Yashas Srinivasa13:57, Jun 23 2021
Supplied/Stuff
Experienced rescue helicopter pilot Nigel Gee, left, and Alpine Cliff Rescue team leader Jim Young on their way to rescue a father-and-son hunter duo at Aoraki/Mt Cook on Tuesday.
A father-and-son hunter duo and a middle-aged Australian man were rescued by the Alpine Cliff Rescue team at Aoraki/Mt Cook in two separate instances on Tuesday. Alpine Cliff Rescue team leader Jim Young said the duo activated their personal locater beacon about 1pm while hunting in the Landsborough Valley area near Aoraki/Mt Cook. The Australian man was on a tramp to the Ball Hut in the Tasman Valley when he veered off course in the dark and got stuck on a cliff face. He turned on his personal locator beacon about 7.45pm.
Mōhua were once widespread. Today they are estimated to number less than 5000. The spikes in predator populations threatened to undo two decades of pest eradication in the valley, which had allowed mōhua to slowly rebound. But the country’s largest-ever predator control programme was launched in December 2019, protecting forest birds over 848,635 hectares of conservation land nationwide as they nested and reared their young over summer months. It will cost $81.2 million over four years. Experts began counting birds in the Landsborough Valley in 1985. “This was the last stronghold for [mōhua] in the whole of the West Coast,” said Colin O’Donnell, principal science advisor for the Department of Conservation.