May 2024
Vegetables in the Ground, Bats in the Trees, and Our First Night by the Sea: A Season Update
A lot has been happening at the sanctuary over the past months, across more fronts than usual. The regular conservation work has continued without interruption, and alongside it a handful of new things have been tried for the first time. Here is where things stand.
New Ground: Garden, Fish Monitoring, and Bats
The garden has come on strongly this season and is producing well — vegetables growing in proper quantities, the kind of result that takes a full season of attention to arrive at and that makes a real difference to life at the camp. It looks good and it tastes good, which is not always guaranteed when you are gardening in a wet Northland climate.
Work has also begun on setting up the infrastructure for fish monitoring in the waterways around the sanctuary. This is early-stage work — the systems are going in rather than producing data yet — but it extends what the program tracks and adds another layer to the picture of how the wider ecosystem is functioning.
On the bat front, automatic audio recorders have been deployed in the forest this season. Bats are not always the most visible part of what the sanctuary protects, but they are part of it, and having recorders out in the right locations means we start building a baseline that will matter as the seasons go on.
Track Work and a First Night by the Sea
A significant amount of track cutting was done this season, opening up access and improving monitoring routes in ways that will make the coming seasons more manageable. This is the kind of work that pays off quietly over time rather than immediately, but the results are already noticeable underfoot.
The most memorable moment of the season was the first ever overnight kiwi monitoring session at a location by the sea — a good spot, and a first for the program. It was not an easy night. Animals were moving around the hammocks throughout, the kind of company that keeps you alert when what you were hoping for was silence and calls. The results were worth it. Kiwi were heard, the coastal location proved itself, and the experience of monitoring in that setting added something new to what the program has done before.
All the regular work — trap lines, monitoring routes, bait stations — was carried out and carried out well throughout the season. The foundation holds.