Gala dinner to celebrate kākāpō at Maungatautari
The milestone of settling kākāpō at Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari will be celebrated with a charity gala dinner.
But it will also be a chance to raise funds towards the operation’s $5000 a day bill to protect some of New Zealand’s most precious wildlife.
Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari is the world’s biggest pest-free sanctuary - 3400 hectares protected by a 47-kilometre fence - just a 30-minute drive south of Cambridge.
It is the home to inland New Zealand’s only kākāpō population, thriving kiwi, kaka, kokako, stitchbird, saddleback, kakariki and takahe.
There is a lot of people power and funds that goes into making sure that predators are kept out, says general manager Helen Hughes.
“So any fundraising that we can arrange, is important to keep the forest in order and make sure that the costs are being covered.”
The gala dinner on June 5 will be a follow-up to the dinner in mid-2022.
This was held to support and prepare for the safe arrival of the kākāpō.
Hughes said it was an opportunity for the team to connect with the community and look at the work happened at the sanctuary since the endangered birds arrived.
“It’s really a celebration of their arrival, talk about the work that we do as a sanctuary and a way for us to fundraise.”
The mountain received a small funding boost from the Department of Conservation through the Jobs for Nature Program - about to end in June.
While there was an “amazing support network of partners and sponsors”, including Waipa District Council, Waikato Regional Council, Wel, Mother Earth, Profile group and others, tourism was a really critical element, Hughes said.
She said the sanctuary was on a tourism journey and team was working to improve visitor numbers over the next 12 months.
About 20,000 people currently visit the mountain every year, but their target was to increase it to nearly 100,000.
This was a fifth of Waitomo Cave tourism - less than an hour south of the sanctuary.
“We'd like to see that increase but not to the level that perhaps other tourist areas see.
“We're limiting the numbers to 300 a day and that’s to ensure that we’re not hurting the mountain as such.
“If we can get people to come in and see what we do, share the word and increase the numbers, that will also help us with constantly battling for the revenue.”
The sanctuary had a series of baited traps that collect predators around the perimeter of the fence.
The fence line itself had a hood over it, preventing predators from getting in.
If a tree fell through the fence line, which happened during the wet and windy season, the team had 90 minutes - on average - before a pest entered the sanctuary.
Hughes said it could be 3am when they get an alert and the team was out with tools within an hour and a half.
“Then we’ll run trapping lines inside looking for about six to 12 weeks.”
Further to that, there were monitoring lines, tracking cars, trail cameras, and more for the utmost safety of native flora and fauna.