Wild about nature

As three years of Jobs for Nature funding comes to an end, our Tautuku project manager reflects on what has been achieved. By Francesca Cunninghame

How to sum up the last three years, eight months, and 24 days of Mahi mō te Taiao Jobs for Nature funding at Tautuku? Three words: unique, humbling, and invaluable. 

Forest & Bird’s ecological restoration project, near Papatōwai in the Catlins, was awarded $579,444 of Jobs for Nature funding in August 2021. It allowed us to significantly expand our pest control and work harder to protect Tautuku’s threatened species. 

From hilltops to the ocean, this special landscape supports a huge diversity of life, and, nearly a decade into this project, we are still learning more about its many inhabitants, from a giant 700-year-old southern rātā to the tiny Gollum galaxias in Tautuku’s wild rivers. 

Before Jobs for Nature, the paid team who managed the huge project area, including the 550ha Lenz Reserve, consisted of a 0.25 part-time project manager (me) and a casual predator control contractor (local resident Gavin White). 

Gavin White creates new trapline tracks, Tautuku river valley. Credit Jorge Jimenez

The three-year grant allowed Forest & Bird to provide casual paid employment to 16 people, a fulltime pest control role for Gavin, and additional field time for myself. Our numerous hard-working volunteers, including from Forest & Bird’s South Otago, Southland, and Dunedin Branches, continued to play a significant role. 

Our Jobs for Nature contractors came from a wide range of backgrounds, including local farmers, mana whenua, first-time employed youth, early career scientists, and experienced ecologists. Together, the team contributed 10,642 hours in the field. 

Botanical surveys revealed an ever-growing list of threatened native plants, including a nationally important population of creeping endemic foxglove Ourisia modesta, only the seventh known site for this species in Aotearoa New Zealand. 

Ourisia modesta. Credit Henry Hart

Knocking back browsing mammals is vital to protect these vulnerable plants, which occupy a small area. The population could be destroyed by one pig rooting at the site. We have applied for funds to fence off the plants but haven’t yet been successful. 

Jobs for Nature funding allowed us to double the range of our pest control operations from 3000ha to 6000ha. We were resourced to target red deer, pigs, possums, goats, and feral cats for the first time, as well as expanding our existing mustelid and rat trapping. 

The grant also helped us learn more about what is predating the nests of secretive mātātā South Island fernbird and track the breeding success of other vulnerable birds, including titipounamu rifleman. 

We were able to further study the distribution of pekapeka-tou-roa roost sites in the Tahakopa Valley beech forest and carry out site-specific weeding, including expanding forest edge habitat for Tautuku gecko. 

“Jobs for Nature gave me an opportunity to make some real gains, for conservation and personally,” said Gavin White, who has spent thousands of hours in the field. 

Now the challenge is to maintain the momentum, knowledge, and skills we’ve learned over the past three years so we can continue to protect Tautuku for future generations.