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The Amazing “Wildside Project” #1 on Banks Peninsula

The Wildside Project on Banks Peninsula is a unique New Zealand example of Community Conservation in Action, where landowners are actively leading the way on private land towards the restoration of an entire ecosystem within a working landscape.

Marie Haley, The Seventh Generation 2019

Wildside Project Started by Farmers

Wildside Project conservation work started 30 years ago when a farmer Mark Armstrong, who grew up with little blue penguins all over the farm, was showing visitors a penguin nest under his woolshed. He lifted the floor board to find a ferret in the nest with two dead adults. This ferret was found to contain the remains of seven newly hatched penguin chicks.

Local farmers had wondered why penguin numbers were dropping and Mark had spent eight years looking for a reason, but this was the first definitive proof that something was really wrong and action needed to be taken. That was in 1988 – the first year that adult penguins started to be predated upon and six yellow-eyed chicks were also lost. Sixteen ferrets were trapped in that first year but it was five years before he caught the last one and the carnage stopped, but not before two-thirds of the white-flippered penguin population were killed in Stony Bay.

Armstrong approached DOC and were able to borrow half a dozen traps. It soon became obvious that halting the decline meant stopping predators well before they reached the penguin colonies, so trap lines were established by the landowners up the valleys. Ten years later DOC established extensive trap lines along the ridges to cliff edges.

Penguin Farmers at Pohatu

Shireen and Francis Helps are often called the ‘penguin farmers’. They were so used to the sound and smell of penguins that they were alarmed when in the 1980s penguin numbers started to plummet. Many years of hard yakka in predator control, building nest boxes, and monitoring nests ensured that the decline of penguins was halted in Flea Bay/Pōhatu.

In other areas of Banks Peninsula penguins were pushed back to caves and cliff faces where predators had less access. In 2000/01 the first survey of Pōhatu was undertaken and 717 pairs were counted; even then this was found to be the largest mainland colony of penguins in Australia or New Zealand. In 2004, 893 penguin pairs were counted. In 2008, 1063 pair and in 2012 a staggering 1304 pairs; a year on year increase of five percent.

Little Blue Penguin in a nest box at Flea Bay.

The Wildside Project Protects the Yellow-eyed Penguins on Banks Peninsula

Yellow-eyed penguins are found at their northern nesting limit on Banks Peninsula and while the population is small it appears to be isolated from the mass mortality and disease events of Otago, which makes this population on the mainland particularly valuable. In the late 1980s up to ten nests produced eleven chicks per year. However, each year a number of predated penguins were also recorded.

Over time this loss had a real impact on the population culminating in a dramatic collapse of penguins down to one nest and no chicks throughout the early 2000s. The trend of one nest and no chicks has occurred again in 2018-2020 summers, land predators are under control, so the impacts this time appear to be from avian malaria, warm summers and the fishing industry destroying habitat and catching penguins as by-catch (largely unrecorded).

Juvenile yellow-eyed penguin at Flea Bay Pohatu Marine Reserve on the Wildside.

Yellow-eyed penguins have been an inspiration for Marie Haley. As a child she often witnessed large groups of yellow-eyed penguins at her beach, where there are no penguins nesting now. Hoiho numbers have dropped across mainland New Zealand and are now listed as endangered, with the population on Banks Peninsula remaining small and very vulnerable. A recovery plan needs to be implemented to ensure that this breeding area is safe for penguins migrating north from the core mainland population in Otago.

Marie Haley holding a yellow-eyed penguin for weighing on the Wildside.

Wildside Project is the Home to the Last Shearwaters on Banks Peninsula

Titi or sooty shearwater were once common across Banks Peninsula along with many other species of burrowing petrel, but by 1995 only three pairs remained in mainland Canterbury at Stony Bay on the edge of a 200m cliff.

Intrepid landowner Mark Armstrong drove a post in to the ground and secured himself to it with a rope around his waist, before lowering himself on to the slip-prone area where the titi nest on the top of this sheer cliff. There he built a chicken wire fence around that last pair. He also established a defensive line of predator traps. This was enough to ensure that the last pair were not lost to local extinction.

Titi or sooty shearwater, one of the worlds greatest migratory birds traveling over 65,000km’s each year from NZ to waters off Japan and Alaska.

Local groups formed a collaboration to build a predator-excluder fence around the colony. In 2010 the fence was closed and the story for this titi colony dramatically changed. In 2009 only one chick fledged and the very next year 20 chicks started on their great annual migration to Japan and Alaska. Year on year numbers have increased until we had 50 nesting attempts in 2018 with 33 chicks recorded pre-fledging.

