping of mustelids, feral cats and rabbits
• to assess the potential for re-introduction of rare wetland and forest bird species
• to re-introduce native wetland and forest birds in the park (eg fernbird).

Volunteer activities

There are a number of activities that volunteers can take part in on this project. They include:

• animal pest control
• bird and insect surveys
• creation of educational materials about the project
• planting and weeding
• project promotion and volunteer recruitment
• project planning and organizing
• opportunities for research students studying the impacts of urbanisation on ecology.

Results

Animal pest control volunteers check and re-load traps twice per week during Autumn (March to May) and Spring (August to December). The results of their efforts can be seen below.

You can contact us if you would like more information about this project.

Updated September 2009