BirdingNZ.net

The Reintroductions Specialist Group Oceania website has been moved and spruced up. Probably the best source of info on translocations that have been done in NZ, but like all such endeavours, is not always completely up to date.
http://www.reintroductions.net/

From time to time in this and others threads in this forum I see unkind words [perhaps a bit tongue in cheek] like zoo used to describe Tiri and other sanctuaries from which alien species have been removed. Some of that from people I regard as friends who I hope will remain friends.

My interpretation of the word zoo is a place where animals from other countries are kept in cages and are largely or entirely dependent on humans for food.

None of that is Tiri

Yes there are feeders and nest boxes just like all over the UK, US where in each case there are millions of each, and if when visiting Tiri, you want to stand beside a feeder listening to noisy children and clicking cameras that's your choice. I prefer the majority of the island where you can sit or stand quietly [especially if you stay overnight] and watch native birds eating native food which they clearly prefer. With the exception of Takehe every endemic species of bird on the island can be seen feeding in or on endemic flora and that is far more common than artificial feeding.

Although the Takehe can't fly away, and the grass they are feeding themselves is probably alien, they are finding their own food a lot of the time and are at least in the right country but not the right island. Even for them I think zoo is not the right word.

What is or was artificial [far more so than Tiri] is

A. almost all of the rest of NZ
B. The time on Tiri [that tiny proportion of the last 100,000 years] when the trees were missing and it was covered with alien animal species [all gone except us].

Finally I'll end my rant by saying that what I really like most about Tiri --and Ulva, Tawharanui etc ---but especially Tiri and Ulva is the almost complete absence [apart from around buildings] of introduced birds which don't seem to be able to compete when the endemics have a fair go.

Well said!!

Yes the Takahe are not the right sort - but the right sort are dead and gone - hopefully they fill a niche pretty close to any previous incumbent.
As far as I know no one is suggesting moving Yellowhead or SI Robin there - so all the introductions replace species that once inhabited or at least visited.

cheers
jim

I'd like to echo what Phil said about reserves such as Tiri and Zealandia being less artificial than most of the rest of NZ, as far as birds go at least. From accounts I've read NZ's forests were full of birds, with a deafening morning chorus, when James Cook visited. Goodness only knows what they sounded like before man (and kiore) arrived.

Fenced reserves on the mainland (or replanted islands relieved of their mammalian pests) where the birds are able to leave (and likely get eaten) are surely no more zoos than islands of remnant/re-created habitat elsewhere in the world that have been made into reserves. In NZ we have mammalian predators plus habitat loss/degradation, whereas most other places it is just habitat loss/degradation. I doubt many people would call the Asa Wright Centre in Trinidad a zoo, or Titchwell in the UK, or Bharatpur in India.

I doubt there would be too many that don't see predation by introduced mammals as the main threat to NZ birds and other wildlife these days. Those silent green veneer forests that cover vast tracts of NZ are way more artificial than any predator-free reserve. Having said that it would be so good if the reserves re-introduced as full a range as possible of the special invertebrates, breeding seabirds, non-avian vertebrates, and other less charismatic biota as well.