Sustainability and Shearwaters

How do you sum up a week with Mick Duncan? For a start, students called it motivating, inspirational, thought-provoking, challenging, mind-blowing, and life-changing. What's the best thing you can take away from a week with Mick Duncan? The students' answer: practical wisdom. In week two, Mick showed us how to put our ideas into action and what sustainable community develoment looks like in real life. We opened up Mick's last lecture to the community again, then said goodbye. It was another great week.

The CCSP Spring 2013 class with their professor Mick Duncan.

 If you've never heard of a Hutton's Shearwater before, here's your chance to be formally introduced. Meet this amazing little, endangered bird that only breeds in Kaikoura! Also known in Maori as the tītī, it's the only New Zealand seabird that breeds in a sub-alpine environment, naturally nesting in the Seaward Kaikoura mountain range. However, with only 2 colonies left, the population is at risk of predation by invasive mammals. So, beginning in 2005, chicks have been brought down from the mountain burrows to a new predator-proof colony on the Kaikoura peninsula.

We were lucky enough to witness the chicks' translocation this spring! The chicks arrived by helicopter on Monday afternoon. Brett Cowan of DOC performed a traditional Maori greeting for the baby birds. They were each weighed, hydrated, and transferred to a burrow that they'll call home for the next few weeks. We were able to see some of the chicks up close and observe the whole process. In the coming weeks, both staff and students will be helping to feed the chicks until they fly off to Australia.

We hiked up the peninsula on Monday to see the Hutton's shearwater chicks get translocated from the mountains to the predator-proof breeding colony. What a unique opportunity to see an endangered species up close!