Looking out for the birds

A fifth-generation Banks Peninsula farming family have broadened the scope of their farming operation to include the protection of native birds. TIM CRONSHAW reports.

Stony Bay farmer Mark Armstrong never planned to become a saviour of coastal birds on Banks Peninsula, but the endless slaughter of penguins and muttonbirds and the wanton, bloodthirsty nature of their demise got to him.

"I was reluctant (to get involved), but it's difficult to see everything getting killed and not do anything. It has become very consuming," he says.

He and wife Sonia farm hill faces that run down to the peninsula's rugged coastline. The homestead is in the stone-lined bay that since the 1890s has been home to five generations of the Armstrong family.

It wasn't until 1956 that a track to the bay was completed.

Mains power arrived two years later, finally rendering obsolete the water wheel that in Armstrong's youth had provided electricity for three lights and three hours of radio listening a day. Before the track was completed a horse-drawn sledge would bring in larger supplies, and wool bales were awkwardly manhandled over knee-high stones and hoisted onto a dinghy to be loaded on a launch at sea.

As a boy, Armstrong was put to work on farm chores such as churning butter. When he was four, he started planting trees around the homestead, a passion that has carried on into adulthood. His handiwork is visible around the farm today in mature stands of exotic and native trees.

White-flippered penguins were also part of his childhood. The noisy, boisterous birds would nest wherever they could, including under a petrol- driven washing machine. Unperturbed by the rattling and sloshing, the female penguin would rear her chicks.

Then their numbers began to decline.

Until the 1970s, teams of rabbiters and their dogs were employed to control a swelling rabbit population. This ended abruptly when officials decided it was a drain on taxes. They believed the rabbits' predators would keep them at bay. The problem at Stony Bay was that those predators – the wild cats, ferrets and stoats – turned instead on the resident colony of about 400 penguins.

"A Swiss couple asked if there were any penguins they could see and I went to show them some chicks," recalls Armstrong. "They were in a box and inside two adults were there with their heads off and the chicks were gone and a ferret tail was showing. I grabbed the gun and shot the ferret.

"For some years we had wondered where all the penguins were laying their eggs and where they had gone. This ferret had six chicks in it."

From that day, Armstrong began trapping the nest-raiding mustelids. "I didn't know what I had let myself in for. It was a massive job, and I have been at it (now) for 18 years."

There were further repercussions for the farm. Without the rabbiters or the rabbit predators, the rabbit population went "berserk", burrowing and eroding the hill slopes. When calicivirus arrived, for some reason Stony Bay's rabbits were 80 per cent immune to the disease.

So Armstrong then waged war on the rabbits, one year shooting up to 1500. It is only recently that numbers have come under control.

As a result of the predator- reduction work, about 40 pairs of penguins were saved.

Nesting birds can now be found in carpet-lined boxes on the verandas of huts next to the homestead. These huts are the overnight resting points on the popular Banks Peninsula Track, which the Armstrongs run with neighbouring farmers.

But penguins were not the only targets of the mustelids and wild cats.

Near the main bay, where paddocks drop suddenly to vertigo- inducing cliffs, is a colony of sooty shearwaters, otherwise known as muttonbirds or titi. There was a time when they could be found without difficulty on the peninsula, but pests have scoured their numbers.

Stony Bay was down to three birds in 1999 when Armstrong decided to act. He built a predator-proof chicken-wire fence following the contours of the steeply descending paddocks, where the birds burrow. The year after the fence was built there were five or six eggs, and today the colony of about 40 nesting holes – a "hive of activity" – is the only one on the peninsula. Traps inside and outside of the protected enclosure provide added predator control, and scientific and conservation groups now support the protection work.

Also inside the enclosure is another of Armstrong's pet projects, a single, rare specimen of Cook's scurvy grass. Seed was extracted from another solitary plant discovered two years ago at Island Bay on the south side of the peninsula. The Armstrongs were entrusted with one of the seedlings , and it is flourishing along with the muttonbirds.

This easy link between conservation and farming can probably be traced to the drought-ridden years of the 1980s. Wool and lamb prices were falling, and the Armstrongs were forced to look outside beyond farming for an income.

In 1989 they joined with other farmers to form the private peninsula track that winds its way through coastal properties.

On the third night of a four-day tramp, visitors stop at the Stony Bay haven. The colonial-style board-and- batten huts were built by Armstrong, crafted mainly from home-milled macrocarpa and demolition finds and an outdoor bath and shower built into a large gnarled macrocarpa stump are visitor favourites.

As the walkers work their way along the rugged coastline, they pass through the pockets of coastal broadleaf forest that Armstrong has created or the couple have nurtured. Native trees and shrubs he planted near the beach to stop the cliffs from eroding have created a leafy passage. More native bush on the farm has been fenced off.

Sonia Armstrong says the planting has not been without cost, but has added to the visual appeal of the property.

"All the planting that Mark has done has been part of the farm budget and it had to happen," she says. "The hundreds of thousands of trees that were planted have made the big picture. It has given Mark a lot of pleasure to plant and make things nicer and to soften the edges."

To ensure these pockets of native bush remain for future generations, they have been covenanted by the couple. The paddocks in front of the main beach were protected by a QEII covenant in 1985, to prevent them from being developed when there was talk of the Government acquiring this land to form recreational areas. While the Armstrongs have no objection to visitors at the bay, they disliked the idea of compulsory purchasing and wanted the site to be retained in its present state.

At the top of the valley, next to Hinewai Reserve, another site has been fenced and covenanted.

This philosophy continued when they bought 109ha of coastal land between Stony Bay and Flea Bay. Four hectares in a gully were covenanted with the local council and a 9ha bush site covenanted with the Banks Peninsula Conservation Trust. After more trees were planted and a road put in, the two protected sites were sold to offset some of the costs.

A 25ha block of mainly regenerating bush on the side of the valley overlooking their farm has been bought and will be covenanted. Mark Armstrong wryly says the new purchase will save them from thinking about a European trip for a few more years.

This flurry of investment in the Armstrongs' later farming years has a purpose. They now have a 500ha farming block, with about 140ha able to be worked by tractor.

They plan to continue leasing the farm, which they have done since selling their perendale flock and cattle herd five years ago. The larger property will allow them to concentrate on maintenance, running the walkway and carrying out their conservation projects.

It has also settled the difficult headache of farm succession. Mark Armstrong says the expanded property will be a way of keeping a fifth-generation Banks Peninsula farm in the family. When he and Sonia retire, their three daughters have the option of living on the farm and continue to lease it as a business, he says.

"I read an article in an American magazine about family farms, and 60% are leased to neighbours and often the owners live on the farm. I see an enormous amount of small farms in Banks Peninsula, and a lot are uneconomical and there will be a problem about how they stay in the family. This is why I am exploring this leasing option. As I see it, you need 10,000 sheep to make a living, and that is three average-sized farms. I see a lot more leasing in the future."

To avoid the trap of many leases failing because of unrealistic expectations by the owners that the leesee should maintain the property, Armstrong plans to do this himself.

"I thought I would miss (running the livestock) but I haven't missed it at all. I have given myself 10 years to set it up so it works well. The new land needs development and maintenance and this is under way."

He says the farm has become too big for him to manage, but the leasing arrangement has allowed him to maintain the property and possibly employ someone to do the work when he gets older.

"It's hard to know what will happen. When we started in the tourism industry people told us `fail to plan and you plan to fail', so we have done a lot of planning.

"I don't have a lot of faith in the sheep industry, but this farm has been in the family for 125 years and as the last Armstrong farming, I would like to keep it going."

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