Te Mimiorakopa Stream

Kapiti Island has a long history, being a tactical place for Maori for example. It has been a bird sanctuary already in the 1890ies. Then it was still a settlement for farmers with cows and sheep, many trees and bush chopped. Unfortunately with humans also pests are coming to an island. New Zealand was a mammal free country until the first Maori introduced rats. With 'white men' the situation got worse, many birds were extinct or on the verge of extinction because some of them can't really fly anymore and more important, their nests, eggs and chicken stay on ground. Very easy preys for rats, stoats and others. The possum, which is highly protected in Australia, is a pest in NZ. He eats heaps of indigene vegetation which also is a big problem. In the beginning of the 20th century they started to get rid of the mammals on the island. Cow and sheep are quite easy but with the others it's way more difficult. They killed 20'000 possums for example until 1980ies. The rats were the biggest challenge Getting rid of rats is a all-or-nothing thing. If one survives and is pregnant, you can start from all over again. In the 90ies they started a huge rat poisoning on the whole island. They had to protect one bird, the weka, since that one just eats everything and would have been at risk. No problem with the other birds. They were successful and in 1998 the Island was pest free. In 2010 a stoat was seen on the island. A huge stoat hunt was started and 3 animals were found and killed. How did they happen to be there in first place? Every person, unless you are struggeling with your jetski, is searched for anmials before entering the island. The distance to the mainland is 5km that none of these animal can swim this distance . What they think happened was that one female, pregnant stoat was on a piece of wood washed from a river into the sea by a storm and half by taxi, half by swimming she arrived on the island. They continued a intensive search for those animal for two years but haven't seen one since. Flora and fauna are coming back in large numbers and doing very well. It's actually where most of the brown spotted kiwi lives, 1200-1500 animals. Next week 32 birds will be caught and brought to other places on the mainland to establish new population or mix the genes with the ones already there. We got all those information from Manaakai, a young Maori whose family lives on the island. When the nature reserve was declared, his great-great-grandmother refused to leave the island so there is private property and that's were we slept in cabins. All in all a fascinating place, I would have loved to stay a bit longer.
Those parokeet you see on the pictures are Kakas. Very curious and very intelligen. They open bags, steal food and do not believe you not having any. Beautiful little fellows. Unfortunately this is not natural behavior being that close to human that's why I tried to shush him away. Very unsuccessfully as you see...Read more