Waipoua Forest SOS - Save Our Sanctuary!

Our most treasured ancient kauri forest, home to Tāne Mahuta is in crisis because of a systemic failure that the Prime Minister urgently needs to address to ensure the public that something is being done.

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Waipoua & Northland Kauri Forest Possum Control campaign: briefing notes.

Background:

The Waipoua Forest Sanctuary is a small remnant of what was once a unique and majestic kauri forest that covered the entire upper north island. The Forest Sanctuary totals just 9,100 hectares plus adjoining areas swelling it to 12,400ha and contiguous forests to a total of 30,000ha.

The public forest remnants of Northland total approximately 100,000 hectares, of which 4,000 hectares is mature kauri.

The main forests are: Waipoua (with adjoining Mataraua and Waima), Kaihu Plateau, Warawara, Puketi-Omahuta, Mangamuka, Whangaroa, Opua, Russell and Herekino.

Free of deer, this forest is by far one of the most pristine on mainland NZ except for birdlife which is among the most depleted due to Northland’s mild climate and constant predation pressure.

Pigs are also having a big impact on Northland forest biodiversity, having dramatically increased in the last 15 years.

Possums arrived late, in the 1960s so the biodiversity levels are higher than many other nat
ive forests.

Aerial 1080 history:
Sodium fluoroacetate (1080) is widely supported by dedicated conservationists because it's a natural biodegradable toxin and is highly effective at controlling introduced predator mammals that destroy NZs unique ecosystems.

Following the first successful aerial 1080 drop at Waipoua in 1990 possum control was kept up for about 5 years. Since then only two sporadic aerial operations have been undertaken in 2003 and 2011, each after public pressure and always far too late to produce sustained recovery of the forest.

In 2011 aerial control was promised every 3 years in line with best practice, but in 2014 only a small corner of the forest was treated to benefit kōkako and to avoid conflict with new iwi trustees. The main Waipoua Forest has had a decade of neglect apart from some successful boundary work commenced in 2020 by Te Roroa.

Warawara has only received two drops, Puketi two and Russell one and a half. The rest have had none including Kaihu Ecological reserve with its unique plateau swamp maire forest which has never had one cent of possum control. The overriding theme in Northland is neglect with intermittent reactionary control, often in response to pressure from NGOs.

Forest impacts:
Each time control is delayed, more trees die; recovering trees are pushed into premature senescence ; a decrepit state from which they never recover. In the 1990 wave, we lost mostly Rātā and Sandalwood. In later waves Tōtara and Kohekohe are dying. With each wave, there is more biodiversity loss and more species are added to the threatened or endangered list.

Since the arrival of possums, Two species have become extinct: Trelipidea adamsii (nationally extinct) and Pimelea tomentosa (locally extinct). Severely possum impacted species that are rapidly declining and threatened with local extinction include: Pittosporum pimeleoides and two mistletoe species, Ileostylus micranthus and Peraxilla tetrapetala.

Mature lowland Tōtara (Podocarpus totara) are heavily browsed throughout showing canopy thinning, decline, dieback and death. The situation is the same with Hall’s Tōtara, Rātā and Kohekohe. Mistletoe populations have died out by 50% since the 2011 operation with no healthy fruiting on surviving plants.

Severely browsed trees can only “recover “ to a geriatric state, not productive ecosystem drivers that create viable forests. The tragedy is that a large number of trees will never recover fully from the years of neglect due to structural dieback and internal decay. Heavily browsed trees still capable of recovery can take a decade or more to do so.

The cost of each delay is measured in decades and centuries.

Possum damage opening up canopies has a serious weed invasion impact. It speeds up the invasion of wasps and weeds such as Tree Privet (e.g. Warawara Forest) adding to further conservation costs.

Birdlife impacts:
The impacts of no 1080 relief are two fold: continuous predation and loss of seasonal food supplies.

Virtually no tōtara fruit, no kohekoh and very little Taraire fruit is available in the forest. Nectar supplies from rātā, rewarewa are depleted. Stripping the 'aisles of the supermarket' prevents birds from breeding. Kūkupa travelled in flocks of 60 or more in the 1960s prior to the build up of possums. Now they fly in ones and twos, indicating no successful breeding and population decline. After a 1080 drop this number rises to threes and fives but the control needs to be sustained to achieve recovery to normal healthy flocks of 100 and normal seed dispersal for a healthy forest.

Regular aerial control at 3 yearly intervals is essential for forest bird recovery. Pulse applications of 1080 is also vital to ensure sustained success of localised trapping programmes for kiwi and kōkako.

Apart from the successful kōkako protection area, numbers of all native forest bird species at Waipoua are lower now than when DOC took control of these iconic forests.

Historical reasons for 1080 delays: sporadic control is unacceptable.

Inefficient and insensitive monitoring contributed to aerial 1080 delays in the early 2000s. It has taken the department some years to understand just how sensitive the forest is to relatively low possum densities and how long it can take for trees to recover. Since 2011 the Department has realised the need for 3 yearly drops at Waipoua rather than 4 or 5 yearly.

Historically some delay has been caused by shifting limited budgets elsewhere, but in the last decade or so money has not been the issue.

