The Blue Duck
Rachel, my wife of 100 years, has counted 53 different species of birds around our property over the past few years, and 33 of those are native. Birds that should be here, and birds that deserve all our efforts to look after them.
There are approximately 500 traps around the station for stoats, weasels, ferrets, rats, mice, hedgehogs, possums and feral cats; all enemies of the blue duck as well as other native species.
I credit Rachel, with the conservation ethic that our family continues to care for the land with, and for the way that ethic continues to influence every decision made, about the stewardship of our land for the future.
That our son Dan continues with his wife and children to follow that path, and that his staff well led by the hardworking Mel, keep all the work progressing is credit to them all. None of us are an island either, everyone on the farm believes in what’s going on, and some wonderful volunteers add immeasurable breadth and depth, to contribute to the amount of work we are able to get through.
It’s not just the birds either. It is so easy to forget all the unseen critters, which make up the native societies that live in and around our bush. The skinks , the geckos, the wētā. The moths, for heaven’s sake, are disappearing.
Every time I see some well-intentioned person advertising that they will plant a tree, I cringe. Because just like with saving the birds, it’s not that simple. Anybody can plant a tree. it’s the easiest thing to do. The real measure of the person is in looking after that tree, the real work.
Trapping is the same, in that you have to keep at it. Doing it once is not a waste of time, but doing it continuously, is the commitment we all have to make.
There are a number of weta boxes around the station to encourage this cool native insect. The destruction of the weta’s native habitat and their vulnerability to predators such as cats, hedgehogs and rats has diminished their numbers over the years and the Department of Conservation now considers that 16 out of the 70 species are at risk.
For the native trees we should really be planting that’s a 10 to 20 year commitment, and one that is not for the faint hearted.
So, Rachel’s lifelong crusade to save the most vulnerable things is the tip of the iceberg, but we must not let the challenge daunt us.
I’m not going to bore you with a whole pile of figures, suffice to say, that since the Blue Duck conservation programme has been going, we are well north of 20,000 rats trapped, a few thousand mustelids, (ferrets, stoats and weasels) thousands of hedgehogs and many hundred cats. And thousands of goats, an increasingly large number of deer, whose population is exploding, and man, they do some damage.
We are not so much anti cat, as anti-anything out of its environment. Cats become feral and nocturnal in our bush, and you would be amazed at how many are out here.
Cats are apex predators, right at the top of the food chain, and don’t just kill for food, but because it’s in their DNA to kill. They do it for fun.
And it’s not really 100 years of marriage – in quality of life, it’s more like a thousand.
See: Blue Duck Station
Blue Duck Station has acres of tracked land superb for backcountry horse trekking. The scenery varies from native bush canopy to rivers and streams, ridge top tracks and mountain views.
Blue Duck Station offers an unparalleled celestial experience.
The extraordinary natural setting offers visitors the chance to observe many species of flora, fauna and bird life found in the native bush and along the banks of both the Whanganui and Retaruke Rivers and Kaiwhakauka stream.
Found only in New Zealand the blue duck, or whio as it’s called in Maori, is a unique and threatened species. A torrent duck the whio requires clear fast flowing water, like that of the Kaiwhakauka and Retaruke Rivers on Blue Duck Station, and approximately 15 of the remaining 1500 pairs can be found here. Photo: Leanne Silver
