After two years as Trust Chair, Reuben Lane has stepped down as both Chair and Trustee for the next year to focus on other projects and, at the recent AGM, Robin Long was elected as Chair.
The Trust is very fortunate to have Robin taking on this role, bringing a great deal of field experience and wisdom to the role as well as five years’ experience as a Trustee.
Robin Long grew up at Gorge River in remote South Westland and became interested in birds and her surrounding environment from a very young age. After becoming fascinated with the local breeding population of tawaki (Fiordland penguins), she started carrying out surveys for the Trust at age 14 and has since counted over 1400 nests spread throughout South Westland, Fiordland and Stewart Island. This helped to better estimate the total tawaki population.
Working for DOC in Hokitika monitoring birds, pests and vegetation for the past seven summers allowed her to spend a couple of months each year surveying tawaki and monitoring nests, as well as helping the Tawaki Project to research the 80% of the time that these penguins spend at sea.
She is now studying a Postgraduate Diploma in Wildlife Management at Otago University and plans to complete a Masters on alpine jumping spiders – a group of endemic New Zealand species we know nothing about. For the same reasons she became interested in tawaki when they were poorly known, Robin is passionate about protecting other species that are generally overlooked and receive little or no funding.
In her spare time, she enjoys rock climbing, tramping, botany, a range of crafts, and has built herself a tiny house in Hokitika.
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!
