Mercury s wind farm project nears the halfway mark stuff.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from stuff.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Massey researchers help to reintroduce Robins to Turitea Reserve
The translocation took place in late April at Bushy Park Tarapuruhi Forest sanctuary near Whanganui.
Dr Kevin Parker
Dr Zoe Stone and Professor Doug Armstrong
Toutouwai, North Island robin, are locally extinct in most of their original range but thanks to a collective community effort including several Massey University researchers, a successful translocation has taken place to reintroduce the bird in the Manawatū Turitea Reserve.
Professor in Conservation Biology Doug Armstrong, postdoctoral fellows Zoe Stone and Liz Parlato and Massey PhD graduate Kevin Parker led the translocation in late April, which resulted in the capture of 40 robins from Bushy Park Tarapuruhi Forest sanctuary near Whanganui and transportation to the reserve, north of Massey’s Manawatū campus.
The robins return to Turitea Reserve stuff.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from stuff.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Green Corridors volunteer Russell Poole plants a rewarewa tree in Palmerston North s Adderstone Reserve. Weeds covering the ground had stymied the birds’ attempts to self-seed the area, and more expensive nursery trees such as totara, titoki, rata and cabbage trees needed to be planted by humans. As well, the total area Green Corridors were responsible for had grown and would continue to grow between areas of urban development, challenging the ability of volunteers to maintain it. The Green Corridors project is paid for by the council, and aims to return a network of gullies from the Tararua Range to the Manawatū River to their natural state, encouraging the return of native wildlife and improving water quality.
Wind turbine towers and nacelles are in place at Turitea awaiting the rotor hubs and blades. When Mercury’s $465m, 60-turbine Turitea wind farm is complete, that will rise to half of the nation’s wind power. It’s a huge contribution but, even so, wind currently provides less than 6 per cent of New Zealand’s electricity. In order to reach the Government’s target of 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030, wind generation is going to have to increase 10-fold. The Tararua skyline, the windiest, richest wind resource in New Zealand, if not anywhere in the world, according to Mercury’s generation development manager Dennis Radich, has pretty much run out of capacity.