Nga Manu Nature Reserve Nga Manu Nature Reserve News

zooboy28

zooboy28

Well-Known Member
There doesn't seem to have been much news from Nga Manu over the past couple of years, but they have recently recieved $15,000 towards a new complex to temporarily hold lizards rescued from an area that will be used for a new road. The article doesn't appear to say if they are on show or not though.

Story & Photos here: Lizards in path of Transmission Gully motorway shifted to new $15k home | Stuff.co.nz

About $15,000 has been spent on swanky new digs for 56 lizards whose homes happened to be in the path of the Transmission Gully motorway.

Major earthworks are just months away from starting on the four-lane, 27-kilometre inland motorway between Porirua and Paekakariki, north of Wellington.

But before the diggers can rip in, the business consortium building the $850 million road has had to figure out what to do with the native reptiles and worms who call Transmission Gully home.

A copper skink enjoys the surrounds of his new home at the Nga Manu Nature Reserve in Waikanae.

The solution was an all-expenses-paid two-year holiday in Waikanae.

In May the business consortium, known as the Wellington Gateway Partnership, sent a team of six into the Transmission Gully bush to retrieve the wildlife living there.

Senior environmental advisor Reuben Mills said it took eight days to round up 46 copper skinks, six common geckos and four brown skinks, as well as about 20 peripatus worms, also known as velvet or walking worms, living among the boulders.

"Nobody really understood how many lizards we'd capture before we went in there," Mills said. Earlier investigations had suggested there may also be falcons, kaka and bats living in the 240 hectare area but none were found.

The worms were shifted to neighbouring bush, while the lizards were moved to a new home at the Nga Manu Nature Reserve near Waikanae, which the Wellington Gateway Partnership contributed about $15,000 towards refurbishing.

They will spend the next two years there, relaxing in the spacious confines of nine specially-constructed "apartment cages" before they are shifted back to new boulder banks in Transmission Gully, close to where they were discovered.

Three empty apartment cages are waiting at the nature reserve for any more lizards that are found as the motorway's construction progresses.

Nature reserve manager Dave Banks said the gecko enclosures had been filled with ferns, bark, sticks, branches and other native vegetation to make them feel like home.

All the species were considered "at-risk" but not endangered, he said.

"All going well, we might also see a little bit of breeding."

Mills said one of the aims of the project was to create as many "enduring assets" as possible along the way, like the new lizard enclosure.

By the time the motorway is open in 2020, about 500 hectares of new planting will have also been completed in the surrounding area.
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I briefly visited Nga Manu today. Here are some things that I learned about the facility today that I feel are noteworthy.

-Most importantly, they no longer have Polynesian Rats.
-Their remaining Mute Swan was given to a private owner in Levin about two years ago, because of its aggressive behaviour.
-The mixed waterfowl aviary is now used to house only their breeding pair of Blue Ducks. This pair had four ducklings recently (I think that they were about a month old), which are being held in a separate enclosure. Once these ducklings get eight weeks older, they will be transferred to Turangi, and they will eventually be released into the wild from there.
-The White-faced Heron that was in the New Zealand Pigeon aviary died several years ago. It was apparently old.
-The Little Owls were transferred to Wingspan, as it was feared that their enclosure at Nga Manu was too small for them.
-Three Australasian Swamphen/Pukeko chicks are being held in an aviary next to the Red-crowned Parakeet aviary until they get older.
 
They no longer have Kiore at all, or just not on show?

Do they still have Western Weka signed?
 
Chlidonias said:
They no longer have Kiore at all, or just not on show?
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Not at all. I specifically asked two staff members (the manager and an employee who has been working there for over twenty years) whether or not they still have Kiore. I think that those staff members said that the Kiore's prolific breeding meant that continuing to keep them would have been too difficult.
Do they still have Western Weka signed?
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I think that there was a sign in the Kea and Weka aviary that had the unhelpful name of, 'South Island Weka', on it. I was in a hurry, and so I did not check what the accompanying scientific name was (assuming there was one).
 
I visited Nga Manu again today. Here are a few more details about the sanctuary.

