My Account
For the past five-and-a-half years, NZ’s most important nature reserve has been maintained under the watchful eye of Department of Conservation ranger Shane McInnes, 34. Next month, Shane departs Hauturu (Little Barrier), partly to find new challenges and partly to keep in touch with partner and fellow ranger Liz Whitwell, who has joined the kakapo recovery team on Codfish Island, on Stewart Island’s west coast. Shane told editor Jannette Thompson that he felt it was time to move on and although he would miss the early morning bird song of Hauturu, he was definitely looking forward to having a proper weekend off ….
One of the things I’ll miss most when I leave the island will be the lifestyle. Liz and I are both keen photographers, particularly underwater photography, and we like to dive and kayak. I’ve been diving since I was about 16 and quite enjoy taking my time and looking at the little stuff in the ocean – the anemones and small fish. The big stuff is pretty cool too – Liz had an encounter with a family of orca when she was snorkelling here. They swam up quite close to her but you could sense that they didn’t mean any harm; they were just inquisitive. Living here you get to immerse yourself in the environment and although I regularly do patrols around the island, I’d say I’ve probably only walked over about half of it. Some places are just so rugged and inhospitable you feel they are pretty much untouched by humans.
My job broadly speaking encompasses visitor management, the tuatara programme, boat patrols and general infrastructure and maintenance. Entry is by permit only and everyone who sets foot on the island goes through quarantine. We take the process really seriously – both before departure from the mainland and on the island. So much effort has been put into eradicating the island of animal and plant pests that the last thing we need is for them to be re-introduced through carelessness. Even the suspicion that there may be a rodent of some kind loose triggers an immediate response and we are constantly setting and checking traps. It can happen so easily – a few years ago a mouse was found in a loaf of bread which was headed for Tiritiri Matangi. It had burrowed itself right into the centre of the bread. It was only the vigilance of the quarantine officer that picked it up and saved what could have been a really costly exercise.
What I love about this job, apart from being as far out of the rat race as it’s almost possible to be, is there really is no such thing as ‘a routine’. It tends to be very busy during summer, but the winters can drag on interminably. That’s normally when Liz and I try and take a holiday. We usually end up on another island in the Pacific, but at least its warm. Winters are probably the toughest time because so much of what we do is weather-dependent. Bad weather keeps us housebound and even though we’ve got some modern conveniences like TV and the internet, it gets pretty lonely. We also have to be careful with the electricity, which is generated primarily by solar panels with a back-up generator.
We get around 400 visitors throughout the year made up of researchers, species translocation teams, supporters trust members and volunteers who may be working on bird species such as the hihi (stitchbird). The Hauturu hihi are the only self-sustaining population left in NZ so a lot of work has gone into monitoring their numbers and health. There’s also a DOC weed team that comes in for four months every year. In whole time I’ve been here I’ve only encountered five illegal visitors and most of those were people who just wanted to sit on the rocks. There was one couple who brought their dog ashore so that it could go to the toilet, but Hauturu has been off-limits for so long now that most people know and respect the rules. The island itself is fairly formidable and looks after itself to some extent – it’s far enough offshore (about 30km from Cape Rodney) not to attract day visitors and there are no safe landing beaches.
The tuatara programme has been one of most rewarding and satisfying things I’ve been involved in. In the early 1990s, the numbers were so low it looked like they were going to become extinct. DOC decided to take some in to captivity to begin a breeding programme and a special enclosure was built. They started with eight and when the island was officially declared rat free in 2006, 60 tuatara were returned to the wild. Since then a total of 130 have been released. It’s still a bit unknown how the species will fare but they’re hardy little things and the signs are optimistic. It was a pretty special thing to be part of the team who actually set the tuatara free.
I’m also proud of the inroads we’ve made to eradicate two particular pest weeds – pampas grass and climbing asparagus. Thanks to funds being available to do some heli-spraying, there is only one particular area on the island now where the pampas is still a problem. The climbing asparagus work has involved ground crews and abseiling into places that would otherwise be inaccessible. When we started we were getting around 30,000 plants annually, now this is down to 300. It’s close to zero density and although it would be nice to think we could rid the island of these pests altogether, that won’t be possible unless they’re eradicated from the coast and inland areas around Leigh and Matakana.
I guess I am a bit of a stickler for the rules where nature is concerned. We’ve taken plenty from our environment; it’s in our best interests to make sure we look after it. When I was a kid I spent a lot of time in the water, poking around the rock pools around the Whangaparaoa Peninsula where I grew up. My dad Grant’s a plumber and my brother’s a builder so really, I should have been an electrician to make the package complete. But I think I might have picked up the ranger bug from my grandparents, Bob and Aileen McInnes, who were custodians of Mansion House on Kawau Island for a few years in the late 1970s. When I left school I studied at Lincoln Uni for a Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management degree and spent a bit of time at Fox Glacier before first coming to Hauturu with a weed team in 1999. I’m not sure what I’ll do after I leave but I’d like to stay in conservation, and particularly species conservation, as long as I’m still learning and still having some fun.
Liz and I dream of one day sailing a yacht around the world, but our first holiday after Hauturu is a trip to the Galapagos where we’re going to be doing some volunteer work. We’ve been lucky to have worked together a lot over the eight-and-a-half years we’ve been together – we were on Raoul Island for a year before Hauturu – and I think we both agree that there are pluses and minuses to working together 24/7. One of the minuses is that sometimes you just run out of things to say. There’s no point in asking ‘how was your day’ when you know it was exactly the same as yours! We tend to work on our own projects and I guess respect that we have different working styles. When I think about it, there really aren’t too many downsides to living on the island. The pace of life in a place like Auckland would never suit me and its been a real privilege to get the chance to make a difference – Hauturu is unique place, the best example of what NZ’s northern coastal areas once looked it. It deserves the best care and maintenance that we can give it.
Mahurangi Matters thanks Norma Jean Charters skipper Piers Barney and Department of Conservation’s community relations manager in Warkworth Liz Maire for making our trip to Hauturu possible.
