Mangaiti’s very own Jurassic Park

The pine trees in the north end of Mangaiti Gully behind Rototuna Primary School have several pairs of white-faced herons nesting in them every season. Watching the activity of these three looked and sounded very prehistoric. Double click on the video to enlarge picture. This video was taken on an old iPhone. It would have be so much better if taken with a good video camera/phone with a zoom lens.

A duck nest in July

Our weeding team came across this mallard (or a hybrid variant) duck nest of fourteen eggs. Birds that have the most breeding success in a predator environment have evolved to have either large clutches or nest several times in a season or both. This ensures they maintain or increase their population. Because our New Zealand indigenous species did not evolve with predators, or very low predation, their nesting frequency and number of eggs per clutch tends to be smaller. This, with other environmental pressures, all to often puts our indigenous species into the “at - risk / declining” in the DoC category. The biggest threat to this duck brood would be hedgehogs, pukeko and domestic cats.

Moving into another restoration area – The Pines

This season we have been opening up another space to add to our restoration area. Called “The Pines” it is the area behind Rototuna Primary School where there are very old large pine trees. General access is from the end of Cabernet Close. Service tracks are being built (photo, before and after), and early plantings have been done by the cubs and scouts on the easier to access parts. Ultimately, we are aiming to create a tawa forest under the pines. We have over 100 seedlings being raised in pots for this. Tawa are frost tender at their early stage of growth so the pines should offer them frost protection, and being tall and old the pines will allow plenty of light through to ensure good growth of the young tawa. The pine trees can be seen in the top back ground of the photos

Eel platform over popular

The Mangaiti eel feeding platform was listed on several Facebook pages over the school holidays as a free activity to do with kids. Unfortunately, this overwhelmed the facility. The eels could not eat all the food that was being offered, which resulted in large quantities of food littering the stream bed. Our Trust volunteers had to remove the surplus food using a net. One of these extractions resulted in removing 2.7Kgs. If you are at the platform and there is food littering the stream bed, please do not add to it. Our security camera, put up to protect the eels, had so much activity that the solar panel could not keep the battery fully charged, which meant the panel had to be upgraded from 3.2W to a 6W.

Community engagement

One of our Trust’s objectives is to have community engagement. In this past year we have had Sam the Trap Man “walk and talk” which was organised by HCC. Sam is so knowledgeable and a great storyteller. He can make little things so interesting. We hosted the Green Pavlova conference field day. This conference was attended by a number of council employees from around New Zealand. They showed a lot on interest in how our Trust worked and were particularly impressed with our achievements. National Tree Cropper Association’s conference also had a gully visit to Mangaiti as one of their field day options. There was an impressive amount of interest considering our restoration project was a bit outside their sphere of interest. The Kids in Nature programme run by HCC had numerous school class visits to see the eels. Three students from Rototuna High School chose our trust for their community project this year and have been attending our Wednesday working bees each week. We hosted the scouts and cubs (Photo)with a planting each this season. It was fortunate that this season we had suitable planting areas for this type of group planting. It was done between 6.30 and 8pm in the evening. We put up a temporary light and most had head lamps. They were all so enthusiastic.

Growing epiphytes for your restoration area

Astelia epiphytes are not only spectacular to view in the New Zealand bush canopy, they should also be considered for any restoration project. At some point restorers must move past planting pioneers and think about the more complex flora that makes up our bush ecosystem. Astelia epiphytes are one of these. We grew ours from small pieces gathered from fallen epiphytes when bush walking. We had no rule book to follow so approached this in two ways. First, as we are fortunate to have a shade house, we used a short piece of punga trunk, took a wedge out of the side, inserted the epiphyte root into the wedge and wrapped it in sphagnum moss to hold moisture.(Photo 1)These were then hung up on the wall of the shade house.

 2015 - Photo 1

With regular watering from the sprinkler system, they grew into mature epiphytes over the following eleven years.(Photo 2)

 2026 - Photo 2

We then employed an arborist to install them into a variety of trees in our 10-hectare restoration site.(Photo 3)

Arborist installing epiphyte -Photo 3

The second way was to basically do the same as with the punga log but install the epiphyte cutting directly into the bush site to take its chances with the weather (Photo 4).If you are doing this, select a site of semi-shade and / or facing south so as not to get the full blast of the summer sun. This worked well. While not growing as much as the ones in the shade house it has grown to a healthy size in the fourteen years that it’s been installed (photo 5). This is probably a more practical option for most restoration groups.

2012 - Photo 4

2022 - Photo 5

We used two Astelia species: Astelia solandri and Astelia hastata / Collospermum hastatum with some of the Earina orchid species coming along for the ride. These orchids grow epiphytically as well and are often found among fallen Astelia nests. This all adds to your restoration mix.

Fifteen years of restoration

To celebrate fifteen years of restoration by volunteers in Mangaiti Gully we produced a photo book for all our past and present volunteers. It is hard to imagine what our section of the gully looked like back in 2010. There were no tracks, with honeysuckle, blackberry and grey willow dominating the wet gully floor. Clearing and planting was done section by section. First build a track to gain access, then drill and poison the willows followed by clearing the honeysuckle and blackberry predominately by hand. There was minimal spray used back then. As the tracks were built, they were gradually connected. The public then started to use them at which stage they were upgraded to what they are today. A highly successful public asset for our city.