Andrew Mackintosh November 13th, 2017
Saturday 11th November’s working bee was on a pleasant morning, at Norgrove Ave close to Chamberlain Park. This is a relatively neglected part of the stream, this area has no walking track or simple access, but is a fairly broad riparian area with lots of potential.
We tackled an area of climbing asparagas which is present in the much of the area.
A big thanks to Volunteers Sean and family, Jeanette, and STEPS Members Sandra, Mac, Liz and Sel.
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Liz November 11th, 2017
STEPS has worked with Council Biodiversity, Wildlands and other experts over the years. We have developed starter plant lists of ‘naturally occurring’ species for three habitats which occur along Meola Creek:
- Lava Rock forest
- Stream side planting
- Wetland planting
These lists are useful for community plantings and for site re-instatement as improvements take place in the catchment. Thanks to Nick Goldwater and Sel Arbuckle for plant lists. Below is a photo taken by Roy Clements of a wetland community planting.
Planting the STEPS Wetland May 2009
Rock Forest planting schedule FoM STEPS plant lists- wetland and streamside (riparian)
Auckland Lava Rock Forest plant list (from Friends of Maungawhau – first published in their book: Maungawhau – a Short History of Volunteer Action 2014)
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Liz November 2nd, 2017
Above is a summary from a Council presentation outlining the pest management approach. Two volunteers resigned and were replaced so we still have a total of four. A training session (July 2016) was held at RCT in order to fill the gap in the volunteer numbers.
Results from the last two trapping sessions (August to mid December 2016 and March to June 2017) are shown below. The numbers may be a slight underestimate as there’s no guarantee that volunteers always record all their catches.
| Rats |
Hedgehogs |
Mice |
| 16 |
0 |
4 |
The latest animal pest monitoring results showed a drop in tracking indices. Notwithstanding that it’s difficult to obtain accurate monitoring data in small urban reserves such as RCT, it’s still encouraging to see such results.
Sarah Peters | Community Park Ranger (Wha)
Parks Services Community Services
Auckland Council
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