New Zealand

H'Okay, so...

It's been about forever since I've blogged – my apologies. As you probably read on Jon's blog, we are now safely settled in New Zealand. In fact, we are nearly done with our 'safely settled' phase of the trip. Three and a half weeks down, we leave Mount Bruce in one week. We've secured a 22-day car rental for pretty cheap ($20/day). Since New Zealand is 'developed' rather than 'developing,' they have the same shamefully poor public transportation found in the US – cars are absolutely necessary to see anything other than major cities. Fortunately though, the entire south island is only 600 miles long, so you don't actually have all that much ground to cover during our three week tour.

But, onto my life of late...

I'm volunteering at Mt Bruce National Wildlife Centre for a month. We provide labor in exchange for housing, but are still responsible for paying for our groceries. Every day with at least decent weather (really quite low standards), Jon and I get an assignment from our boss, load up our backpacks with eggs and rabbit jerky, and head out into the woods. Out in the woods we have a grand treasure hunt – remarkably similar to large swaths of my childhood memories – except this time our treasure is decaying rats and poison.

160 million years ago, New Zealand was part of the super-continent Gondwallaland along with Australia, Antarctica, South America, Africa, and India. 60 million years ago, New Zealand pushed off and has had its own isolated environment ever since. In this special little test-tube, evolution cooked up a unique ecosystem dominated by birds rather than mammals – the only native mammals here are three species of bats. Humans arrived only 800 or 1000 years ago from Polynesia – the same people who established populations as far away as Hawaii and Easter Island (off the coast of Chile) about 1200 years ago. These first arrivals brought their culture and animals with them, and initiated the decline of endemic bird populations.

Mount Bruce's 8100 acres are home to the NZ captive breeding program and some of the largest populations of reintroduced species on the mainland, including ~150 kaka, ~40 kokako, and 23 adult kiwi. Jon and I have also been continually impressed at how nearly every New Zealander we talk to has been to or at least knows of Mt Bruce. It is the public face of the Department of Conservation's wildlife program and has a state-of-the-art visitors center with interactive displays that rival anything I've ever seen.

While other reserves use predator-proof fences to insulate their bird populations, Mt Bruce's size necessitates another approach: the entire reserve is covered in predator traps and poison bait stations. Some 100 miles of tracks line the hills, each roughly maintaining elevation, and in total producing something like a crudely-drawn topo-map. Tracks are rugged passageways hacked through the forest or bush with a poison bait station every 100m and a trap every 200m along the line.

When our boss first arrived here, six years ago, they could catch 100 Australian possums in a day and you could hear the rats scurrying toward the bait stations as you walked away. These days, they no longer catch possums, and Jon and I only find rats in about one in four traps – so the system is actually working quite well. In our three weeks, Jon and I have cleaned out ~50 rats, one feral cat, five ferrets, and one stoat. I would say 'caught,' but most of the animals we see have begun the process of decay weeks before we get there – yummy.

But as long as it's not raining the job really is pretty fun. And recently Jon and I have doubled back over tracks that have already had the poison removed – these tracks are closest to the highway and also contain kiwi nest sites so they are trapped every two weeks. We've become pretty calloused to dead animals and not having to deal with poison means we can move faster, which feels good.

Anyway, long post already... so, quickly now... pictures are from Mount Bruce, or one of our weekend trips around the North Island. On our first trip, Jon, Diane and I shot up north to Tauranga then cut over to Gisborne spent the afternoon driving down the coast, visiting wineries. Last weekend, Diane was awesome and let us borrow her car, and Jon and I drove south along the coast and then visited Wellington. We spent the morning in the national museum, and in the afternoon we attended a huge food show with 180+ booths giving out samples of wines, cheese, meats, and prepared foods – awesome.

Please check out some of my photos at http://mackbrickley.shutterfly.com/ . It currently only has photos from New Zealand, but South American pics will slowly find their way there too.