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Dulux – Protecting Our Place
Kea Conservation Trust receives 3-year funding boost
With their distinctive green feathers and cheeky habits, the kea has long added a dash of colour to New Zealand’s wilderness. And now, Dulux New Zealand is pitching in to ensure this iconic creature will be protected for years to come. Over the next three years, Dulux New Zealand will be contributing $50,000 annually towards the Kea Conservation Trust’s nest monitoring programme. The funding is part of the Protecting Our Place partnership which involves Dulux New Zealand working with DOC to paint and protect
its network of huts and lodges, to the value of NZ$1.5 million. The kea nest monitoring programme started in association with DOC in 2009 in the Nelson Lakes area. Kea Conservation Trust’s chair Tamsin Orr-Walker, says “the programme was initiated in Nelson Lakes to identify fledging timing to support our summer population surveys. This confirmed that we were not missing seeing young kea on the mountain tops due to earlier breeding events but that breeding pairs were not succeeding at raising chicks to fledging age; and predation appeared to be one of the main
threats. As such annual nest monitoring has become a vital tool to record annual fledgling survival rates and more particularly, risk of predation of kea at nest sites by introduced predators such as stoats and possums. This information has proven invaluable; helping direct conservation efforts through development of a pilot predator control programme to be initiated at our Nelson lakes survey site during the 2013 breeding season. We hope that the nest monitoring programme this year will show more chicks successfully fledging at this site as a result.” she says.
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