New Zealand Wildlife

What to do

• Survey dates: 24th June – 2nd July
• Select your garden, park, or school
• Choose one day from 24th June to the 2nd July 2023
• Look and listen for birds for ONE hour.
• Record the HIGHEST number of a bird species observed at one time.
• Submit your survey results

Not wild, and not native.

I think this is Chungus, hunting flies.

A flightless midge from Antarctica - Antarctica's only native insect

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/124345

I remember coverage of this after the Jody F Millennium ran aground in 2002, and during the Rena clean-up in 2011. Apparently they've been warning us for 33 years now. This is one of those things that gets ignored until it's too late, then everyone starts pointing fingers. Partly because anyone who does what we need to do now won't get the credit they deserve. It's the fixers who get called heroes, not the preventers.

Didn't expect to be dropping ancient Chinese philosophy here, but I couldn't help but think of this story:

A lord of ancient China once asked his physician, a member of a family of healers, which of them was the most skilled in the art.

The physician, whose reputation was such that his name became synonymous with medical science in China, replied, “My eldest brother sees the spirit of sickness and removes it before it takes shape, so his name does not get out of the house.

“My elder brother cures sickness when it is still extremely minute, so his name does not get out of the neighborhood.

“As for me, I puncture veins, prescribe potions, and massage skin, so from time to time my name gets out and is heard among the lords.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/90948

And it sounds like a Geiger counter when it's sniffing things out

Cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/79539

I just posted about this on !politics@lemmy.nz, but anyone who cares about NZ wildlife, tourism or climate change should have their say on this.

MBIE's Tourism Environment Leadership Group has developed a Draft Tourism Environment Action Plan. They say:

The draft action plan aims to ensure tourism has a positive impact on the natural environment and proposes 6 focus areas to achieve this. These areas or Tirohanga Hou (new pathways) are:

• Tourism journeys are decarbonised
• Tourism champions biodiversity
• Visitor management is optimised for te taiao (nature)
• Accelerated technology uptake and innovation enable regeneration
• Tourism businesses are incentivised and enabled for sustainability and regeneration
• The tourism system and its levers are optimised and resourced to support regeneration

Each area has multiple actions that will deliver positives not only for the environment but for communities and tourism operations.

Some actions see the tourism industry working with communities to create a picture of what healthy visitation looks like. Others focus on supporting and incentivising tourism operators to adopt sustainable or regenerative practices. Rapid investment in low-carbon technologies for long-haul travel is another key action.

You can take their survey here. It's anonymous and took me about 10 minutes. The full plan and info about how else to make submissions is here.

There's an RNZ article about this, but they mostly focus on "sustainable airline fuels".

Got this photo of a nesting baby matuku moana / white-faced heron on holiday a few years back. Spotted it up in a tree at Grossi Point Reserve near Mapua, Tasman District.

This is a fungus that should be visible this time of the year, can often be found in gardens with a good mulch bed

I just found out about the Aotearoa Species Classifier via this post.

It's made by members of the TAIAO project at Waikato and Canterbury universities using AI trained on photos from iNaturalist.

Then someone told me in that thread that the iNaturalist app already had its own auto ID feature.

The Aotearoa Species Classifier works offline, and seems to be better at IDing than iNaturalist, but they're both good. The Aotearoa Species Classifier also has an online web classifier that has more powerful models and tools than the app.

Aotearoa Species Classifier

• Google Play Store
• Apple App Store
• Web Classifier

iNaturalist

• Google Play Store
• Apple App Store

Canterbury Regional Council will build a 48-kilometre-long pest fence as part of the war on wallabies.

Wallabies had spread outside the containment zone and Biosecurity NZ estimated they could cover a third of the country by 2050 if no action was taken.

"This week's expert is all about fungi! Dr Mahajabeen Padmamsee from Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research joins Anna to talk about all things mushrooms.

From foraging to the role they play in the ecosystem Dr Padmasee is covering all aspects of mushrooms and fungi, particularly in Aotearoa."