Ruakaka Wildlife Refuge consultation
Consultation closed 30 September 2011
Estuaries are remarkable places. Many plants and animals are specially designed to live in estuaries, making them unique wildlife areas. For thousands of years the estuary at Ruakaka has supported a diversity of wildlife including many shorebirds that have made the area their home.
The Department of Conservation wanted to know what you thought about reducing the pressures that human activity in the area places on the wildlife in the refuge.
Godwits
Conservation values of Ruakaka Wildlife Refuge
Bar-tailed godwits breed in Alaska and travel to New Zealand to spend the summer months at our estuaries. Some of these birds seek out the Ruakaka estuary and in so doing follow a path laid down by their migratory ancestors many years ago. The Ruakaka estuary is a favoured spot for Bar-tailed godwits and Lesser knots at peak spring tides because it offers a safe, dry roosting (resting) area when other sites in the Whangarei Harbour are flooded.
Lesser knots, Australasian gannets and the elegant white-fronted tern can also fly great distances to feed and rest at the Ruakaka estuary, while other birds found here are unique to New Zealand. Some, such as the New Zealand dotterel, are now threatened and likely to become extinct without our care. The significance of the Ruakaka estuary to birdlife was recognised some 50 years ago when it was made into a wildlife refuge.
Reducing the effects of human activity on wildlife in the refuge
Much in New Zealand has changed over the past 50 years, and while the wildlife refuge at Ruakaka has remained, the area around the refuge has grown with additional industrial and residential developments. What's more, Ruakaka is set to continue growing in the near future.
The Ruakaka Wildlife Refuge is small and this means that the human activity around and within it affects the wildlife present here.
There are things that can be done to reduce the pressures on the wildlife in the refuge but success depends on us. If we want to continue having shorebirds within the Ruakaka refuge at all times, we need to do some things differently. Safe areas available for the birds need to be modified and some parts of the refuge need permanent or temporary public access controls.
back to top