Fieldwork

Beginning in 2000 ACT has employed a year round field worker to advance scientific and other programmes. This commitment to local employment and a sustained programme of data gathering and education activity has been the basis for the increasing resource we can now contribute to the work of other Great Barrier environmental initiatives, educational and cultral programmes, as well as being directly beneficial to the Awana area.

ACT fieldwork includes: (start date)

• Counting brown teal flocks at the Awana stream flock site each month (July 2000).
• Encouraging local farmers to carry out activities like wetland grazing and rotary sedge and rush slashing when it won't harm brown teal.
• Monthly rat trapping and indexing (April 2001).
• Year-round feral cat trapping in the ACT forest and coast (2002).
• Monitoring NZ dotterel and variable oyster catcher breeding in summer (December 2000).
• Telling visitors about the dangers of dogs and humans disturbing dotterel and oyster catcher nests (2000).
• Monitoring the beach, with the Awana Beach Care Group, for signs of cats and stoat footprints (2000).
• Counting shags each month and monitoring their breeding (2001).
• Surveying the coast and forest for petrel nesting colonies between October and February (2001).
• Laying trapping lines to detect any possums, stoats or weasels (2000).
• Annually monitoring forest birds by five-minute bird counts in April (August 2001).
• Counting birds on farmland twice a year in winter and summer (August 2001).
• Nightshooting to reduce rabbit numbers (2000).
• Monitoring and controlling pukeko numbers (2001).

Information obtained from the ACT rat trapping program contributed information to a recent article in the Biological Invasions Journal - Click here to download the prospects of eradication article in pdf format. (Courtesy of Springer publication - WEBSITE)

ACT's field workers use cage traps for feral cats and check them daily in keeping with DoC and the SPCA's animal ethics standards.

ACT staff also collect and write up data, write quarterly reports and develop fundraising initiatives.