The Manawahe Kōkako Trust
25 Years of dedication and hard work
I first heard the kōkako in the early morning in the early 1970s while mustering ewes and lambs for shearing with Bill Rendall on our horses. It was early dawn on the high trig point of the farm. Way down below us in the bush came this magical falling note call of a bird. I asked Bill what was that sound? He replied it was a kōkako, a bird he had not heard for many years (the Rendall family were early pioneers in Manawahe).
At that time Radio New Zealand was playing native bird song every morning and I managed to get a recording of the kōkako. I took my recording into the bush alongside the Waikamihi Stream and played it and almost immediately a bird answered in the tawa tree above. It looked bedraggled with a feather missing in its wing, but was very agile, hopping from branch to branch. What a wonderful sight!
From then on, I took my family and friends down to the same spot and nearly always the bird was there. If disturbed it would flutter with a lot of wing noise to the next tree, then hop from branch to branch to gain height. I became fascinated with the kōkako and eventually (in the late 80s and 90s) visited sites where DOC was monitoring breeding sites in Kaharoa and Waimana.
I soon realised, to save the birds the native bush must be protected from predators, especially rats and possums. When I first bought the farm, I had a war on possums and 4,000 were eliminated. They were also killing the beautiful kohekohe trees. At that time the QEII Trust was being formed, so I gifted 70 acres of kōkako habitat and 70 acres of the Manawahe Escarpment. My neighbour, John Mackintosh also gifted acres of bush, which created a larger area and a corridor for the kōkako to flourish and increase.
John Savory – Manawahe Farmer
A call for protection
Photo: Neil R Hutton
The project begins...
In July 1993, DOC Ranger Jeff Hudson surveyed the Manawahe kōkako for the first time. He found 21 birds concentrated around the Karaponga Stream on the Mackintosh and Averes properties. He observed a different dialect to Te Urewera birds and noticed Manawahe kōkako were distinctly larger than any others he had come across. It was thought the birds had no future on the mainland so a team caught 5 and relocated them to Kapiti Island where their progeny still survive today.
In 1997, Jeff Hudson gave a talk to the Whakatane Rotary Club about his work with kokako in Te Urewera. Afterwards he was asked if he knew of a project the club could take on.
He told them about a small, declining population of kōkako at Manawahe that needed saving before it was lost. DOC couldn’t help because the birds were on private land. Club President, Murray Hays, was keen to have an ongoing project that could involve the whole club. He presented the idea of protecting the birds to the members and got a very positive response, with 15-20 members electing to join him.
Landowners Ross Dredge, Wendy Montrose and John and Jean Mackintosh were keen. Jeff and his sidekick, Grant Jones, offered to oversee the project as advisors, drawing on their experience in kōkako recovery and the Manawahe Kōkako Trust was born.
The trust’s brief was simple; protect the kōkako from introduced predators and allow them to breed unmolested. To do this, they would need to carry out an extensive eradication programme every Spring. The control area, home to 3 pairs and a few single kōkako, covered about 300 hectares of regenerating native bush on the South side of the Manawahe hills in the Eastern Bay of Plenty.
The Whakatane Rotary Club lent $3,500 to buy bait stations and MKT scrounged bait from the Bay of Plenty Regional Council to get started. Volunteers, including Jeff and Grant, gave up their Saturday mornings to set up a bait station grid, slash tracks and nail bait stations to trees from August to December, lugging backpacks full of bait over the bush clad ridges.
"Without the input of Grant and Jeff's knowledge we would be either inadequate or, if we had to pay for their expertise, insolvent. As well as their intellect, their hard physical work is greatly valued, for them both a real 'Busman's holiday.'"
“We had a lot of fun. We would get to Manawahe for an 8am start, sort out who was going where, tramp up and down hills carrying backpacks full of bait for a few hours and end up with a fantastic gourmet barbeque. Actually it was sausages and tomato sauce, but it was delicious!”
A Song for a Saturday Morning
On Saturday 16th October, you missed a spectaular Manawahe Kōkako Trust open day. Despite the day dawning grey and gloomy with a cool wind and threatening rain, 46 people including 3 children gathered at Mackintosh’s at 7am. They came from near (a few hardy locals) and far (Whakatāne, Ōpōtiki, Rotorua, Cape Runaway and England would you believe). After piling into the more rugged vehicles and driving deep into the outback of the Mackintosh’s gorgeous farm, we walked for 30 minutes or so in native bush, a mere doddle.
