Conservationists try to set up gannet colony

An ambitious project has been launched in the Abel Tasman National Park as conservationists attempt to start a gannet colony there.

The idea is the brainchild of Project Janzsoon, a privately funded trust working with the Department of Conservation, the Abel Tasman Birdsong Trust, the community and local iwi to restore the ecology of the park over a 30-year time frame.

The team has picked Separation Point as the optimum spot to attract the birds.

Reporter Alison Hossain joined DOC's threatened fauna ranger in Takaka, Mike Ogle, on one of his first checks of the site since their work began.

"Here we are in Abel Tasman National Park, and we're on a side track that leads down to Separation Point, and if you listen very carefully in the distance you might just hear gannets calling. They're not real gannets, it's a recording from a loudspeaker that we've set up to attract gannets to hopefully create a colony here at Separation Point."

"I would be hoping we might see some real ones but we've just bumped into some friends who said the only ones they saw were made of fibreglass, so no. But maybe in the last twenty minutes since they've been there one has landed, that would be a wonderful surprise."

And as we approached Separation Point, there was the sight we had been hoping for:

"OK so we're on a bluff just leading down to Separation Point now and we've just seen two gannets flying overhead. They're quite high, still about 200 metres above the sea, whereas where we're doing the gannet restoration, we're only about 20 metres above sea level so if they flew over they would have been well above our decoys and our sound system. But they quite often cruise along this coast and what have we got, oh a twenty knot norwester howling across the front of Separation Point here, and when it's blowing like this the gannets come right in close, they come right over the rocks and the lighthouse at Separation Point, so that's probably what those ones have been doing, looking for a feed. And there's a fair chance they come from the colony out at the end of Farewell Spit."

That gannet colony at Farewell Spit has about 5000 breeding pairs but the site is vulnerable to erosion and pigs so the colony is at risk of running out of space, hence one of the main reasons for trying to establish a new colony here.

As Mike Ogle and I scrambled down to Separation Point with Peter Gaze from Project Janzoon, we discover it's not just my hair that took a battering in this wind:

"Now we're right down on Separation Point itself, we're down on the rock platform which the lighthouse and the gannet decoys are sitting on. The first thing we're going to have a look at is the loudspeaker which is pumping out the gannet noises that's attracting the gannets in. It looks like it's at a bit of a funny angle. It cops a lot of wind here and last night it was rattling in town so I imagine the wind was fairly roaring out here last night. We might need to have a look and see if we can up our anchoring system a little, a little more steel, a few more bolts into the rock."

Once the loudspeaker is repositioned, Mike Ogle climbed inside the lighthouse to inspect the camera to find out if there have been any visitors.

"So this is the time lapse camera and it's set to capture an image every ten minutes and the batteries and the card in there are big enough to last one month, so we only need to do this once a month so it doesn't need to be done too often. It's held on just by this strap so we'll take the strap off and go down out of the wind and change the card and change the batteries."

As we head back towards a more sheltered spot in the park, we are joined by one of the national park's hut wardens, Crystal Brindle, who has been tasked to look after the monitoring station over the summer.

She said it was a prime example of why she wanted to work in the conservation field in New Zealand.

"So it is what I wanted to do. I wanted to work with DOC so that I could learn more about New Zealand and contribute to the conservation of these great places. The reason I wanted to work here is that I saw the national parks when I visited and I was absolutely blown away by the management and also the natural resources that are here, so I really wanted to give back in a different way and become involved as much as I can and working for DOC is a great way to do that."

Mr Ogle said although the Australasian gannet was not an endangered species, it was about looking at the bigger picture.

"Gannets aren't threatened. In fact nationally their numbers are increasing, and they've been increasing since the 1980s by a couple of percent every year. They are one of those rare native species that's doing alright with us doing absolutely nothing to it."

"This isn't DOC funding that's paying for it, this is Project Janzsoon which is a private trust and the aim of the trust is to restore biodiversity to Abel Tasman National Park, and so this is a project that's come through funding from Project Janzsoon. If it works, which we're reasonably confident and hopeful that it will, then not only do we get the birds but we also get all the things that seabirds bring with them. So we get all the guano and the nutrients and so on, so then maybe we'll get enough guano in here we can bring in Cook's scurvy grass which is threatened, so we've got that bird-enriched environment that scurvy grass needs so that's wonderful. Then maybe we can start getting more invertebrates and maybe some lizards come along. It's an eco-system restoration, and it can snowball," he said.

Peter Gaze from Project Janzsoon said they believed they had done everything they could to encourage the gannets to visit … and stay.

"Well because gannets are colonial breeders they need this sort of mob psychology, they've got to believe that everybody else thinks it's a good place to breed too. So we are trying to assist that by putting out fibreglass decoys and also playing through big speakers the gannet calls, the calls that would normally be heard at a gannet colony. So any renegade gannet that happens to be cruising past looking for an alternative would hopefully be lured in with the thought that what's good for these guys would be good for me too. We just hope that that will work and that enough live birds will pitch in and provide that critical mass, that movement, that others will follow."

And he said all they can really do now is cross their fingers, and wait.

"With wildlife restoration the results are never guaranteed. I'd like to think in five years' time Mike and I will be able to come back and see 20-30 pairs nesting here and we'll be sitting on top of the lighthouse having a cold beer and celebrating. But the chances are we'll come back in five years' time and say that was a good idea and we got it wrong, or the birds got it wrong. There's no guarantees but you've got to take a bit of a punt and we hope for the best."