Ongoing monitoring of the health of kauri on Aotea Great Barrier Island goes to ground next week with field surveys due to get underway.
From 2 November, Auckland Council is working with Department of Conservation to take a closer look at areas of interest identified in an aerial survey earlier this year, for signs of kauri dieback disease. Kaitiaki from Ngāti Rehua Ngātiwai ki Aotea are partnering with the team on this work.
That aerial survey took a bird’s eye view of the island’s forest to get a better understanding of its overall health but with a focus on identifying any sick or dying kauri Now field teams will be looking to see if what they saw in the air is correct.
“They will be surveying trees to understand if any are showing any symptoms of the disease as well as taking soil samples to test for the presence of Phytophthora agathidicida - the pathogen that causes kauri dieback disease,” says Auckland Council’s kauri dieback team manager Lisa Tolich.
“The last time we attempted a ground-truthing survey was in 2014 but a severe storm battered the island, preventing us from getting to most of our sites so with this work we hope to be able to get better baseline data to work from.”
This work is part of the five-yearly kauri health surveys council already conducts across the region.
Aotea / Great Barrier Local Board chair Izzy Fordham says it is vital the battle against the disease continues and knows locals will appreciate those efforts to get a better understanding of what’s happening on the island.
“Our unique landscape and environment, including our forests, is one of the many special things about living here and why people visit here so the more we can to do stop the spread of the disease the better.”
Waitematā and Gulf ward councillor Pippa Coom adds that an investment, funded from the Natural Environment Targeted Rate, in monitoring of the disease helps to guide decisions for management of it on the island.
“We need to proactively tackle kauri dieback to protect kauri and Aotea.”
Protecting our kauri
This work is enabled through funding from Auckland Council’s natural environment targeted rate and one of many projects underway to reduce the spread of kauri dieback disease.
These include track upgrades in both local and regional parks, new cleaning stations and the permanent closure of some track.
We’ve also got tough on those breaching track closures.
We are working hard on track improvements and other projects to protect kauri and enable public access where possible as summer approaches.
Find out more about what we are doing to tackle kauri dieback and track information at aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/protectkauri