Jeff Hudson used a recording of Rotoehu forest kōkako song to get our birds interested and managed to call a pair in to our position. Being territorial creatures, kōkako get very upset when a neighbour trespasses on their property and they swoop down for a look at the intruders, while telling them in no uncertain terms to get lost. This all made for a very entertaining hour for the watchers. The birds hung around and kept up a reasonable level of song and everyone was thoroughly enchanted. There is nothing like sitting under a pair of kōkako in full song. We walked back to the vehicles in a cloud of euphoria and drove a few hundred metres up the road to be fed sausages and hot tea and coffee in a lovely spot. The rain held off until everyone had gone just to make a perfect end to the morning. Kōkako Trust working bees are as much fun as open days with a BBQ finish and you get all those warm fuzzies from doing good deeds.
"The 2001 survey located 24 kōkako. The 2002 survey located 32 kōkako comprising 10 pairs, 2 singles and 10 juveniles. This season's increase in kōkako numbers reflects the successful animal control programme in place at Manawahe.
Photo: Wendy Montrose
The success of the predator control work undertaken by the Manawahe Kōkako Trust was seen in the results of surveys undertaken in 2001 and 2002. In 2007, a survey by Grant Jones and Bruce Bancroft established the presence of 24 pairs and 5 single kōkako, a total of 53 birds in 29 territories.
"This report is getting somewhat easier each year because we are being rather monotonously successful"
During this time the Trust received much recognition in the press for the hard work put in by the volunteers and the group were nominated for and won several environmental awards. It was not just the growing kōkako population that provided motivation for the volunteers to continue their hard work in the bush, year after year. Every working bee and open day would end with a barbeque, which became the glue that held the Trust together and many lifelong friendships were formed through volunteering for the Manawahe Kōkako Trust.
"One clear, crisp morning I heard a magnificent bird call from the bush...Hearing that bird that morning is something I'll never forget. Today, I reflect on the kōkako and what great friends it has resulted in us having for a large part of our lives. It would be nice if it knew how important it is to us all."
President, Murray Hays, would write about his own motivation for volunteering in his annual reports, highlighting the social events that took place throughout the year, which would often include group field trips and tramps. “I look forward to getting back to the bush. I find that the huge divergence in relation to my day to day work is personally rewarding and invigorating. I very much enjoy the camaraderie and I love the birdsong.”
After a decade of hard work, the Manawahe Kōkako Trust volunteers had grown in experience, managing a predator control programme over hundreds of hectares of steep native bush. Their countless hours of mahi had resulted in a boost of kōkako numbers to 53 birds in 2007. However by 2009, the kōkako population had begun to decline for unknown reasons. More research was needed to determine why a population that was so well-protected from predators was in decline and the Manawahe Kōkako Trust agreed to take-on this challenge.
Ladder leading to a Kōkako nest
From the initial drop in kōkako numbers in 2009, the number of pairs of kōkako plateaued. During this time, other populations of kōkako in areas managed for possums and rats were continuing to grow. In 2012, kōkako specialist Bruce Bancroft recommended that nest monitoring be undertaken in Manawahe after the results of his annual population survey showed another year of no increase in pairs.
In 2014, a grant of over $160,000 was received from the Lotteries Environment and Heritage fund to fund three years worth of research to better understand the reasons for the decline in the kōkako population, despite the ongoing predator control. By this time the population had further dropped to just 6 pairs. The research involved monitoring these remaining kōkako pairs during nesting, to find the answers to some key questions.
"We hoped this monitoring would provide some answers to a number of questions. Are all the pairs at Manawahe engaging in nesting activities? Is there evidence of a sex-ratio imbalance among pairs? Kōkako are known to form male-male pairs when populations have a gender imbalance; with male-male pairs even attempting nesting; could this be happening? Are the nesting attempts of kōkako yielding viable eggs and healthy chicks? Are chicks surviving to adulthood? Monitoring of nests would tell us more about the population dynamics of Manawahe kōkako.
Although the Manawahe Kōkako Trust received some incredible support for this research from DOC, Bay of Plenty Regional Council, QEII Trust, Forest and Bird and from several expert contractors, the volunteers contributed a huge amount of time to assist with the ongoing monitoring over several months each year during the kōkako breeding season.
