The kea conservation trust is calling for volunteers to help them record kea throughout kea habitat on any (or all) weekends during July. For more info see http://www.keaconservation.co.nz/
Forest & Bird » Native Plants & Forest
Calling all kea-lovers
(9 posts)-
Posted 2 years ago #
-
Kea are amazing, just incredible that till the late 1970s there was a government bounty which encouraged people to kill them! Who could kill this?
Attachments
-
smallkea.JPG (41 KB, 0 downloads) 2 years old
Posted 2 years ago # -
-
I was woken at 6am this morning by a flock of keas all around my South Westland house. Here they live at sea level and share the podocarp beech forest with kaka. They are amazing feeders. In her MSc studies, Ria Breijhart now running Ecoquest, found that kea ate almost 300 different types of food. They are opportunists and need to know just what is available at a particular season in any given year. At Arthur's Pass this month they have been feasting on beech seeds that are ripe in the tops of the trees. They are also tearing up our farm fields to get grass grubs. Last month the most popular food was snowberries (Gaultheria) and they were up high in the mountains feeding on these alpine plants. Here at Lake Moeraki we have this month watched them eating miro and supplejack berries. They were ripping up the moss on the forest floor to get at grubs and earlier in the summer they were feeding on flax nectar.
Forest and Bird members should not forget that it was F&B that campaigned successfully in 1986-88 to get keas given permanent legal protection. We ran a campaign called "Keas for Keeps" with T-shirts and posters and detailed sumbmissions first to Internal Affairs Dept then DOC. Until then, farmers could shoot any kea that they thought or claimed was causing a problem.
In 1979 I was on West Wanaka Station doing studies on snowtussocks and I saw the pastoral lessee shoot 2 kea right in front of me with his "kea gun", a sawn off 22 Rifle.It was awful and motivated me to do something about saving these wonderful birds.
US Writers/biologists Alan Bond and Judy Diamond from University of Nebraska have studied kea for the last 25 years. In one of their research areas they looked at all the allegations that kea kill sheep and found that most of the claims were totally false. Kea were the scapegost for losing sheep on the mountain as always happens in normal high country musters and is largely attributable to overstocking or poor mustering rather than any impact of kea. The farm that we have owned since 1994 called Cora Lynn next to Arthur's Pass National Park was a place where it was always claimed kea killed lots of sheep. In the 15 years we have owned the farm and run around 4,000 stock units, we have never found and evidence of kea killing or damaging sheep. Quite the contrary. Because we host visitors from all over the world who come to NZ to see wildlife, they delight in seeing these large intelligent birds.
Keas for Keeps!!
Posted 2 years ago # -
Apparently the intelligence of kea rates up there with that of some primates, scientific studies show.
Posted 2 years ago # -
No! Primates have the ability to use tools. I've spent a bit of time with kea and I've never seen them using tools.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Primates have the ability to use tools because they have an opposible thumb. Also its mainly only the higher primates that do this, namely chimpanzee. Kea have exceeded certain primate species in some problem solving tests that dont require the use of tools, just thought and a bit of apparatus manipulation.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Everyone that loves seeing and hearing kea could not help but be concerned when it was reported earlier this year that a number of radio tagged kea were killed in a 1080 operation by the Animal Health Board at Fox Glacier. It raised questions about the scale of kea kill generally through possum control operations using 1080.
There is now an extensive science programme in place coordinated by scientists Graeme Elliott and Josh Kemp (and others) measuring kea reproductive rates with and without pest control. It is also monitorng impacts of future pest control operations on kea.
On June 2-3, all around where I am living here at Lake Moeraki South Westland, there was an 11,000hectare DOC 1080 operation throughout the native forest using 6 helicopters in a very well organised operation. This is a continuation of a 15 year programme to save mistletoe, fuchsia, rata, kaka and a whole range of native birds in the Moeraki- Haast-Arawhata country. In total for DOC West Coast, approximately 280,000hectares or 18% of the forested area of Westland DOC conservancy is now under DOC pest control. The treatment mostly involves 3-4 yearly aerial 1080 operations. Another 400,000 hectares on the West Coast is under pest control by the Animal Health Board. In total then about 43% of the West Coast's total forest area is now under regular pest control. This is a much higher ratio than most of the rest on NZ's conservation land and an even higher ratio than the extent of pest control occuring in our National Park system.
18 days after the Lake Moeraki 1080 operation I can report that my wife, son and I have been recording kea calling and flying around us every day since then the forests here were treated. We see flocks of kea every day, almost all day. They also call for a lot of the night. There has been continuing strong kea numbers for the whole 2 week period. We have heard and seen falcon every day also and morepork every night.
It is really encouraging.
I have been doing more research into the impact of pests on bird and plant species. Apparently kaka are equally threatened by possum predation as they are by stoat predation. Careful studies of female kaka and chicks on their tree hole nests have shown that possum are just as likely as stoats to climb into the nests and kill the chicks. They also kill the female kaka that does most of the chick rearing. That is why we have lost kaka from huge parts of New Zealand. In vast native forests now protected from logging, such as Waitutu Forest in Southland where there has been virtually no possum control, female kaka are now outnumbered by male kaka 7 to 1. On mainland NZ, the best male:female kaka ratio is about 1.5 males to every 1 female (where there has been intensive pest control) and on offshore islands with no pests the ratio has got as low as 1.3 males to every 1 female.
Without pest control we have ended up over most of mainland NZ with a kaka population that is ether extinct or dominated by old non-breeding males that will hang on for decades (they are long lived birds) but obviously will not be replaced.
In summary then for our two great forest and mountain parrots, kaka and kea, on-going and extensive pest control looks like being the only way these birds are going to have a future. This will be particularly important as global warming makes it possible for possums, rats and mice to climb higher into the mountains and not be killed off by the cold in winter. We know that wherever these introduced mammals go, there main predator the stoat soon follows and stoats do seriously predate kea nests and devastate alpine rock wren and blue duck populations.
Posted 2 years ago # -
I had a visit from the Kea Conservation Trust leaders Tamsin and Lorne yesterday. A key topic of discussion was whether people should be allowed to artificially feed kea in the wild as is happening at the Homer tunnel Milford, the Glaciers, Mt Cook and Arthur's Pass. The other topic was the ethics of keeping kea in cages in aviarys even if the cages are big walk through type facilities (eg Staglands Upper Hutt, Willowbank, Christchurch).
What do people think?
Posted 2 years ago # -
Animals in captivity is never as good as them being in their natural habitat. But it serves a purpose in getting awareness about problems that these animals face. Kea in particular are a highly intelligent bird and as long as they are mentally challenged and enriched on a regular basis i dont see a problem with it. But animal enclosures need to exceed the current standards and recommendations in my opinion. I currently do enrichment with 2 captive Kea in a council enclosure because I dont think their home is good at all and im doing my best to make their life a bit more interesting. Places like these need a shake up and Kea moved to better facilities.
Posted 2 years ago #
Reply
You must log in to post.