February 2025 Newsletter

February 2025 Newsletter
(Our 100th edition)

Upcoming Volunteer Trips

We have these volunteer trips coming up, all travelling by water taxi from Okahu Bay:

Sunday March 16th (endangered plants - full)
Saturday March 22nd (weeding, track clearing)
Thursday March 27th (weeding, track clearing)
Wednesday April 9th (weeding, track clearing)

You can book on any of these trips by registering here:
https://motuihetrust.my.site.com/volunteer/s/weekend-volunteer
or email operations@motuihe.org.nz

We have these midweek volunteer trips coming up, travelling by Dreamweaver from Pier Z:
Tuesday March 18th (TBC)
Friday March 28th

If you are interested in joining any of these trips, please email Simon on volunteermotuihe@gmail.com

Kind Donation from Lou and Iris Fisher Charitable Trust

We are very grateful to receive a kind donation from the Lou and Iris Fisher Charitable Trust, to support our project to re-establish fluttering shearwaters, petrels on the island. This donation will be spent over the next 2 years and will contribute to equipment and transportation costs.

If you'd like to be involved in the seabird project, please contact operations@motuihe.org.nz.

Free Courses Available

Auckland Council is funding several training days for volunteers

First Aid - Monday 10th March (New Lynn) & Friday 21st March (Three Kings)
Growsafe - Friday 4th April (Te Atatu) & Saturday 5th April (Onepoto)

If anyone would like to be registered on any of these courses, please get in touch.

Sunday 2nd Feb General Volunteering Day

A full water taxi headed over to Motuihe for our first general volunteer day of the year. The team had a very productive day and covered a variety of tasks.

Stuart led the weeders to continue the war against mothplants, these are flowering at this time of year so easy to spot. And if we kill the vines before the pods develop it's an added bonus, so we don't need to collect the pods over winter. Lois and Jackie cleared tracks to keep our access to all parts of the island open. With the trees we've planted rapidly growing this is an ongoing task. And our dotterel monitors carried out their final survey. The dotterel chicks have now all fledged after a successful breeding season - last year there were no recorded chicks surviving, so this is a testament to the care and attention from our dotterel team.

Our penguin team continued their mahi to set up a monitoring programme for our resident population. One last moulting penguin was seen in a burrow, the rest of our kororā have left and won't return until the beginning of the next breeding season. Over winter we'll install some additional nesting boxes and carry out maintenance in the current locations. (Jill)

Photo: Mounting a camera to monitor activity at one of our tuatara burrows (Lois Badham)

Sunday Feb 9th Visit to Ruthe Islet and Rotoroa to search for Linum Monogynum

A small team set out for the day for a small, largely-unknown island in the Ruthe Passage between Ponui and Rotoroa (Ruthe Islet). This collection of rocks is the location of one of the last known sightings of Linum monogynum - the NZ Linen Flax. Our team were hoping to find seeding plants and collect seeds as part of our Endangered Plants project.

Photo: Linum Monogynum (Jeremy R. Rolfe)

In spite of a thorough search on Ruthe Islet and in some bays on nearby Rotoroa, no trace of this rare plant was found. This highlights the huge importance of the endangered plant project - without intervention there are plants that will become extinct in the Hauraki Gulf. We are hugely privileged to have the opportunity to save some of our rarest plants, although it appears that it is possibly too late for the NZ Linen Flax in the Gulf. (Jill)

Thursday Feb 13th Drone Spraying Trial

3drone

We are grateful to NZ Lotteries, and the grant that has supported us to make great progress with our weeding programme.

As part of this work, we worked with Geoff and Jeremy from Island Solutions to trial drone spraying of the pampas that is starting to invade our difficult-to-reach cliff faces. An early morning start saw us leave Okahu Bay in the dark, on what turned out to be a perfect day for the trial - very light winds and clear skies. Geoff and Jeremy skilfully manoevered the spray drone into places impossible to access any other way, and provided a good wallop of spray into the pampas plants around Pa Point, Billy Goat Point and the cliffs beyond Calypso. Using a spray which is only effective on grasses, and a nozzle which dispenses large droplets to reduce wind spray, the drone was able to effectively target pampas at the same time limiting the effects on native plants growing in the vicinity.

The wand used by the drone to carefully target only pampas

We are hoping to carry out a follow up trial later in the year to look for and treat any possible regrowth. This will confirm the success of the technique, and we are hoping it will give us another tool in our toolbox in the fight against invasive weeds. A big thanks to Island Solutions for the long, hot day they spent ensuring things went smoothly. (Jill)

To view dates for our next volunteer trips, visit our website www.motuihe.org.nz