06-05-2025
Donations helping keep rare bird alive
Donations from people all over New Zealand are helping efforts to keep Southern New Zealand dotterel/pukunui on the planet.
It is the world's rarest wading bird.
A year ago, there were just 101 left. This year, flock counts showed a population increase of four birds bringing the total to 105.
It was a small lift, but hugely significant, Department of Conservation (Doc) dotterel ranger Dan Cocker said.
"Pukunui only breed on Rakiura/Stewart Island and some of them migrate to Awarua Bay in Southland to feed.
"If they don't survive in these places, they'll be gone for good."
Numbers have fluctuated over the past 30 years due to different predators, but especially feral cats.
The population hit an all time low of 62 birds in 1992 and bounced back to 290 after intensive predator control in 2009, before rapidly declining again despite continued pest control efforts.
Doc has a dedicated dotterel recovery team who work hard on bird monitoring, banding and predator control at breeding sites and surrounding areas.
"We're thrilled the April flock counts showed a population increase," Mr Cocker said.
"But 105 is still a perilously low number for this one-of-a-kind bird. We can't take our foot off the gas."
In 2023, the New Zealand Nature Fund launched a campaign in partnership with Doc to raise funds from donors to support Doc's dotterel recovery team to protect the birds from predators.
New Zealand Nature Fund chief executive Sarah Lyttle said more than 600 people had already contributed to the dotterel campaign with more than $400,000 raised to date, including $200,000 from an anonymous party and $20,000 from the Southland branch of Forest & Bird.
Doc has used funds from these donations to employ additional trappers to target feral cats at nest sites, add cameras around key breeding sites to monitor feral cat numbers, buy extra feral cat kill traps, and support more helicopter flights to monitor remote nesting sites.
"Enabling people to invest directly in projects that prevent extinction is our mission and it's wonderful our donors have made a very tangible difference to the pukunui this season," she said.
Mr Cocker said donations "boosted our ground trapping efforts, resulting in 64 feral cats being trapped across our predator control zones. That's almost double what we caught last season".
"While the extra trapping efforts have benefited pukunui, we're barely holding the line for this species.
"We need to control feral cats across a much larger area where pukunui breed."
Doc was considering a proposal for an aerial 1080 operation to protect nesting Southern New Zealand dotterel ahead of the 2025-26 breeding season.
The goal was to increase numbers to at least 300 by 2035.
"We still have a long way to go to reach this goal," Mr Cocker said.
"The good news is if we work together, we can create safe havens for our taonga species by removing pests and restoring ecosystems." — APL
