Southern underbirds

Epic efforts are underway to save the last 101 pukunui southern New Zealand dotterels from extinction. By Kerrie Waterworth

Imagine spending up to eight days at a stretch isolated above the bush line on the mountain tops of Rakiura Stewart Island. Your home is a backcountry hut and almost every day you are buffeted by the strong westerly Roaring Forties winds, rain, hail, or snow. 

Sound appealing? Twenty-six-year-old Guy McDonald is there every month, carrying out predator control, and says he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. 

Guy was the inaugural winner of Forest & Bird’s Te Kaiārahi Rangatahi o te Taiao Youth Award in 2015. Now, nearly a decade later, he is on the frontline of efforts to save the last remaining population of pukunui southern New Zealand dotterel.

The former South Canterbury Kiwi Conservation Club member is the lead field ranger for the Department of Conservation’s Pukunui Recovery Project to save the critically endangered native bird. There are just 101 adults left in the world, all living and breeding on Rakiura Stewart Island. 

If you have never heard of the southern dotterel or pukunui (meaning “big tummy” in te reo), it is not surprising, as they spend most of the year feeding on the beaches and estuaries of Rakiura and from September to January nesting and breeding among the alpine plants and scrub on the island’s mountain tops. 

Guy McDonald at Mason Bay, Rakiura. Credit Laura Findlay

Guy says he doesn’t struggle with the remoteness as there is always something to keep him busy in the field – searching for dotterel nests, modifying cat traps, or working on little infrastructure projects. 

“I joined the Pukunui (Southern New Zealand Dotterel) Recovery Project after spending a year working on the Kākāpō Recovery Programme in 2022,” says Guy. 

“I’d always wanted to live on Rakiura and help protect its birdlife, so when I was offered a job leading the Southern New Zealand pukunui dotterel team I couldn’t turn it down.” 

Guy has found pukunui “very friendly and curious”, often approaching people on the mountains in a polite and inquisitive way.

“To me, they are like the kea of Rakiura, roaming the mountain tops, and have a similar charismatic trill call they do when gliding around playfully in small flocks. 

“They are also one of the most loyal and dedicated birds I have ever worked with, defending their nests with their life in most cases.” 

In August/September, when the breeding season is about to begin, all adult pukunui develop dark reddish-orange plumage. 

“My co-worker Daniel Cocker (Dotterel Dan) often refers to them as a ‘tomato with wings’, which I reckon sums them up pretty well, especially in the peak of the breeding season.”

Pukunui Southern New Zealand dotterels are larger, heavier, and darker than the northern New Zealand dotterels. They were once widespread throughout the South Island, breeding along the Southern Alps. They were last seen in the South Island in the early 1900s, soon after the introduction of stoats.

Graph showing pukunui population 1990–2024. Credit DOC

In 1991, the last remaining population on Rakiura plummeted to an all-time low of just 62 birds, but by 2010 their numbers had increased to 300 thanks to predator control. 

Sadly, since then, the population has been on a steep decline, with 126 in 2023 and only 101 in 2024. The species is now classified as nationally critical, one of the most severely threatened native New Zealand birds, at high risk of extinction. 

Feral cats are the biggest threat to the survival of pukunui, followed by swamp harriers, rats, spur-winged plovers, black-backed gulls, and white-tailed deer. 

In the September 2023 to January 2024 breeding season, the recovery team trapped 32 feral cats from around four of the main pukanui breeding sites – Northern Tin Range, Mount Rakeahua, Rocky Mountain, and 511 Hill. 

This breeding season, they removed 30 feral cats from around the same breeding sites before the first pukunui nest was discovered in early September. 

DOC’s Pukunui Recovery Project has been working to protect the birds during the breeding season since 1994, but DOC recently increased the funding to recruit Guy and three other rangers for year-round predator control. 

Rakiura Stewart Island Senior Ranger Biodiversity Kevin Carter says, with 50% of its population lost over five years, pukunui are projected to go functionally extinct within three to five years unless a more effective strategy is used.

Dotterel recovery team HQ, Rakiura. Credit Guy McDonald

“Given the (budgetary) challenges we’re up against, we must focus our effort on work that makes the biggest difference for Aotearoa New Zealand’s unique biodiversity.” 

Kevin says the Pukunui Recovery Project will be ongoing and has no defined end date. 

The current goal is to increase the number of breeding pairs to at least 100 by 2030, which should give the population the ability to cope with chance events or predator outbreaks that currently pose a very high risk to the survival of the pukunui population. 

Feral cat caught on a trail camera, Rakiura. Credit DOC

Next autumn, Predator Free Rakiura will start removing feral cats, possums, and rats from its first 10,000ha block (10km x 10km) at South Pegasus, in the southern end of Rakiura.

Kevin says this will help several pukunui breeding pairs in the area, but predator control of spur-winged plover, Australasian harrier, and white-tailed deer will be required to help maximise the number of eggs that hatch and chicks that survive through to adulthood. 

In the meantime, back from an eightday stint on a Rakiura mountain top protecting the breeding pukunui, lead ranger Guy says growing up in Timaru and working with South Canterbury KCC and Forest & Bird volunteers during his teenage years opened his eyes to the challenges and threats our precious wildlife face, fuelling his passion for protecting unique species on the brink.

“The pukunui are a Rakiura gem,” he says.“If we want our grandchildren to be able to see them, it’s up to us to fight for their survival. 

“I often think about the birds that are no longer with us, like the moa, and wonder what it would be like if they were still around today. Could they have been saved too?”

Pukunui and chick, Mount Rakeahua. Credit Craig Stonyer

VANISHING NATIVE SPECIES 

by Chelsea McGaw, Forest & Bird’s Otago and Southland regional manager

Aotearoa New Zealand has the highest proportion of threatened indigenous species of any country in the world. This includes 90% of all seabirds, 84% of reptiles, 76% of freshwater fish, and 74% of terrestrial birds. The Department of Conservation is the organisation charged with helping managing these species, on a skeleton budget. 

The decline of pukunui is an alarming one, but we have been here before. Both kākāpō and takahē were functionally extinct but have been brought back from the brink by DOC under intensive management. Kakī declined to a low of just 23 birds in 1981, when DOC decided to step in. But saving our unique manu doesn’t come cheap, with an estimated $25 million spent on kākāpō recovery over the last 45 years.  

A few months ago, Conservation Minister Tama Potaka said that the goal of saving every species was “very aspirational” and something “we may not be able to deliver on”. Not what you want to hear coming from the Minister in charge of promoting conservation of the natural and historic heritage of New Zealand. He said it could cost hundreds of billions of dollars to stop all our native species becoming extinct. 

With year-on-year budget cuts continually hammering DOC, the axing of Jobs for Nature funding, and a government dead set on prioritising our economy over nature, it is hard to be optimistic for species in serious trouble, such as pukunui. We take solace in the knowledge there are hardworking and passionate people, such as Guy and Dan, fighting with everything they have to save these beautiful birds.