Banks Peninsula
Southeast Banks Peninsula - The "Wildside"
Introduction
Context and History
Welcome to the Banks Peninsula biodiversity hub. The purpose of this page is to highlight work being undertaken on Banks Peninsula to protect, enhance and restore biodiversity.
As a distinct part of Canterbury, Banks Peninsula has a range of habitats, plants and animals that are unique. This includes sooty shearwater (titi), who maintain a remnant population on the southern side of the Peninsula in one last remaining location, as well as jeweled gecko, yellow-eyed and white flipper penguins and lowland patches of podocarp forest. The Peninsula also contains species that are not found anywhere
else in the world! This includes the Banks Peninsula Daisy and a few
remaining populations of Cooks Scurvy grass.
Historically the Peninsula, comprising two ' extinct' volcanoes, was once covered in lowland podocarp and broadleaf forest, including rimu, matai and totara species. In damp hollows of valley floors and along the a margins of rivers and streams, numerous wetlands also existed. Nearby, Birdlings Flat and Kaitorete Spit connected the Peninsula to the southern part of Canterbury; providing then - as now - a home for species such as the rare native sand sedge, pingao, and New Zealand's only native poisonous spider, the kaitipo.
In this state, the Peninsula provided a key source of resources for local iwi, with Maori settlements being established in various bays, including a major pa site at Onawae, at the head of present-day Akarao harbour. A variety of mahinanga kai species were harvested by the descendants of the present-day Ngai Tahu, including native wood pigeons (Kereru), native swan and geese (now extinct) and a variety of marine resources, including paua and kina (' sea eggs').
In the years following the arrival of the first European settlers, much of the forest on the Peninsula was milled to supply the demands for timber from the 'treeless' plains; those trees not milled were frequently burnt, either deliberately or by accident. Wetlands were drains, rivers bridged and much of the land converted to pastoral agriculture.
Banks Peninsula Map, showing key settlements & travel times.(left); and from the air (right).
Biodiversity on Banks Peninsula Today
Changing economics and attitudes, underpinned by a renewed appreciation of the natural values of Bank Peninsula, has sparked growing support by landowners, iwi, local authorities and government agencies to biodiversity protection on the Peninsula. The consequences have included projects, including the establishment of numerous covenants that mean, presently, there is more remnant bush on the Peninsula than 100 years ago. In part the Peninsula's own environment has played a key role in this. The availability of remnant seed sources and plentiful rain - more than on the nearby Canterbury Plains - has provided condition suitable for the recruitment and growth of new forests. Underpinning this has been a human commitment to protection and sustainable management
Southwest Banks Peninsula from Birdlings Flat
Biodiversity Initiatives
Banks Peninsula has become the centre of a number of exciting collaborative efforts, involving landowners, community groups and local authorities to protect and restore local biodiversity values. Hinewai, to the north of Akaroa, for example, is the site of a large-scale project devoted to the use of passive methods - allowing nature to heal itself - to restore the forest in its valley surrounds. Here, through canopies of introduced gorse, native trees such as rimu and kahikatea are slowly pushing their way through, leading to the gradual recreation of the forest that once stood in the valley.
Hinewai is also the site of an innovative scheme to bring tui back to the Peninsula; a bird last seen in reasonable numbers in the 1960s. In April 2009 40 birds were translocated from Maud Island, in the Marlborough Sounds, to Hinewai with the hope that they will provide the nucleus for the growth of a viable population of the bird. This project has brought together people from a range of groups and parties, highlighting the collaborative nature of much of the biodiversity work undertaken in the area.
The Banks Peninsula Conservation Trust is one of several such groups working on the Peninsula. Comprising a cross section of community members the Trust leads a covenanting programme that Looking down on Hinewai
has seen 30-plus covenants established across the Peninsula. The Trust also collaborates with a variety of other organisations, including Environment Canterbury and the Christchurch City Council to promote biodiversity conservation in the area, while many of its staff and members have been closely involved with other biodiversity initiatives, including the tui restoration project previously described.
Banks Peninsula Images: Sign at the tui release ceremony, Hinewai (April 2009); a Banks Peninsula stream in native forest, Okuti Valley (December 2008) ; large Rimu, QE II covenant, Prices Valley (January, 2009); and Miles Giller (QE II Trust) and Rachel Barker (Banks Peninsula Conservation Trust), Prices Valley (January 2009).
Biodiversity Challenges - Control of Weeds and Pests
One of the challenges for biodiversity on Banks Peninsula is the problem posed by numerous introduced weeds and pest. Problem weeds include gorse, broom, Japanese honeysuckle, yellow ginger, old man's beard and banana passion fruit (pictured, left).
Pest animals of concern include hares, possums, rabbits, stoats and ferrets, feral goats and deer, and ships rats. Efforts to control these species are on-going and include a community supported initiative programme for the control of possums. Under this scheme local residents pay a special rate to support a possum control programme around the Peninsula. This particular programme, one of the few community initiative pest programme's remaining in Canterbury, has the dual benefits of addressing possums as a bovine TB vector and as a biodiversity concern.
In April 2009 Environment Canterbury, in collaboration with the Canterbury Biodiversity Coordinator, Christchurch City Council, Banks Peninsula Conservation Trust and others, supported the publication and distribution of the book The War on
| Banana Passion fruit. A Peninsula problem plant (above). |
Pests: Dealing to Key Pest Plants and Animals that Threaten Native Species. A Landowners Guide for Banks Peninsula and Kaitorete Spit. The book provides a comprehensive guide to the weeds and pests of Banks Peninsula, some of the biodiversity values that they threaten, and methods and processes for controlling them. A pdf version of the book can be down-loaded through the following link:
Other links
If you are interested in other Banks Peninsula web-sites detailing the areas and its management go to the web-site of the Banks Peninsula Conservation Trust, below:
Banks Peninsula Conservation Trust web-site