Like a Noah’s Ark of New Zealand wildlife, Hauturu/Little Barrier Island has one of the most intact and diverse ecosystems anywhere in the country. George Driver visited New Zealand’s first nature reserve to see what Aotearoa was once like.
It started before I stepped off the boat. Skimming the deep blue waves, a New Zealand storm petrel escorted the DOC vessel Hauturu on our journey to Hauturu/Little Barrier Island. Thought extinct for more than 100 years, the seabird was rediscovered in 2003 and its only known nest site is on Little Barrier. It was the first of many encounters with Aotearoa’s rarified flora and fauna that I would experience over the next 24 hours. Rising 722m out of the Hauraki Gulf, with access tightly restricted, Little Barrier has a mystique that few locations possess. The extinct volcano pierces the skyline of the Pacific, and beneath its rich green canopy, it harbours iconic species such as kiwi, tuatara and kakapo. “It’s as close as you can get to what New Zealand was like before people arrived,” says Little Barrier ranger Richard Walle. After getting ashore, this became immediately obvious. A saddleback/tieke flittered through coprosma and flax growing from the boulder-lined coast, cackling its distinctive staccato call, now all but silenced on the mainland. A small weeding team, which had been working on the island for about three months, helped unload the boat – whose cargo included live locusts for the baby tuatara. One of the workers rifled off each call we could hear – shining cuckoo, kaka, bellbird. But before I could explore, I had to head to the island’s quarantine shed for a final inspection. Visitors must get a permit to visit the island and undergo a strict quarantine inspection before landing. Visitor numbers are restricted to 600 a year, but most years only about 200 people get a permit. The rigmarole of quarantine started the night before, when I washed all of my clothing, inspected every element of my footwear for soil and seeds and turned out every pocket to look for unwanted passengers. This inspection was repeated in a sterile room resembling an operating theatre at the Warkworth DOC office. Under blinding fluorescent lights, I put my possessions on the stainless steel tables to be scrutinised. Again, every pocket was turned out, every patch of Velcro inspected. Walle even pulled out a set of tweezers to pick stubborn seeds from the sole of his boot. After quarantine, I was free to roam. Chaperoned by DOC communications advisor Nick Hirst, we looked around agog, listening to the cacophony of calls and watching the stream of birds flying overhead. I poked my head into a bush and saw a saddleback scratching through the undergrowth, like a sparrow. Walle says each species fills a niche on the island, replacing the roles which have now been taken up by introduced species on the mainland. “Hauturu isn’t about active management,” Walle says. “It’s about supporting a strong, natural ecosystem. When you’ve got that, even introduced species can’t push in, because every niche is taken by native species.” Walle has lived on the island with his wife Leigh Joyce and two children, Liam (12) and Mahina (14) for the past six years. But his adventure started well before Hauturu. Growing up in Germany, close to the border with the Netherlands, he became a carpenter after high school and joined the Journeyman, an 800 year old organisation for travelling craftsmen. “When you join, you have 24 hours to get at least 50km away from your hometown and you aren’t allowed to return for the next three years,” Walle says. “I liked the history of the guild, and the adventure of experiencing new things. I learned a lot about life.” Walle worked his way through Europe, England and Scotland and on to Australia. He came to New Zealand in 1989 and, struck by the friendly culture, stunning scenery and unique flora and fauna, became determined to stay. He started his career with DOC restoring the Donovan’s Store in Okarito – the oldest building on the West Coast. He also met Leigh at Okarito – she was camped on the beach, studying kiwi in the area. The couple soon started their island odyssey, working on Stewart Island. Richard worked for DOC repairing huts and tracks, including helping build the Rakiura Great Walk. Leigh studied kakapo as part of a PhD on the birds. They later headed to Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, working for Volunteer Service Abroad, helping communities recover from the 10-year long civil war between 1988-1998. When they returned to New Zealand, they became resident rangers on the Maud Island Scientific Reserve in Marlborough Sounds, where they lived for six years. Their children started life on Maud, before the family moved to Little Barrier. They are both homeschooled, with the freedom to follow their interests and learn at their own pace. With a steady stream of scientists visiting the island, Walle says they have no shortage of teachers. [caption id="attachment_48601" align="aligncenter" width="1980"]
Photo: George Driver[/caption] “A lot of the scientists take them under their wing. I’ll go for a walk with Liam and he’ll know the Latin, English and Maori name of every plant we walk past. I think it’s an incredible education.” Walle says they have the choice to go to school on the mainland, but they haven’t been tempted yet. “They know what it’s like in the city and when they think about what they have here they aren’t interested in leaving.” At Little Barrier, Walle is responsible for managing visitors and workers, patrolling the island to prevent people from landing, and monitoring the trapping network. “It’s pretty fantastic. But when I get back to the mainland, it’s quite a culture shock. You realise just how highly modified the environment is.” Exploring one of the tracks, I was startled by the whooping wings of a New Zealand pigeon/kereru fleeing the undergrowth. On the mainland, these birds are reconciled to the treetops due to predators, but here their natural behaviour is on display and, along with kokako, they regularly graze on the lawn outside the ranger’s headquarters. “From a scientific perspective, it’s a diamond of a place,” says Auckland University of Technology associate professor Dr David Towns. “Little Barrier is probably the most diverse ecosystem in the world where predators have been removed, so we can learn a lot about how an ecosystem changes and adapts.” Towns worked as a science advisor for DOC on the case to eradicate kiore rats from the island in 2004. Since then, wildlife has continued to rebound. But he says the ecosystem will take hundreds of years to fully regenerate. “Some of the species there are very long-lived and it will take hundreds of years for them to come back to good numbers. Take tuatara – numbers on the island went down to eight animals in the 1990s. Over 100 eggs have now been hatched and released there, but the average density on other predator-free islands is up to 2500 per hectare, so there’s a long way to go.” The 3000ha island has over 400 native plant species and is New Zealand’s largest forest area undisturbed by browsing mammals. The steep slopes create a range of environments. Pohutukawa line the coastline, kanuka and puriri dominate the lower slopes, with kauri forest higher up. Northern rata, beech and tawaroa are found at mid-altitudes, and the island is crowned with a cloud forest with southern rata, totara and nikau, all covered in moss. [caption id="attachment_48602" align="aligncenter" width="1980"]