Bar graph showing titi nesting attempts (blue) and chick at fledging (purple) on the Wildside

Regenerative Farming on Banks Peninsula

Initially the Wildside was a reaction to the issue of predation of little blue white-flippered penguins, endemic to Banks Peninsula. At the same time the community of traditional farmers was struggling with the 1980s financial downturn and started to look to diversify their income with on-farm tourism operations. One of these was the Banks Track. This brought about a shift from traditional farming to regenerative farming where beautiful scenery, biodiversity, and healthy forest were valued for economic reasons.

Hugh Wilson at Hinewai Reserve Local Legend and Conservation Hero

When in 1987 Hugh Wilson confidently set out to use gorse scrub as nursery canopy for spontaneous native forest restoration, Hinewai was among the first projects to apply this ecological understanding on a significant scale. It’s impact has been widespread. Hinewai is now the largest private reserve in New Zealand at 1250ha (1570ha under Hinewai management), turning around a marginal farm covered in gorse to native forest within 30 years.

Hugh envisioned a reserve that protects the full range of vegetation and wildlife from summit to sea, now in 2020 we are on the cusp of seeing this come vision coming into creation. However, neighbouring conservation covenants across the Haleys’ and Simpsons land in Fishermans’ Bay have seen this become a reality as the first full catchment protected ki uta ki tai through farmland in New Zealand.

Hugh Wilson, botanist, linguist and artist, teaches the next generation at Hinewai Reserve.

Hinewai is not alone. It is now connected into the Akaroa town catchment by protected areas owned by the NZ Forest Restoration Trust, by Misty Peaks Christchurch City Council Reserve and along the crater rim in both directions by DOC Ellangowen Reserve and by Queen Elizabeth II National Trust (QEII) and BPCT covenants, and other DOC and private reserves including Josef Langer Trust’s Panama Reserve. The Wildside is connected into the ocean by two Marine Reserves; Pohatu and Akaroa.

Josef Langer Trust Visionary Robin Burleigh Coined the “Wildside Project

DOC Ranger Robin Burleigh was involved with the protection of both species of penguin and managed the comprehensive Banks Peninsula little blue penguin census in 2000/01. The overwhelming impression was that the penguins were found in greatest numbers from Le Bons Bay to the Akaroa Headland, with a higher range of biodiversity, less weed pests and fewer exotic habitats than the wider Banks Peninsula.

Robin was the visionary who dreamed of the Wildside, an area with biodiversity worthy of special protection and with landowners who were deeply engaged in conservation that needed support and collaboration with agencies. Robin talked to key researchers, agencies and landowners and with wide ranging support, and funding from the Josef Langer Charitable Trust to contract trapper John Stuart and Wildside Coordinator Marie Haley, the Wildside was born.

Rangers from different government agencies, landowners and the community all work together to protect special species and landscapes on the Wildside.

The focus of the Wildside has moved on from the initial protection of pelagic sea birds to become a truly collaborative whole landscape restoration project within a living and working environment. The successes are considerable. Collaborative predator control has resulted in a dramatic turn-around for sea bird species. Twenty-four percent (at 2018) of the Wildside is protected through private covenants (17.5%) or public reserves (6.5%), and this figure is ever increasing. The first whole stream protected from summit to sea through farmland in New Zealand was on the Wildside, and seven other Wildside catchments currently have freshwater fencing underway, with the majority of each stream protected in nearly every bay.  

The Wildside project, indicated by black line, reserves in block colour, predator traps as dots. Covering 13,500ha and multiple bays and landowners.

Marie Haley of “The Seventh Generation” led the Wildside Project to National Success

In 2017 the Wildside was the WINNER of both the MfE DOC Green Ribbon National Community Leadership Award as well as the 2017 Inaugural MPI Community Bio-security Award. Giving acknowledgement to this humble community who for 30 years have gotten out in all types of weather and across all sorts of terrain to protect and celebrate the special species who live here alongside us.

Marie Haley, collecting the 2017 Community Leadership Green Ribbon Award, and making an impassioned speech as to the importance of communities taking ownership of their environments and quietly leading the way.

Learn More with a Wildside Tour from Akaroa’s #1 Expert Guide

If you want to be inspired and learn more about this amazing farmer and landowner led conservation project then contact Marie Haley to book a guided Wildside Tour. We don’t have a Wildside Booking Office, but sell all of our tours online at https://theseventhgeneration.org/

This Wildside Project is now manged by Wildside Coordinator Alice Webster of the Banks Peninsula Conservation Trust, Alice is available at alice.webster@bpct.org.nz  or 027 2539624

Marie Haley

I am your guide, Marie Haley, I was born and raised on Banks Peninsula. The seventh generation direct decedent of Akaroa’s very first French settler. I grew up on the family farm following in the footsteps of my Grandfather, and his Grandfather before.