Here's some good news about local birds here in NZ.

Today I've been editing the final draft of a MSc thesis by Stacey Lewthwaite. Stacey has been applying her data skills to my 20+ year dataset of species counts between Christchurch and Lincoln. The bulk of her thesis has focused on looking at the phenology shifts (in abundance, flowering, singing) associated with climate change.

I don't want to steal much of Stacey's thunder just yet but I wanted to share these two good news graphs. These are the numbers of korimako (NZ bellbirds) and ducks (mallards/greylard hybrids) that I've counted per bike ride over the past two decades.

Both species have got *considerably* more abundant over this time period.

For korimako, we think it's because of the forest regeneration and mammalian predator control in their breeding grounds in the nearby Port Hills, done by City Council rangers and Summit Road Society volunteers. For the ducks, we think it's the planting of flood retention wetlands around the fringes of the city plus the increase in farm irrigation.

So, while we hear a lot of scary doom and gloom about nature in the media, some species are thriving because of our actions. Let's do more of that.

#EcologicalMonitoring #nz #nature #birds #LincolnUniversityNZ

Bellbirds are back, baby!

The first korimako, NZ bellbird, was spotted today back on campus at #LincolnUniversityNZ. I got a photo and one of the postgrads recorded it singing.

About this time of year korimako have finished breeding in the forest reserves of the Port Hills and some birds go roaming out across the less suitable habitats of the Canterbury Plains. A few find the university campus. It's usually the male birds that get this far out, as was the case today.

https://www.inaturalist.nz/observations/349975490

https://www.inaturalist.nz/observations/349975490

#birds #nz #bellbird

I spent this week up in the Craigieburn Forest Park of the NZ Southern Alps helping to teach our Masters level Conservation Biology course at #LincolnUniversityNZ.

This is the first year we've run the course field trip at this location. We did so to better understand how nature is recovering after the big December 2024 fire in the area.

We were joined by retired restoration ecologist and pine expert Nick Ledgard, who spent much of his career working at the site. Nick now has a set of restoration trials set up to learn how to increase the native cover in the burnt area. The worry is that if left alone it will transition to a largely weed dominated vegetation.

@frankashwood joined us for the first days of the trip to help us monitor the soil invertebrates establishing in the burnt areas, which we're comparing with the unburnt areas.

@TimCurran was also with us for a day to better understand how the fire spread through the area, and why a lot of the mountain beech forest did not burn.

#restoration #ecology #nz #FieldTrip #universityFieldTrip

It's a weird time to be working at #LincolnUniversityNZ.

We've bounced back from the earthquakes and covid lockdowns and there's been an optimistic buzz in the air. The earthquake damaged buildings are mostly replaced and in the last few years Lincoln has had some of its highest enrolments ever. Last year it graduated the highest number of graduates in its 147 year history.

Ironically, getting more enrolments than expected has been bad because that doesn't equate to more government funding, which instead continues to decline in real terms. NZ universities receive about *a third* less funding than the OECD average.

The solution, we learned from the Vice Chancellor Grant Edwards yesterday, is that the university is going to have to lose 40 of it's about 700 staff. Presumably those that remain will, once again, need to pick up the slack.

This kind of austerity is squeezing the life out of NZ's universities. The same thing is happening to the science sector. NZ's newly combined Bioeconomy Science Institute also going through redundancies so it can survive on less government funding.

Please remember this at the upcoming election. Investing tax dollars in research and higher education is *good* for the country.

😔

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/590629/lincoln-university-to-cut-40-full-time-equivalent-jobs

https://insidegovernment.co.nz/record-graduation-for-lincoln-university/

#LincolnUniversityNZ #jobcuts #austerity #science #universities #AcademicChatter

I've just returned from our three day annual Biodiversity Coast-to-Coast field trip with our second year ecology course at #LincolnUniversityNZ. We traversed NZ's South Island east to west and back again. The students surveyed birds, plants, invertebrates, and mushrooms in 10 m by 10 m plots at seven sites along the way. The students have the time to explore and document the myriad of species they find.

