A volunteer group that protects rare and endangered river breeding birds along the Ashley River in Canterbury is celebrating being recognised for its work.
Nick Ledgard searches for birds along the Ashley River. Photo: RNZ / Belinda McCammon
Ashley Rakahuri Rivercare Group has been monitoring the river for the past 15 years and was a finalist in last year's Green Ribbon Awards.
While small compared with most of Canterbury's braided rivers, Ashley River is host to a wide variety of threatened birds.
The work the group has done over the past 15 years means that while the numbers of these birds are declining on big rivers like Waimakariri and the Rakaia, their numbers are increasing along Ashley River.
The wrybill, black-billed gull, black-fronted tern, black stilt, banded dotterel, pied stilt and South Island pied oystercatcher may not be birds that most people are familiar with but their numbers are increasing through the hours volunteers put in monitoring them and working on pest control.
Black Fronted Tern on the Ashley Rakahuri River. Photo: Ashley Rakahuri Rivercare Group
The work is being hailed as a model for what can be done on the bigger rivers with money, community effort and local authority support.
Group chairperson Nick Ledgard is spending his retirement trying to increase the number of indigenous birds on the river.
"The end goal would be to have a population that is at least stable, and hopefully increasing, and local people be aware that they have something very special here.
"People call me from all over the world, wanting to see wrybill, to see the black-fronted terns and to have that as a sustainable and stable part of our community.
"We're only one kilometre from Rangiora, I don't think there's anywhere that has such a large urban concentration so close to indigenous birds breeding in their original habitat but that's not going to last if we don't look after them.''
Bev Alexander, Steve Attwood and Nick Ledgard work to protect Ashley River. Photo: RNZ / Belinda McCammon
The Ashley River is a foothills-fed river, as opposed to rivers which flow from the alps, like the Waimakariri, so it will dry up naturally from time to time and at the moment, it is very, very dry.
Canterbury has 60 percent of the country's braided river area, and Mr Ledgard said people just see the flat land as an opportunity to drive four-wheel-drives over them, across the breeding grounds of the birds.
"If I look around me, if I drive between the braided rivers, everything I see wasn't here 200 years ago because it was all introduced.
"The only place where I'll see part of the original ecosystem is at the braided rivers and the most obvious of that is the birds.''
One of the problems that comes with the dryness is the growth of lupins on the river bed.
The river hasn't had a decent flood in the past 18 months, which has allowed the lupins to grow, Mr Ledgard said.
This is a problem for the birds, who only nest on the ground and in open shingle, so the growth of weeds like lupins, crowd their area.
The invasion of exotic weeds, including lupins, is one of three main threats to the birds here. Other threats are predators - such as stoats, wild cats and hedgehogs - and human disturbance, including people driving on the river.
Volunteers like Bev Alexander are crucial to the group's success.
"When I look at these beautiful little black fronted terns flying around, walking over the waters, gathering little fish and flying off to a colony to feed their young, it's just beautiful.''
Ms Alexander doesn't think people appreciate how important the habitat is to the birdlife.
She enjoys the variety of birdlife found on the river and the more she visits the more she realises how important it is to volunteer in order to prevent the numbers from dwindling.
It's crucial to ensure broom and lupins don't take over the waterways, she said.
"It's not many years ago that families could come down and picnic, swim in the water, but that's a thing of the past now, for various reasons, including the water being polluted. But also the broom and lupins are taking over the open spaces that used to be here.''
Volunteer Steve Attwood's main interest is bird photography and conservation, which gave him a good excuse to come out to the river at the weekends.
He will often approach people if he sees them driving over the riverbeds.
"People say 'oh these riverbeds are just a wasteland, what's the harm in hooning around?' and politicians say 'any water that reaches the sea is a waste', but it's not.
"This is an amazing environment and the birds here have evolved for it. Studying them and taking pictures of them and telling people about them is a privilege.''
After 15 years the volunteers believe they can now safely claim to be making a difference.
They hope their work continues to raise awareness of the area, especially by bringing protection to the birds during the breeding season, which runs from September to January.