An infertile Kōkako egg in an abandoned nest - Greg Moorcroft
"We had a very hectic 6 month period. Some of our members, along with professional and volunteer support practically lived at the block in order to provide the absolute best support. An incredibly intense and completely different aspect to that which we had become comfortable"
After three years of research, the results from the nest monitoring cameras showed that predation by rats and possums was unlikely to be a major cause for the population decline in Manawahe. The most significant finding was that 70% of eggs from the nests were infertile. This result lead to more unanswered questions. Was the high rate of non-viable eggs due to a genetic bottleneck from such a depleted population? Was the low level of nutrients in the Manawahe soil to blame? Or was the lack of fruiting plants in the forest understorey, due to ongoing browsing by wallaby and deer, impacting the health of the kōkako during their breeding season?
"We at MKT should be immensely proud of our efforts over the last 18 years or so and we are looked on with envy by other similar groups who struggle to get volunteers for their projects."
In 2018, permission was given by DOC and iwi to translocate adult kōkako pairs from the nearby population at Kaharoa. On August 17th, 2019, a hui was held at Kaharoa for Ngati Rangiwewehi and Tapuika to bless the kōkako before they traveled to Manawahe. Catching began the next day and 3 pairs were caught and banded so they could be easily identified during future monitoring in Manawahe.
In 2021, a further translocation was approved and 3 more adult pairs were caught at Rotoehu to further grow the population at Manawahe.
During this time and to the present day, annual nest monitoring and population surveys have continued to be undertaken by specialist contractors. While it is still early days to know just how successful the translocations have been for improving the breeding results of kōkako in Manawahe, the most recent monitoring undertaken during 2023-24 has shown the best results in a decade. The number of adult pairs and singles has begun to increase to 15 birds from just 11 in 2021. Most significantly, the number of chicks that fledged has also grown year on year, with 4 chicks successfully leaving their nests in 2024. Within just a few years these chicks will hopefully pair up with others and raise chicks of their own.
Photos: Neil R Hutton
"These new kōkako are the hope for the future survival of the Manawahe population and wouldn't be here without the dedication and hard work of a lot of people"
Photos: Neil R Hutton
By the time the second translocation was completed in 2021, the Manawahe Kōkako Trust volunteers had contributed tens of thousands of hours work in the bush and on paperwork to protect the Manawahe kōkako. The project had grown in scale to cover hundreds of hectares of bush and the predator control operation was so effective that routine rat monitors were consistently below 5%, the recommended level to protect the kōkako. Many volunteers had been involved in the project since it began in the 1990s and it had become more difficult to recruit younger volunteers to travel to Manawahe and undertake the trapping and baiting. By 2022, the group decided that it was no longer sustainable for the Manawahe Kōkako Trust to continue working on the project independently.
"Whatever the future brings, we see 2022 as a turning point, where a new approach is needed to carry on the good work of the past. I would like to thank all of you who have been a part of this journey. The future will be somewhat different, but I believe the key work - the predator control in the bush - will continue seamlessly into the future."
During this time, the Bay of Plenty Regional council had been providing funding for ongoing predator control to both the Manawahe Kōkako Trust and another local group the Manawahe Eco Trust, which managed an area of several hundred hectares adjacent to the kōkako block. Peter Fergusson had been overseeing the predator control work for the Eco Trust since 2013 and was also a long-time volunteer of the Manawahe Kōkako Trust. Throughout the course of 2023, he worked closely with the trustees of both groups to merge the project area and ensure that the kōkako in Manawahe would continue to be protected for generations to come.
While the Manawahe Kōkako Trust has ceased to exist on paper, many of its people are still active volunteers, heavily involved in the work on the ground to protect kōkako. Several of these volunteers have become trustees of the Manawahe Eco Trust and will uphold that the protection of the kōkako is paramount in its operational planning. Many volunteers from the Manawahe Kōkako Trust continue to take part in the baiting days within the kōkako block and with the monthly trapping. In 2023, the Manawahe Eco Trust updated its vision to recognise the significance of the kōkako in the work it undertakes.
"To enhance the mauri of Manawahe for our Mokopuna to hear the song of the kōkako from lakes to sea."
The work carried out by the Manawahe Kōkako Trust for 25 years has ensured their song lives on in Manawahe to this day.
Dedicated to the Volunteers who, for 25 years, shed blood, sweat and tears for the Manawahe kōkako.