Work is bringing glorious native plant back from the brink
Conservationists in Hawke’s Bay are boosting by 25 percent the collection of genetically diverse kākābeak plants available to supply seed and cuttings to a species recovery initiative bringing this glorious New Zealand native back from the brink of extinction.
Napier-based organisation The Urban Kākābeak Project is building a fifth pest-proof exclosure on land in the Maungataniwha Native Forest owned by the Forest Lifeforce Restoration Trust. One hundred additional plants, propagated from wild-sourced plants, will join an existing collection of 400 that acts as a seed-bank in a last-ditch, and so far highly successful, bid to stave off extinction.
Seeds and cuttings from Maungataniwha are propagated by Napier nursery Plant Hawke’s Bay, owned and run by well-known biodiversity champion Marie Taylor.
The young plants are then distributed by The Urban Kākābeak Project to schools, marae, gardens and collections across the district.
“The point of distributing the plants is to prevent all our species recovery work with kākābeak from being undone by a single natural disaster, which is what could easily have happened with Cyclone Gabrielle when Marie’s nursery was severely flooded,” said James Powrie, founder of The Urban Kākābeak Project.
It has distributed several thousand young kākābeak, or ngutukākā, so far.
The new exclosure on the Forest Lifeforce Restoration Trust property at Maungataniwha is on land that was formerly a pine plantation, which the Trust is returning to native bush. The Trust’s forest manager Pete Shaw identified the site in the Te Hoe catchment for its manuka cover and frost drainage.
It is some distance from the other exclosures. This all part of the project’s aversion to risk.
“Quite apart from the risk of natural disaster, plant seed is a sporadic product, “ Mr Powrie said. “With a species this close to annihilation it just makes sense to mitigate as much risk as we can. And if that means spreading these exclosures more widely across the Trust’s property, then that’s what we’ll do.”
The propagated plants are, in a sense, coming home. Some were grown at Plant Hawke’s Bay from seed collected from wild plants growing on bluffy strongholds within a few hundred meters of the property.
Once transplanted at Maungataniwha they are tended by Mr Powrie, his wife Anita, Forest Lifeforce Restoration Trust staff and their team of volunteers.
The 100 new ngutukākā plants, propagated from about 20 sources, will be planted in the new predator-proof exclosure in October, in time for the Spring growing season. Mr Powrie expects to be able to collect the first seeds and cuttings from these plants next year.
Exotic predators have impacted kākābeak so severely in the bush that now there are only about 100 kākābeak plants known to exist in the wild, mostly on the East Coast, and only about 10 percent of these remain in Hawkes Bay.
In years gone by hundreds of wild plants grouped together would create stunning spectacles from the Bay of Islands to southern Hawke’s Bay. But today only a few lonely specimens remain in the wild, clinging to the inhospitable cliffs in a desperate last defence against goats, deer and other exotic browsers.
Although cultivated commercially and grown widely in gardens for a century or more, domestic kākābeak are all derivatives of one or two wild plants that have been interbred for flowering beauty or form, and now have unknown ability to survive in the wild.
This, and the small number of wild plants, is why kākābeak holds New Zealand’s highest possible threatened plant ranking, ‘Nationally Critical’.
The Urban Kākābeak Project has received support from Forest Lifeforce Restoration Trust, Pan Pac Environmental Trust, Biodiversity Hawkes Bay, RedAxe Forestry Intelligence, the Department of Conservation Community Fund, Plant Hawkes Bay Nursery, Ngāti Pahauwera Development Trust and Rockwell Automation.
How you can help
Mr Powrie called for hunters, anglers, trampers and rafters to keep their eyes out while in the Hawkes Bay and East Coast bush this spring for individual kākābeak plants growing in the wild.
Any sightings of the flamboyant plant, which is typically found clinging to cliffs and inaccessible bluff systems, should be reported to the nearest DOC office.
New finds are significant because they widen the pool of wild-grown genetics that can be used in propagation efforts.
“We’re asking anyone who sees a plant – and they’re pretty unmistakable – to make a note of the location, preferably using a GPS for the most accurate co-ordinates, and to let us have this information as soon as they get back to civilisation,” Mr Powrie said.
“This is the time of the year when the plants are heavy with spectacular bunches of curved crimson flowers, so it’s an ideal time to spot them.”
Those wishing to serve this species can join the Urban Kākābeak Project group on Facebook for growing tips and sources, and information about growing the plant in its original wild form.
