Accolades for Mana Island

HELEN GUMMER

IN GOOD HANDS: A fairy prion chick being fed a sardine smoothie by volunteers from the Friends of Mana Island.

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Mana Island is one of the top 25 ecological restoration sites in Australia and New Zealand.

The site has been selected by a cross-Tasman panel of ecologists in a competition run by the international Global Restoration Network.

The contest was part of the preparation for a major ecological restoration conference being held in Perth in August.

DOC conservation analyst Colin Miskelly says the main thing that sets Mana Island apart is the groundbreaking work done in translocating seabirds, and the high level of community involvement to achieve that.

"Land birds are comparatively easy to relocate, but seabirds have a strong homing system," he says.

"If you catch and relocate them, they will return to their original home."

But the Department of Conservation, Friends of Mana Island Society and other volunteers have found a way to get around that by relocating the birds, such as Fairy Prion, Petrel and Fluttering Shearwater, as well as fluffy chicks.

"We have taken the chicks from four different sites around the country," Mr Miskelly says. "Teams of volunteers have put them into artificial burrows on the island, fed them sardine smoothies with a syringe, and tricked them into thinking the island is their home."

Colin Ryder, president of Friends of Mana Island, says the society employs a contracted scientist to run the projects and guide the volunteers.

"We have had three seabird translocations so far," Mr Ryder says. "The birds have to be fed twice a day for one to five weeks. They also need to be weighed and measured  it's a big operation, needing about six to eight volunteers every day."

The translocation project has been running for 10 years and has seen 704 fluffy chicks onto the island.

Mr Ryder says there are plenty of other restoration projects ahead, with plans to establish other bird and animal species on the island.

The society is also planning to set up an outdoor sound system to attract more seabirds to the island to nest, using mating calls.

Mana Island was farmed for 150 years. In the mid 1970s it was turned into quarantine facilities and buildings and wharves were erected on the island, which are now used by conservationists. The island has been an ecological sanctuary since 1986.

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