Out and About: New Zealand Nature Program

Hey everyone! I’m Ray, the silver haired one in the picture above, and I am one half of the New Zealand Programs Leadership team: the other half is Toby, the scruffy haired one in the picture above.

It’s been an amazing few months on the program and we have been blessed with some really good weather. We only had one bad weather day, and that gave me a chance to take the guys on my patented ‘Ray’s Lord of the Rings Tour’. Fun was had by all. Toby has been away for 2 weeks leading the Machu Picchu fundraising trek, so it’s just been me and the volunteers: planting, removing weeds, surveying streams, counting seals and learning all about Maori myths and legends from one of our ranger friends up north.

Here is a little more about some of our recent program highlights:

Seal Survey at Cape Palliser
Ray and team journeyed 2 hours to this amazing site to identify, monitor and count the seals alongside DOC workers Joe and Jenny. Our final count; a staggering 966 seals and about 10,000 photos of adorable seal pups.

Wellington Zoo
The zoo is always a great day and lots of fun. This time round we made enrichment toys for Sean the sun bear and mulched a large area of the gardens outside the chimp house!

8th July. Nga Manu
This was such a fun day at Nga Manu nature reserve. Between the eel feed and the baby chicks we managed to cut up and re-plant lots of flax. Here we are balancing on the back of a tractor!

As you can see, we’ve been having loads of fun. The volunteers who are here at the moment are very lucky as next week they will be travelling up to the Coromandel Peninsula to take part in some conservation work with the Moehau Environmental Group, a group committed to keeping down pest numbers in order to save the endangered Kiwi Bird, amongst others. The gang will have an amazing trip and get to see some of New Zealand’s most untouched and precious rainforest. We go to Coromandel once very 3 months or so and soon we will also be starting a project at the northern tip of the South Island: very exciting. That means we all get to go on the 3 hour ferry crossing and sail through the Marlborough sounds, which are stunning.

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