Posted by Ellery McNaughton @EJ_McNaughton

Every month for the past 15 months I have stood on the streets at my study sites and conducted 10-minute bird counts. Somewhere along the line, I inadvertently began counting trees. Every site has at least one tree that birds seem to favour perching in over others, a sort of bird-version of the cushy chairs that granddads can always be found in. I often find myself focussing on these trees during my bird counts (while also not forgetting the other, less favoured bird-versions of church pews and university-seminar chairs). It makes it particularly noticeable when I turn up for the next month’s count, and that tree is gone.

Of my 27 sites, 14 of them have had at least one tree cut down in the past year. Some were natives. Some were over 10 metres tall. Sometimes they were replaced with other trees. Sometimes they were replaced with houses. Mostly they weren’t replaced with anything.

Urban trees are at risk. In places like central Auckland, where the majority of urban tree cover is on private land, it is important to have policies in place that can be used to protect and maintain the urban forest. Unfortunately, governmental policy reforms meant that in 2015 blanket urban tree protection was removed in Auckland, leaving an inadequate individual-based tree protection policy behind. With the exception of registered ‘notable’ trees and those in certain ecological areas, homeowners have free rein with regards to chopping down trees on their property.

Yes, a man’s home is his castle. The problem is, we live in a community of castles. Trees provide communal benefits. They increase health, mental wellbeing and air quality. They create additional opportunities for connection with nature by providing habitat to urban wildlife. People need to start looking past the boundaries of their property and their present time. When decades of growth can be cut down in minutes, the least one can do is consider the bigger picture. If nothing else, at least consider that it is jolly difficult to conduct a bird count over the noise of a chainsaw.

Ellery McNaughton is a PhD student in the Centre of Biodiversity and Biosecurity, School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland. Her project investigates the effects of a city-wide changeover in streetlight technology on urban bird behaviour and ecosystem function. She is supervised by Margaret Stanley, Jacqueline Beggs, Kevin Gaston(University of Exeter, UK) and Darryl Jones (Griffith University, Australia).

Posted by Carolina Lara @carislaris

A quick summary of some of the amazing things achieved in the second year of my PhD: leaf samples of 350 trees collected, processed and stored at -80˚C, 500 hours of birds´ visitations to New Zealand native plants video recordings analysed and 162 hours in the field mistnetting – 232 birds so far. If you think I have done it myself, you´re wrong. Throughout this PhD-year I have worked with great volunteers who have helped me achieved all these things. A special mention to Manon Pulliat, our French intern from Agrocampus Ouest, who spent five months at the Centre of Biodiversity and Biosecurity getting to know how scientific research is conducted in other parts of the world.

Manon after a hard day in the field collecting leaf samples

All of those whose PhD projects involve some sort of fieldwork will agree with me on this: WE NEED VOLUNTEERS. A volunteer is defined as a person who is willing to provide a service without expecting any sort of monetary compensation (quite important if your project is money-limited). They can be classified in three types: 1) casual volunteers whose activity targets specific needs, 2) volunteers who perform more formal types of volunteer service – having a personal commitment and gaining a sense of accomplishment, and 3) volunteers who are required to volunteer by a specific organization. More specifically in the ecology field, there is a relatively new term to refer to those volunteers who participate as field assistants gathering information in scientific studies: “citizen scientists”. Citizen scientists are not necessarily directly involved in the scientific community, some of them are members of the public with a strong desire to understand ecological processes and most importantly, to connect with nature.

No volunteer can resist holding a bird while mist netting

Our job as scientists is to provide volunteers with the necessary tools to collect reliable data in the field. This takes time but the end-product will be definitely worth it. Thanks, volunteers for all the help and good moments in the field!

 

Carolina Lara M. is a PhD Candidate within the Centre for Biodiversity and Biosecurity, School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland. Her research interests focus on seed dispersal networks within fragmented landscapes. She is supervised by Margaret Stanley,Jason Tylianakis, Karine David, and Anna Santure.

Posted by Robert Vennell @RobertVennell

Conservation in New Zealand often involves killing things. Especially cute and fluffy things, like bunnies, mice, hedgehogs, ferrets and possums. We’ve got a good reason for it – these creatures are decimating our native ecosystems and wildlife and would cause untold destruction if left unchecked. But our obsession with killing things sometimes boggles overseas observers who struggle to understand why we would dress up dead possums in wedding gowns and bikinis.  Come to think of it, I struggle to understand that one as well.

Growing up in New Zealand I think it can be really easy to hate our introduced mammals for all the damage they cause. But its nice from time to time to reflect on how neat these creatures really are. They are incredibly intelligent, curious and fascinating little beasties – It’s just a shame they are in the wrong place and need to go.

One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about using camera-traps for my research – is getting to observe all sorts of cryptic creatures and behaviours that we rarely get a chance to see.

For example, if you head along to the Ecology Ngatahi Youtube Channel you can check out this great video of a playful possum getting up to all sorts of mischief. The final image is a rat falling out of the tree – perhaps it was pushed? Or how about this somewhat spooky montage of rats scuttling up a tree at rapid speed.

The nature of conservation in New Zealand means that to protect our native species from extinction, we have to remove the invasive ones – but that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate these pests for being amazing little critters in their own right.

 

Robert Vennell is an MSc student in the Centre of Biodiversity and Biosecurity, University of Auckland studying the impacts of wild pigs on native forests. He is supervised by Margaret Stanley, Mark Mitchell (Hawkes Bay Regional Council),Cheryl Krull (AUT) and Al Glen (Landcare Research). He also writes about the history, meaning and significance of New Zealand’s native tree species at www.meaningoftrees.com