Bridging the gulf - Hauraki Gulf enhances city living
Motuora Planting Day, 2005
Auckland City has always offered what would be expected from a country’s largest city—shopping, fine dining, business … but with the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park right on its doorstep, home to some of New Zealand’s rarest species, city living takes on a whole new meaning.To gently set down a little spotted kiwi, to see it scamper to safe haven, to know that some abiding emptiness had been refilled, was, says John Tregidga, ‘a life-changing experience’.
‘To see those kiwi being released back onto our islands, just a stone’s throw from the mainland, and knowing that they were safe’, says the Hauraki District Mayor, ‘made all those interminable meetings worthwhile’.
The 50 or so islands of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park, a backdrop to John’s early life, are now the focus of his present and his hope for the future. Also chair of the Hauraki Gulf Forum, he’s part of an ambitious effort to acquaint Aucklanders—New Zealanders—anew with the cultural and natural touchstone that is the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park.
‘I grew up on boats in the Gulf’, he recalls, ‘but you never appreciate what’s right there at your back door when you are growing up in it. But once you travel overseas, you realise what a beautiful asset we’ve got.’
William Goodfellow, Managing director of Explore NZ - Auckland’s Whale and Dolphin Safari - couldn’t agree more. He says the encounter rate in the inner Gulf is ‘huge’, thanks to resident populations of common dolphins and Bryde’s whales. What’s more, the whales are surface feeders, which means visitors get a good long look at them. Visitors might meet any of an incredible 22 species of marine mammal in the Gulf, including bottlenose dolphins, orca, or even migrating humpback whales.
‘We have this incredible diversity right on the doorstep of New Zealand’s biggest city’, he says, ‘and its potential is far from reached’.
Like many others, William believes that the Gulf, if not exactly under-utilised, has nevertheless long been under-recognised. ‘As part of Auckland’s tourism inventory, it deserves to be right at the top.’
Historically, he says, Auckland has been promoted as a ‘gateway’; a layover ‘before you head off to so-called real tourism experiences’. But he sees this slowly changing.
Recognition of the importance of the Hauraki Gulf and the Marine Park is growing, thanks to the work of the Hauraki Gulf Forum. The Forum brings together the Department of Conservation, the Ministry of Fisheries, Te Puni Kokiri, councils and tangata whenua representatives. It’s driving a mandate to promote integrated management to protect the values of the islands and waters of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park.
That means guarding the Gulf from impacts wherever—however—they might present. Regional, district and city councils are tasked with mitigating threats like pollution and sedimentation at sources well beyond the Park boundaries. That could be effluent from the 410 000 dairy cows grazing the Hauraki Plains; or sediment from land development along the Waitemata seaboard.
‘This is a unique piece of water’, says John, ‘and it’s worth protecting’.
This isn’t the first attempt to do so. The Hauraki Gulf Maritime Park was created in 1967 by Act of Parliament, and administered by the then Department of Lands and Survey. But around the time the Department of Conservation was created in 1986, the old park was disestablished.
In 2000, new legislation, the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park Act, prescribed a new way and a new will; management that transcended statutes and territorial boundaries, traversed land and sea, embraced values both Mäori and Päkehä to sustain the life-supporting capacity of the Gulf and its islands.
Most importantly, it empowered the Forum to—as Sean Goddard puts it - ‘bring the Hauraki Gulf and the Marine Park to life for people’.
Little spotted kiwi
The Gulf, says Sean, Department of Conservation Auckland Conservator, ‘is not just a view from your lounge or a backdrop to the City. It is something that is very much alive—a unique and diverse ecosystem supporting seabirds, whales, dolphins and people. Aucklanders are very lucky to live within the special environment of the Marine Park, and it needs our protection’.
He points out that the Marine Park is a unique concept in New Zealand conservation; the Pmaoark connects communities living and working in our largest city to the unique natural and cultural heritage values of the Hauraki Gulf—something both residents and visitors can experience and enjoy. The fact that Auckland was ranked fourth-best city in the world in a recent Quality of Life report by Mercer reflects the importance of this connection.
Alongside DOC, a growing army of community trusts and thousands of volunteers are working to restore the Park’s natural and cultural heritage. There is provision in the Act for private landowners and councils to vest land in the park. Waiheke landowner Rob Fenwick vested over 1000 acres this year, and several councils have resolved to do the same in preparation for the Park’s 10th anniversary in February next year.
No fewer than five marine reserves lie within the park, and some Gulf islands, such as Hauturu/Little Barrier, are home to our rarest wildlife.
For that reason, Hauturu is a closed sanctuary visited only by permit. But many others, such as Tiritiri Matangi Island, offer open access, so people can connect with these special places and the wildlife they are home to.