-They currently have two female Yellow-crowned Parakeets/Kakariki off-display. In the future, the staff hope to phase out the Red-crowned Parakeets and to start breeding Yellow-crowned Parakeets. They also have at least two Red-crowned Parakeets off-display, in addition to the ones that are on-display.
-There is indeed a sign in the Kea and Weka aviary which says that their lone Weka is from the South Island. The subspecies name is not included. I was not able to get any good photos of the Weka.
-I did not mention this before, but there is no longer a barrier between the Red-crowned Parakeet and North Island Kaka aviaries. I was not sure whether or not there were any Kakas present the last time, but today I saw that there is indeed one Kaka living with the Parakeets.
-All four of the Blue Duck ducklings are still alive. Today I noticed that the sign on the ducklings' aviary says that the ducklings hatched on the 7th of December, 2019.
-Today the staff banded and released two rescued juvenile Tuis. One of them was rescued after a dog ripped off the skin on the front of its neck.
-They still have all three of the young Pukekos in the same aviary (inside the Kaka and Parakeet aviary). One of them is quite big now, but it has a large naked patch on one of its wings, so presumably it is recovering from a serious external injury.

I will upload some relevant photos to the gallery.
 
A few updates/corrections:

The aviary that I thought only housed New Zealand Pigeons is actually significantly larger than I had thought, and it houses Nga Manu's pair of Brown Teal. The Brown Teal are now the sole inhabitants of this aviary, and because their pond is in the back of the aviary (behind a chain-link fence and some tall grass), they will probably be very difficult to see if the layout of the aviary doesn't change.
Nga Manu currently has three New Zealand Pigeons on display. One of them is in the Kaka and Parakeet aviary, and it is a permanent resident because it is blind in one eye. The other two are in the Blue Duck aviary, but I am unsure of whether or not they will eventually be released.

The Kaka and Parakeet aviary actually has two Kakas, and the Kea and Weka aviary currently has three Keas. One of the Keas (a female) was kept off-display until recently because she was being extremely aggressive towards the male and the other female; this particular Kea exhibits this behaviour for two months of each year.

All three of the young Pukekos are apparently gone now; I don't know whether they died or were released.

The 'story' behind the Western Weka is that it was caught as a chick somewhere in the northern South Island by people who were holidaying there, and those people then took it with them when they returned to the North Island and they reared it to adulthood here. The weka's owners eventually found out that owning a weka as a pet is illegal, so they decided to give it to Nga Manu. The Department of Conservation got involved, and they wanted to transport the weka back to the South Island, but that obviously never happened. So, the weka became a permanent resident of Nga Manu.

Here's a messy list of the captive birds that are currently on display at Nga Manu:

-North Island Brown Kiwi: 1.1
-Western Weka: 1
-New Zealand Scaup: 3.1
-Brown Teal: 1.1
-Blue Duck: 1.1 (+ The four ducklings are probably still there but I didn't see them in their aviary today).
-Morepork: 1 (I think that I heard that it isn't kept in the kiwi enclosure any longer, and that it can only be seen somewhere else during night tours).
-New Zealand Pigeon: 3
-Kea: 1.2
-North Island Kaka: 2
-Red-crowned Parakeet: At least 4
-Tui: 1
 
I briefly visited Nga Manu again today. Here are the notable changes that I picked up on:

-Their captive Tui, which died last year, has not been replaced.
-There was a fledgling Morepork in the aviary that also contains a breeding pair of Brown Teal. The captive adult Morepork at Nga Manu died late last year, but I doubt that this fledgling is going to be his replacement.
-The only bird in the fenced-off part of the Kaka and Kakariki aviary was a scruffy-looking and somewhat sheenless New Zealand Pigeon that must have fledged recently.
-The aviary that held the Blue Duck ducklings early last year was signed as containing Brown Teal, but I did not see anything in the aviary itself. The breeding pair of brown teal at Nga Manu had ducklings last September and I suspect that this aviary is actually where the brown teal ducklings were held for most of the time before they were transported to Peacock Springs.
 
A few updates from Nga Manu's spring newsletter [Ngā Manu Spring Newsletter 2021]:
  • they are currently caring for five North Island Brown Kiwi: "We are currently caring for five birds consisting of two pairs and a juvenile which will be transferred to Otorohanga Kiwi House. A juvenile pair are settling in and on their way to becoming the new stars of our Nocturnal House display. Our breeding pair which occupy our outdoor enclosure are presently incubating their 4th egg of the season which was laid on September 29th. We will have a good indication of whether it is healthy and developing normally in another week."
  • two Brown Teals have hatched. They will be released in November.
  • their pair of Yellow-crowned Kakarikis have produced a chick from the first clutch and are currently incubating a second clutch. All of these chicks will be transferred to Pūkaha for future release.
  • the zoo's group of Whitaker's Skink have increased to 29 individuals with six pairs. The newsletter mentions that the total known population for this species is 49 animals.
  • seven Wellington Green Geckoes bred at Nga Manu will soon be transferred to Mana Island. They currently have 13 individuals.
  • a Morepork recently arrived from Orana Wildlife Park. The male has been paired with their female in the hope of forming a breeding pair.
 