Most delays have been caused by competing interests and issues staff face: departmental restructuring (highly debilitating), loss of experienced staff and competing interests such as Myrtle Rust, Kauri phytophthora and partnership arrangements between the crown and iwi. These are all goals worth investing in, but they should never be allowed to detract from the core maintenance work to protect the natural asset. Possum control is like feeding the kids: it must go on however busy life gets. We need a Department that understands this and is accountable for it.

Staff responsible for initiating and organising aerial 1080 have a wide range of other responsibilities that compete for attention. Necessary leadership and institutional support for such staff to enable delivery has been highly variable over the years.

Protecting the natural asset, our forest, from possums is a critically time dependent task. It is a fundamental duty and a core responsibility of the department that the public expects it to reliably deliver on.

This vital work must not be allowed to take second place to other issues and events.

Solutions;

Long Term Forest Health Plans:

Waipoua and each of the other Northland forests require a long term forest health plan led by DOC and the local iwi, working together with the community, conservation NGOs and neighbouring covenantors. This is an important priority to pursue and will require knowledgeable people from each entity to create a solid working team committed to serving the forest.

In the meantime, essential control work must continue to avoid irreversible biodiversity losses while relationships and plans are developed.

A new dedicated entity is necessary for Northland’s possum control:

A dedicated entity responsible for timely delivery is vital to success.

Northland has a complex iwi landscape with ever changing voices to engage with.

The entity needs to be able to engage with iwi as effectively as possible without compromising their national duty.

It also needs to be able to implement effective educational programmes where misinformation about 1080 science is an issue.

It needs to be immune from general departmental restructuring or response demands (e.g. being requisitioned for fire, whale strandings, biosecurity events etc). It needs to be directly accountable to the Minister, reporting also to iwi and relevant NGOs.

Northland falls within one kauri bioclimatic zone and experiences sporadic severe droughts that can seriously affect the ability of possum impacted trees to recover. Between 2013 and 2020 there were 3 substantial to severe droughts.

In such years with reduced growth even moderately low possum densities can prevent recovery and cause further irreversible decline of already threatened canopy trees.

The drought cycles require a comparably flexible response to the mast year cycles in the South Island.

There is a strong rationale and need for a Northland based dedicated entity or team to deliver possum control for our Department of Conservation.

It is important that such responsibility for delivering possum control is retained by the department and not farmed out to any other party, so as to ensure continued adequate participation of the broader NZ public that has an irrevocable relationship with these treasured forests.

Monitoring standards must be improved so they are simple, quick to implement, responsive to the forest’s needs and focus on delivering healthy fruiting and net recovery as a standard rather than just foliage cover or tree survival intended to prevent forest collapse. Forest Sanctuary status and acknowledged National Park value demand a high standard of protection, not simply prevention of forest collapse.

Existing foliar browse monitoring systems are too slow to guide timely management or to stop decline of tree health. With every delayed control operation we are seeing reduced vigour of the canopy, reduced fruit production and hastened demise.

Half dead trees that produce little or no fruit are of little use to the birds or to forest regeneration. Taraire is a major forest tree yet it is difficult to find healthy fruiting groves of taraire anywhere in the forest. Kererū/kūkupa often fly kilometres to private farmland to find fruiting taraire!!

Sustained boundary control will be essential to stop reinvasion. This was not done in 2011 and rapid reinvasion coincided with a severe 70 year drought in 2013 to impede normal forest recovery. A new dedicated entity that was accountable for the forest’s health would notice, take these environmental cues seriously and be able to respond to such events to ensure the forest continued in recovery mode.

Given the biodiversity losses to Northland kauri forests suffered by pigs and the ever present threat from deer liberations there may be a
strong reason to include these animals in the new entity’s portfolio.

Warrant of Fitness Reports:

To ensure public confidence that our Department is actually protecting our treasured forests we need an annual Warrant of Fitness report for each Northland forest.

This is essential to inform parliament and the public on the current health of the forests and effective expenditure of public funds. This will provide much greater transparency than current annual financial reports.

Supporting iwi in sustained control:

As Treaty partners to DOC, mana whenua groups play a vital role in current work and in jointly formulating longer term plans to protect our nationally important kauri rainforests.

In each of the Northland forests sustained ground control/boundary control is an essential element of possum control and forest restoration. At Waipoua Te Roroa is already doing this in the vicinity of the Waipoua River, but crown support is required for it to be sustained over the entire boundary in the long term.

In addition there are sensitive sites within each forest where rare species, favoured possum habitats and surviving ancient tōtara trees will require ground based personnel to maintain a self resetting trap regime. Such possum magnet sites remain vulnerable and require dedicated attention.

There is a need for fruit and foliage recovery monitoring. Both iwi and NGOs should participate in this mahi.

These are all well suited to sustained local employment of dedicated young people, including from local hapu, for careers in kaitiakitanga and forest restoration.

If the condition of our nations iconic forest, Waipoua reflects our conservation department we are in deep trouble....

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Is our Department of Conservation fit for purpose if they cant even look after the premier rainforest of Aotearoa NZ?
#SaveWaipouaForest