Two of these are Rangitoto and Motutapu Islands, currently the focus of the Gulf’s most ambitious restoration programme. This winter, three applications of rodent bait marked the first stage of an eradication that will eventually see the islands rid of cats, rats, mice, stoats, hedgehogs and rabbits. With the pests gone, Rangitoto’s pohutukawa forest - the world’s largest—can flourish again, and Aucklanders can be reunited with native wildlife long since estranged: käkä, takahë, kiwi, tuatara.
At a combined 3800 hectares, the two islands represent one of the biggest eradication challenges DOC has tackled, but they will add another bastion to a growing network of safe sanctuaries for Gulf wildlife. ‘People don’t see the Gulf swarming with mutton birds as they might in the subantarctic islands’, says Sean, ‘but seabirds were once probably the main natural characteristic here’.
Thanks to pest eradications, he says, seabirds such as Cook’s petrels, once found only on Hauturu, can be heard at former haunts in increasing numbers and forest species like bellbirds from Tiritiri Matangi are now recolonising other islands and the mainland.
Rick Braddock, director of Motutapu Farms, has leased part of the island as a farming concern for the last 16 years—but this year the lease was cut short to make way for the pest eradication. He couldn’t be happier about it. As a trustee of the Motutapu Restoration Trust, he’s keen to help the island return to a semblance of its former natural self.
‘Motutapu would have to be one of the most highly-modified islands around the country’, says Rick. ‘When we assumed the farming lease in 1992, there was hardly a tree to be seen. Since then, the Motutapu Restoration Trust, through its volunteer planting programme, has planted almost half a million native trees; all grown from the Trust’s own nursery at Islington Bay’.
He’s seen the difference on Rangitoto since possums and wallabies were removed in the early 1990s: ‘It was pretty well knackered’, he recalls, ‘but the regrowth has been exponential; the place looks like it has a future now’.
He has a similar vision for Motutapu - tall shelter belts of native trees, groves of coastal shelter for seabirds, wetlands restored. But the island should also remain a working farm, says Rick, a recognition of its place in the cultural mosaic of Hauraki Islands. ‘The island has a number of important archaeological sites, and they’re best protected under pastoral land use’, he says.
Besides, he has another vision: ‘Think of what Motutapu represents’, he invites, ‘a working farm, a rich Mäori and Päkehä history, native biodiversity, the surrounding seas ... just about everything international tourists come to New Zealand to see. It ticks all the boxes’.
Sean Goddard agrees: ‘Visitors—and Aucklanders - perhaps look to the South Island for their wilderness experiences; their walking, their iconic landscapes. But in fact, those experiences are right here on Auckland’s doorstep.
‘Conservation is not a nice-to-do add-on - it very much underpins New Zealand’s tourism economy. Here in the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park, we’ve got a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate this.’
The Hauraki Gulf Marine Park didn’t enjoy the easiest of births. Achieving consensus among so many diverse stakeholders has been a challenge, says John Tregidga; ‘Working together is not an easy feat, but it’s the strength of this Forum.
‘It’s about coming to a better understanding—everyone having equal input in the process -and to have gained that, and the policies and plans we’ve got, was a big achievement.’
Now, he says, the Forum has set its sights on ‘building an identity and profile, so that wherever you are in the Gulf, you will recognise you are part of the Park and encounter its stories’. DOC has been given the mandate to lead this work, ready for the 10th Anniversary of the Marine Park creation in 2010.
That sort of branding is just what the Gulf needs, says William. ‘The bigger the profile, the more recognition it will get - people will come to understand what an incredible resource the Gulf is.’
‘Once we have an identity’, says John, ‘a brand that says to the public, “if you are in the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park, then this is an area that needs respecting”, then we can start educating people. And for me, I know we’ll have achieved that when we no longer need rubbish bins in the Hauraki Gulf. Everyone will take away their rubbish, rather than expecting to leave it behind’.
‘We’re getting to a point where we will have created something that has the equivalent status of a national park, but in the marine and coastal environment—coming to life by being more than the sum of its parts’, says Sean. ‘A lived-in, worked-in, park.’
Look out!
Norway rat
The benefits of increased biodiversity come with responsibility. While open public access is one of the treasured tenets of the Park, it raises the risk of pest reinvasions, requiring eternal vigilance.
Rats and mice can stow away in boats or backpacks, as was graphically illustrated in February last year when visitors noticed rat prints in the sands of Motuora Island, a vital kiwi sanctuary 5 kilometres off Mahurangi Head; the invader was trapped within a fortnight. Another stowaway on Motuihe 2 months later proved easier to catch - the remarkable nose of Jack, a specially-trained rodent-tracking dog, led DOC staff to a female Norway rat.
Such incursions, which might be triggered by a single inattentive boatie, could spell disaster for threatened wildlife and a foil to multi-million-dollar eradication efforts. An Auckland Regional Council biosecurity plan has created a Hauraki Gulf Controlled Area to protect that investment.
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