WhistlingKite24 said:
  • the zoo's group of Whitaker's Skink have increased to 29 individuals with six pairs. The newsletter mentions that the total known population for this species is 49 animals.
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To be precise, this is the number of animals from the Pukerua Bay population (all of which are in captivity). The species as a whole is thought to have originally been found throughout the North Island, from Auckland to Wellington, but after the arrival of humans became reduced to three tiny populations, two of which were on islands off the north of the North Island (one in the Mercury group and the other off the Coromandel Peninsula), and the third being the sole-remaining mainland population (at Pukerua Bay just above Wellington). Some island translocations of the northern animals have also taken place in recent decades.

The Pukerua Bay population has since become extinct in the wild, so the animals in captivity (at Nga Manu and with a private breeder) are the only ones left.

There is the possibility that the population off the top of the North Island and the population from the bottom of the North Island are actually two separate species. Currently, however, they are treated as a single species.
 
Chlidonias said:
, and the third being the sole-remaining mainland population (at Pukerua Bay just above Wellington)
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Do you know when/why this mainland population went extinct? As I always thought they were one of those reptiles which had been confined solely to a few offshore islands(like robust skink, tuatara, etc).
 
the racoon has spoken said:
Do you know when/why this mainland population went extinct? As I always thought they were one of those reptiles which had been confined solely to a few offshore islands(like robust skink, tuatara, etc).
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Rats and cats, and loss of habitat - same as most native lizards. The Pukerua Bay population was the first living population discovered, in the 1960s; the Mercury population in the 1970s; and the Castle Island population (off the Coromandel) in the 1980s.

The remaining habitat at Pukerua Bay for the skinks covered only one hectare. They were thought to have become extinct there by the start of the 1980s, but were rediscovered in 1985 (they are large skinks but are nocturnal and very secretive, and they lived there only in greywacke scree so were not at all easy to find). Six animals were captured by DoC for breeding around that time. A proper attempt at a breeding programme began with DoC captures in the years following 2002. Some of the original captured animals from the 1980s were still alive and were included in the programme. The last time any were seen in the wild was around 2010.
 
Chlidonias said:
Rats and cats, and loss of habitat - same as most native lizards. The Pukerua Bay population was the first living population discovered, in the 1960s; the Mercury population in the 1970s; and the Castle Island population (off the Coromandel) in the 1980s.

The remaining habitat at Pukerua Bay for the skinks covered only one hectare. They were thought to have become extinct there by the start of the 1980s, but were rediscovered in 1985 (they are large skinks but are nocturnal and very secretive, and they lived there only in greywacke scree so were not at all easy to find). Six animals were captured by DoC for breeding around that time. A proper attempt at a breeding programme began with DoC captures in the years following 2002. Some of the original captured animals from the 1980s were still alive and were included in the programme. The last time any were seen in the wild was around 2010.
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Sad to see something can eke out an existence on the mainland for that long, only to become extinct in the 2010s.
 
Per my visit today, Ngā Manu does not currently have North Island Brown Kiwi on display.
 
Information that I learned from my visit to Ngā Manu today:

-The Kea are still in their usual walk-through aviary, but it is not open to visitors. This includes that the aviary is actually not open to visitors via guided tour, as the parent Kea have been found to be easily stressed by intrusions. I was not told the current age of the Kea chick, but a photo of it that was shown to me, taken on the 6th of August, showed that the chick was already fluffy and had open eyes at that time.

-Ngā Manu currently has three North Island Brown Kiwi, but all of them are being kept in an enclosure that can only be visited during the kiwi encounter tours at night time. One of the kiwi returned to Ngā Manu just yesterday after being kept at Massey University for a while. The other two kiwi have recently had an egg and the male is incubating it.

-The Giant Kōkopu (Galaxias argenteus) that are kept at Ngā Manu came from Wildlife Foxton Trust.
 
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