Remote volunteers raise voices in the wild
It’s doubtful anyone will hear you screaming in the unpopulated Matukituki Valley wilderness of Wanaka’s back and beyond.
There’s no cellphone coverage, no carrier pigeons, and sending smoke signals could get you labelled a criminal or negligent nuisance.
Fortunately for New Zealand’s outdoor community, there’s another way to get attention. A radio.
And happily for those in the southern boondocks, there’s a company in a city about 500km away, that makes radios.
Sir Angus Tait founded Tait Communications in Christchurch in 1969 and it now employs about 650 people around the world.
Tait Communications last week gave the Matukituki Charitable Trust volunteers three bright orange, waterproof radio sets so they can communicate with each other while setting pest traps and counting birds and bats.
The Matukituki Charitable Trust was established by Canterbury couple Gillian and Derek Crombie in 2013 and is starting its fourth summer of a long-term predator reduction project.
Volunteers last year included students from Otago Boys’ High School.
Wanaka conservation identities Stu and Heather Thorne, who have been nurturing a small robin population in the park for the last 10 years, are also involved.
By the end of last summer, 483 traps had been installed along 19 trap lines by operations manager Paul Hellebrekers and volunteers.
Hellebrekers’ team has now set up 512 traps and should have 650 by the end of this summer.
Last season’s work was ‘‘the peak’’ because volunteers were installing traps and monitoring ones put in the year before.
‘‘It was double the workload. I think we have about 80 odd traps to go and then it will become more manageable,’’ Crombie said.
As at May 2016, the trap line work had cost at least $70,000, with 452 pests caught between September 2015 and May 2016.
The trust says the count is low but ‘‘encouraging’’ and shows predation control is working.
‘‘Paul Hellebrekers is obsessed. Completely obsessed. He really is,’’ Crombie said.
‘‘We couldn’t do it without him. He is an absolute winner. He may even get the rest of the traps in, in the next couple of weeks. Then we will have 600 or so traps to be monitored every month. That’s quite a test in itself. That’s when the radios will come in.
‘‘There are a few traps up high, above French Ridge Hut and in other alpine areas. That was a worry because we could have people in there on their own and it becomes a real safety issue.’’
Hellebrekers said the trap lines were a ‘‘positive success’’ and having a significant impact on bird life, with good numbers of South Island robin, rock wren and kea being observed.
One of the highlights for him was the discovery of a small population of rare long-tail bats in the red beech forest near Aspiring Hut.
‘‘It is a good trust, a good group of volunteers. It is quite hard work though. Some of the lines are reasonably tough. But we have had some good successes,’’ Hellebrekers said.
Tait Communications’ mobile radio package is worth about $4000 and was handed over to the Crombies in Christchurch last week.
The equipment would be trialled over the next couple of weeks but with a lot of snow at high altitude, Crombie was not expecting volunteers to go into those places until October or November.
The Department of Conservation also uses Tait mobile radios and has given the trust permission to use its land mobile radio channels.