references
Photo: Nathan Donaldson
OCTOBER – NOVEMBER
KCT Conflicts Coordinator, Andrea, organised a kea day at Ngatimoti school during October. KCT Field Coordinator Corey and his kea dog extraordinaire, Ajax, also joined in to show the kids their particular skills while Christine from Natureland in Nelson inspired the kids to create enrichment for the KCT’s kea playgrounds. The first Queenstown Startup weekend was attended by the KCT Chair who pitched an idea for a kea sightings phone app to a room full of entrepreneurs. The idea was snapped up by a team of marketers, app developers and business gurus, and after 52 hrs of intense brainstorming, the Wildlife Tracker concept was born! Most excitingly, Boost New Media stepped forward to develop the app. Thanks to everyone involved including the Startup weekend mentors, our hardworking team Kirsten, David, Tamas, Ben, Bruce and Toshi, and to Nathan Donaldson and his team at Boost for believing in us! Donations/membership received: $44,056.30
DECEMBER – JANUARY
Our nest monitoring season was completed at the end of December with a total of 33 female kea being tracked throughout the five-month period. Four of these females successfully raised a total of 11 chicks between them. A supplementary feed and monitoring area was set up at Nelson Lakes to divert kea away from toxic baits during a 1080 drop in December. All the kea who visited the diversionary area were confirmed safe; however, one of our resident breeding females sitting on her nest within the drop zone ingested poison baits and died. The new Wildlife Tracker phone app with 10 species loaded (including kea) was launched in December (and promoted on 3 News tech bytes). This provided a unique opportunity for the KCT to work with other conservation groups around NZ. Thank you to Boost new Media (who developed the app pro bono) and who continue to refine this great conservation tool! The KCT Chair presented at 2 veterinary conferences in December: the Retired Veterinary Association in Alexandra and the Veterinary Wildlife Conference in Wanaka. A call for vet help by the KCT was enthusiastically answered and discussions are on-going. Our summer catch trips run by our Field Coordinator Corey with support from his faithful sidekick Tom were initiated on 5 January in Kahurangi and Nelson Lakes. A total of 18 volunteers took part in the 10-day effort which resulted in a total of 7 kea caught. A total of 43 kea were monitored throughout Battle for our Birds, 4 of which were confirmed dead from ingesting 1080. Donations received: $5,579.43
The summer catch trips were completed in the Hawdon Valley during February. A total of 26 kea were caught over the entire 15-day programme and 3 transmitters placed on adults. A total of 30 volunteers (including unpaid experienced bird handlers) contributed the equivalent of 156 days effort in total. Thanks to everyone for such a great effort!
FEBRUARY – MARCH
‘Matu’, a young male kea involved in kea researcher Clio Reid’s behavioural studies, was killed by a car at the Viaduct Lookout (Death’s corner) in February. An intense discussion on the importance of signage to alert drivers to kea on the road was initiated on our Facebook page as a result. Great to hear everyone’s ideas. Two kea research papers were available to view online during February: Nic Dussex’s genetics paper (journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0118522) and Erin Kennedy (www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1642/AUK-14-196.1).
Photo: Clio Reid
KCT Advisor and President of the Zoological Society of Auckland (ZSA), Dr Lorne Roberts, presented a talk entitled “An MOU between communities and kea” to ZSA members. And lastly our FB presence increased a whopping 3,000 likes across the year to 5621 by the end of March 2015! Donations received: $3,424.31
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Photo: Corey Mosen