Wilderness May 2016

HAT’S OFF TO THOSE involved in the Kakapo Recovery Programme. This year’s breeding season has seen 38 chicks hatch – the most in any year since the programme began in 1991. Breeding kakapo isn’t just about pairing up birds. It’s probably the most hands-on breeding programme in New Zealand – perhaps the world. Every minutiae of a kakapo’s life is monitored, from how much food it eats, how heavy it is, who it’s mating with and even how long it’s been away from its nest. Scientists can even predict the exact day the breeding season begins based on spring temperatures. (Imagine all the snooping New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service would like to do on people and you have a fair idea of the kind of surveillance kakapo are under.) When…

NO KIDDING? WHEN STEPHEN CONN (Pigeon Post, April 2016) says that one of the worst things a nature lover can do to the environment is have children, I understand his point. As a fellow nature lover, I share his despair at the environmental destruction going on. But responsible parenting is also the opportunity that we, as a species, have to turn this around. And really, if all the environmentally aware people stopped having children we’d lose this chance. When it comes to my own children, I have found that experiencing nature together provides some of the best chances to nurture their own sense of respect for the natural world. Not only that, but through wilderness experiences they can learn about leadership, decision making and risk, and build relationships that can…

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AT HINAPOURI TARN, TOILET PAPER BLOWS IN THE WIND Beating the crowds in Nelson Lakes National Park by finding a remote tarn to camp beside is a popular objective of many visitors. Too many, according to DOC. Wilderness has often promoted the virtues of camping beside idyllic Hinapouri Tarn, just off Robert Ridge and near Angelus Hut. But it appears this option, and others in the wider Angelus Basin, is becoming too popular and human waste is now a blight on the scenery. “We have had reports through the summer of toilet paper blowing around within the basin,” said DOC’s Nelson Lakes operations manager John Wotherspoon. “Any camping above the bushline is hard on the environment. Toilet waste doesn’t break down as quickly – it’s colder and there is less…

Eric Buenz was dismembering a bighorn sheep he had shot when the thought struck him: why was the bullet he’d pulled out of the animal about half the size of the one that went in? “You have to wonder,” he says. “Where did the lead go?” That was nearly 10 years ago, and Buenz, who was a Mayo Clinic College of Medicine biomedical researcher at the time, realised that the lead disintegrated into microscopic fragments – and that, over the years, he’d probably been eating them. “Saying there is an explosion of lead throughout the animal would be a bit over the top, but not by too much,” he says. “The concentrations are higher near the point of impact, and aren’t isolated to the wound channel.” Further reading bore out…

One of the most magical parts of tramping is the moment you prop up your trail-weary feet on a weathered stone in a wild landscape and dig into your well-earned supper. Andrew MacDonald has tramping cuisine down to an art form. It all started on a trip he took with his father, Grant. A few years ago, they were tramping in Kahurangi National Park in search of the elusive rock wren. “It was a massive mission, and when you’re that tired and hungry, anything should taste good.” As they sat down to dinner one night, Grant pulled out one of his first freeze-dried creations: a Sicilian pasta, created in his own freeze-drying machine. Andrew’s packaged food didn’t hold a flame to his dad’s delicacy, and inspiration struck: Grant’s background in…