This is now the 12th year we've been running this field trip, at the same sites with the same survey methods. We use the data in a lab later in the course to describe and discuss the patterns and trends in biodiversity.

I now have a pile of photos to sort and upload to our course project on #iNaturalist, as do our students. Here's a quick taste of the trip (which was excellent fun).

Big thanks to Lincoln Uni. lecturers @GodsoeWilliam and @frankashwood for coming along for the first time. It was *terrific* having them there sharing their expertise with the course.

#ecology #FieldTrip #universityFieldTrip #teaching #nz

Earlier this week I had the good fortune to help #LincolnUniversityNZ ecology Masters student Heidi Allan with her field work.

Heidi's got an ambitious big-scale discovery project going, looking at the beetle communities in native NZ beech forest canopies all the way from Kaikoura on the east coast to Punakaiki on the west coast, and from the lowlands up into the Southern Alps.

The beetle community in NZ's beech canopies is largely unexplored, and has never been sampled at anything close to this scale before. Heidi's bound to find lots of new things. She'll also greatly increase our knowledge of how this community is affected by climate.

Here are some photos from our trip. Along with Heidi are John Marris, the curator of our university entomology museum, and our university's herpetologist (and lover of creepy crawlies) Jennifer Gillette.

#fieldwork #ecology #nz #entomology

On Friday I was lucky to get a tour of the Isaac Conservation Park, west of Ōtautahi-Christchurch city, NZ. It was set up by Sir Neil and Lady Diana Isaac, who had a vision of channelling their business success in quarrying and construction into nature conservation.

While the Isaacs have passed away, the still-successful Isaac Construction company operates under the Isaac Conservation & Wildlife Charitable Trust. The Trust uses proceeds from the company to fund conservation and heritage preservation work.

They also fund postgraduate research, which is why I was there. We're grateful they're funding the Master of Science student Kate McDowell at #LincolnUniversityNZ. Kate is modelling the population dynamics of the critically endangered orange-fronted kakariki (parakeet).

Orange-fronted kakariki still exist in the wild because of the Isaac Conservation Park. All the wild birds now are descended from captive reared birds and the wild population is still in a precarious state.

The Isaac centre is also rearing other critically endangered NZ birds, including the kakī-NZ black stilts and tuturuatu-Shore plovers. They work closely with the Department of Conservation to release captive birds back into the wild.

It's really important work and I tip my hat to the foresight and vision of Neil and Diana Isaac. Business owners have the power to do a lot of good in the world.

https://isaacconservation.org.nz/

#conservation #biodiversity #nz #birds #nature

One of the highlights of my day was when William Harland, a talented ecology undergrad here at #LincolnUniversityNZ, stopped by my office to show me his photos of temnocephalid flatworms. These distinctive squat tentacled flatworms live in colonies on NZ's freshwater crayfish, koura, and eat scraps left over when the koura feed. They apparently cause no bother to the koura.

William found these at Poolburn Reservoir in central Otago.

Amazing!

The photo is CC-BY William Harland: https://inaturalist.nz/observations/341041723
Here are more photos of these crazy flatworms on #iNaturalistNZ: https://inaturalist.nz/observations?verifiable=true&taxon_id=868829&place_id=6803&preferred_place_id=6803

#invertebrates #flatworms #NaturalHistory #NZ #Freshwater #crayfish #crustaceans #nature #crayfish

I spent part of my summer on Banks Peninsula with a team from #LincolnUniversityNZ monitoring lizards, invertebrates, and birds. We also, optimistically, put out a set of bat recorders.

Native bats haven't been reliably sighted on Banks Peninsula in many decades but there's always hope that there's a colony or two out there somewhere. If you know the Peninsula, we put our recorders out at Tutakakahikura, Ellangowan, Panama Rock, Mount Pearce, Hay Reserve, and Montgomery Reserve. All have areas of old growth forest with some gnarly old trees where bats could roost.

Sadly, the results are in and we detected no bats.

#ecology #EcologicalMonitoring #nz #bats #BanksPeninsula