Conservation – One data point at a time

There’s one thing I keep coming back to in conservation, and that’s this – restoration is not just about “doing”, it’s also about listening. It’s easy to picture conservation as the visible work – traps in the bush, weeds being pulled, seedlings going in the ground, kiwi being released. All of that matters deeply. But for me, one of the most compelling parts of this work is something quieter. It’s the process of learning how this landscape functions, and then letting that understanding shape what we do.

At Piroa, a big part of what we’re doing right now is monitoring. In simple terms, that means trying to understand what is here, how species are using the landscape and how the system responds over time. Good conservation is not just action, it’s action followed by feedback. Are we seeing the response we hoped for? Are we creating the conditions for native species to thrive? If not, what needs to change?

Over the past few weeks, we’ve deployed more than 60 acoustic recorders across the wider Piroa landscape, in partnership with Northland Regional Council, the Shorebird Trust, Wild Ecology, Kūkūwai Consulting, and other local ecologists. These devices sit quietly in the forest for a month, recording activity we would otherwise never know was happening. Bats are elusive, almost invisible to us, yet they are an important part of a healthy forest and a useful indicator of ecosystem condition. This first round of monitoring won’t tell us everything, but it gives us an important starting point, our first glimpse into how bats are using this landscape.

We’re also heading into kiwi listening season in May. As the nights get longer and darker, kiwi become more active and begin calling earlier. Kiwi listening is beautifully simple. People head out at night, sit, listen and record what they hear. Over time, those observations build a picture, not just of where kiwi are present, but how they are spreading across the landscape.

Alongside this, we’ve recently welcomed three young kiwi into the ranges. These birds were translocated from Matakohe-Limestone Island, gifted by Ngāti Hine, and received here by Patuharakeke and Te Uri o Hau with that same sense of care and responsibility. Each bird carries a transmitter, allowing us to follow where they go, how they settle and which parts of the forest they choose to use. As they establish and, hopefully, begin to pair up, we’ll learn more about how this landscape is supporting them.

With Conservation Week coming up from April 20 to 26, this feels like a good moment to ask people to do one thing for conservation in their own patch. That might be planting, trapping, joining a local project or simply noticing what is living around them and how it is changing. Conservation is not just about action, it is also about understanding, and the more people we have paying attention, the better chance we have of restoring this place well.