Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 55
Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds
Finally
we have a response from the NZTA to our list of questions regarding the
management of kotuku, the red pollution in the Wharemauku, pollution monitoring
in the Ratanui Rd wetland and the issue of pollution monitor delapidation.
NZTA
(from the Environment Manager)
Thank
you for the photograph – it reminds me of the plastic heron in my fish pond
back home. I have checked out the NIWA monitors at the location post storm this
week and there is some vegetation fouling which needs removed and this will be
attended to. I
don’t have much more to say on this topic other than the project has consent to
construct the expressway and is doing its best to comply with all consent
conditions at all times, and there is a real commitment by the construction
team to do so. If
you wish to meet with the ecologist and myself at any time in the future to
discuss the weed removal and landscaping plan for the areas of land you are
concerned about please let me know.
In other words - they're continuing not to say (much more) though just
so you aren’t confused, here are two spot-the-difference photographs - the kotuku is on the left.
There are only 100 left of the former still living on this planet; but no shortage of the latter. They start at around $800 (sans postage).
Meanwhile we remain none the wiser as to whether the NZTA has a plan to manage encounters with this critically endangered bird.
Despite
the assurance in this email, the monitor hadn’t been checked, because we found two staff doing just that, the next morning.
They had a cursory look and were goodnaturedly heckled by strollers on the
walkway for being unwilling to get their feet wet by crossing the creek for a
closer inspection. A week later the monitor still hasn’t been cleared of debris. Though as we have previously mentioned it isn’t sited far enough down the Wharemauku
anyway, to pick up the red pollution that is pouring into its lower reaches.
 |
| NIWA pollution monitor Dec 10 |
This is the monitor submerged at the height of Wednesday’s flood, which was one of
the most dramatic of the past ten years. And here it is again a week later.
 |
| NIWA pollution monitor Dec 16 |
 |
| Snarled detached pipe Dec 16 |
Just
downstream from here the local juvenile delinquents had detached a section of
the Fortress fence, designed to keep
the Public off the expressway site,
and laid it across the Wharemauku. It enabled us to get across and have
a closer inspection.
The detached arm going into the body of the monitor, which
we have been publicising for six weeks now, will have allowed the water
inside. Curiously a makeshift pallet bridge has been thrown across
the creek though we don’t know by whom, or whether they had permit to do so.
 |
| Fortress Bridge over Wharemauku |
In
lieu of their assistance we have decided to bestow upon these delinquents the Midnight Collective Fortress Award which includes free membership to the
Midnight Collective. (Well ok, membership is free anyway.)
 |
| Raumati Beach Dune Lake Dec 16 |
The
storm has given us our dune lake back, though, ominously all the wetland birds have now abandoned this area and there is no sign of the heron and spoonbills of previous years.
Yet the air is filled with new generations of welcome swallows as our nests
at either end of the Wharemauku have fostered second broods. Here a mother and
fledgling are resting on a section of the expressway security fence that our new juvenile delinquent members missed.
 |
| Welcome Swallow and fledgling NZTA security fence Dec 16 |
The mothers continually tease the youngsters into
the air by looping down to feed them and then not going through with it. This
trips them into the air where they start to get the idea themselves. A light
seems to go on and then they’re away on their own. There is still plenty of insect life around for these birds despite the
premature drying up of the lake.
Track
we were listening to John
Mayall Let's Work Together This is from A Sense of Place 1990. He mines a narrow range of Blues but its all pure gold.
People, when things go wrong
As they sometimes will
And the road you travel
It stays all uphill
Let's work together
Come on, come on
Let's work together
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