An amazing journey was had this year for Rūma Kereru at Kaniere School and its teacher, Maria Lockington and her daughter, Grace.
It all started at Hokitika Primary last year with some penguin education and some planting with little ones and Maria’s first experiences of the West Coast Penguin Trust and the fight for the protection of penguins. Maria moved to Kaniere School this year and took her passion for penguin conservation with her into Rūma Kereru. They started with some penguin education and went on to taking action with a nest box project, and raising awareness through creative means of animation, powerpoints and education resources. It was an absolute pleasure to work with such an enthusiastic and passionate teacher.
Meanwhile, whilst Maria and I were starting the next box project, I carried out a penguin dissection class at John Paul II for seniors (years 11,12,13) which was a huge success again. A young and talented student, Grace Lockington, happened to take part in this dissection class and found it fascinating and at the same time she had won her place on a prestigous full-scholarship learning opportunity by AFS and the University of Pennsylvania for young women interested in STEM. She had been struggling to come up with a Capstone Project for her scholarship and then it clicked – penguins, nest boxes, primary kids.
Read Grace’s journey here and find out about the AFS Global Stem Accelorators Programme here.
And so the journey began. The class did design work, advocacy work, built 6 nest boxes and took a trip to the beach to learn how to spot tracks, learn about their habitat and how to protect penguins and other seabirds.
Have a look at their journey here.
Thanks to this young chap and his mother, the beach was cleaned up from rubbish. They never go to the beach without a spare rubbish bag just incase there is rubbish to collect!
A huge thank you to Rūma Kereru, Kaniere School and the Lockington family for all the hard work and dedication, patience and time spent from the West Coast Penguin Trust and myself!
While materials were chosen that would stand up to the harsh coastal conditions, those same coastal conditions are conducive to plant growth! Occasional checks of the fences have been carried out by volunteers and rangers so that any maintenance needs can be identified and remedied. The never-ending need for maintenance is managing the vegetation that can grow through the fence, for example gorse, blackberry and hydrangea, pushing it to breaking point in places, or flop over causing damage from the weight of rank grass, rushes and weeds such as montbretia.
Volunteers recently spent a few hours tidying up the main fence along Woodpecker Bay north of Punakaiki so a big shout out to them - thank you Fiona, Jony, Reef, Katrina, Mandy, Marty, Teresa and Deb! Flax had been pressing down on the fence, but now the fence has been freed up by these wonderful volunteers - and they picked up a fair bit of rubbish too.
Volunteer Natassja Savidge has offered to check and help maintain the Hokitika penguin protection fence and joined Ranger Lucy Waller and Manager Inger Perkins in May to inspect the length of the fence. Some minor issues were found but the main finding was the extent of the vegetation growth that was damaging the fence in places. Big thanks to Natassja!
