Relocation of the birds

Where will they come from?

The birds will come from Pureora Forest Park between Lake Taupo and Te Kuiti. Pureora is home to a large healthy population of North Island robin and the closest mainland location to Moehau.

About 30 birds will be captured, banded and checked by a vet before transport to each of the two sites. The birds will be held in individual cardboard boxes for transport with mealworms and water available for their journey.

North Island robin being removed from
a clap trap

Catching the birds

This is a two stage process.

• Firstly, we train the robins to get used to people and respond by
  walking along forest tracks, clapping our hands every 30 or 40 metres
  and laying out food. The birds soon learn to associate the clapping
  sound with food.
• We do this for 10 days, then immediately go to the second phase
  which is capture. For this, we do the same clap hands-place food
  thing, except this time we place the food inside a small trap. So, a
  person places food in the trap on the ground, then they clap, down
  comes the robin and the trap door is shut behind it.

How many people are involved, and where are they from?

• There’s different people involved at different stages.
• For the planning side of things which has been underway since mid
  2008, there’s being a project team of 8, led by Wendy Davies from
  DOC.
• It’s really a community project though, with iwi and the Moehau
  Environment Group (MEG) taking lead roles and providing much of
  the manpower.
• For the training and capture we’ve had about 20 people working in
  the forest, as well as behind the scenes – cooks, drivers, that sort of
  thing.
• For the monitoring that will go on afterwards, there will be times
  when up to 17 people could be on the ground at any one time.

How are the birds going to be moved?

• By van - each bird has it’s own travel box with food and water inside
  for the journey. The vehicles are air conditioned and we are planning
  on travelling a night to keep them cool.

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How do you know they’re healthy and OK to move?

• We have a vet in the capture team who checks 30% of the birds
  caught.
• They carry out a range of standard checks - they get a visual check
  and blood, cloacal and faecal samples are taken and sent to a lab in
  Hamilton for analysis.
• The birds are only moved after the results of these samples are
  available, which takes a day or two at most

Where will they be be released?

• On public conservation land on the eastern side of Mt Moehau, near Stony Bay; and
• On 300ha of privately owned land just south of the DOC site where MEG is has been running a pest control programme.

Both sites are suitable environments for the birds and have managed predator and pest control programmes in place.

Map of the area

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