My yr 8 students come to work-

I am very fortunate that the school I work at has a really close relationship with Lake Rotokare.
Geographically we are only about 6 kilometres apart. My 2 hosts (Melissa and Simon) are also parents on our board of trustees. Other school parents are trustees on the Lake Trust and other parents are volunteers.
The lake project is an important part of our school culture. We visit the lake as often as we can and we help out whenever we can make it work.
Over the years our students have been involved with planting, weeding, weta hotel building and we were a pilot school for a lot of the education programmes that Melissa runs.

I am super lucky to have the opportunity through my teaching fellowship to be working at the lake alongside people that are already considered good friends.

Last year my prinicipal and Simon (my host and BOT chair at the time)  finally sorted out an idea we have been throwing around for awhile- twice a term, the year 8 students would go to the lake and do some volunteer work that makes a real contribution to the project.

Earlier in the first term the students came to help with the pitfall trap monitoring. This was while I was away in Dunedin on my leadership course so I was a little sad that I didn't get to be part of it.

This time they came out to help collect tracking tunnel cards. It was the first rainy day in months, but as I found out years ago- rain doesn't stop Rawhitiroa School from doing things!
The 5 year 8s arrived in raincoats and sensible footwear ready to work.

Daryl and Chauncy looking at a tracking card

Rawhitiroa School Year 8 students and Chanucy before the rain!

Darrian and Karen carefully making their way down an 'easy' bank

Logan posing!

Darrian posing

Thanks Logan for taking a photo of me!

Volunteer work has been a huge part of my life for a long time (Mountain safety council, Land search and resuce, New Zealand Cadet Forces.)
Being able to introduce my students to volunteer work is really rewarding.
We had an enjoyable few hours together, it was great to share with them what I am doing. I am really looking for to term 2!

Tracking tunnels part 2- what we found

This week we have been working hard to collect in all the cards that we put out last week.

The most exciting find was this card-

 

These are lizard prints!

 

After 1000 cards with weta, ants, beetles and spider prints, finding this card had the team really excited!

After an unsuccessful round of pitfall trapping last month, we were really pleased to find these prints.

We know that lizards are in the sanctuary because they are being seen, their prints are being found in tunnels and they are being heard- they are obviously just far too smart to fall into our traps.

 

Lizards are an indicator speices. They indiciate the level of predation in an area. If there are no predators, there should be plenty of lizards. With Lake Rotokare now reaching the end of its 5th year as predator free, we should be seeing lizard numbers growing.

 

Weta are the other indicator species the team at Rotokare are really interested in knowing about. Our tracking tunnel run has shown that we have TONNES of weta.

 

The other neat thing to happen during the collection of the tunnel cards was a visit from my Year 8 students. (Read the next post to find out more. )

 

I was lucky enough to be joined last Sunday by a young man called Blair and his carer Sylvia. We spent an enjoyable few hours collecting the cards from the edge of the lake. It was neat to work with a young man who has a disability but was so keen to be out in the environment learning and helping. Blair took the following photo of me resetting some mouse traps- Thanks Blair!

 

 

 

 

tracking tunnels- cards out (part one)

As part of the ongoing biosecurity measures at Lake Rotokare, a full scale tracking tunnel run is held twice a year. A tracking tunnel is a rectangular shaped tunnel that has an inked card in the middle of it. It gets baited and left out for a week.
Tunnels are one of the monitoring measures used at the lake.
Creatures will be lured by the smell of the bait, walk into the tunnel... walk across the ink pad... have a nibble.... then walk out the other end... leaving their prints behind.

One of the tunnels

one of the cards, laid out with peanut butter and a small piece of meat

 

Nothing will be 'caught' in the tunnel, but we can gather information about what creatures are out and about in the sanctuary.

There are approximatey 1200 tunnels spread over the 230 hectares.

The tunnels in high risk areas (on the fence line and road edge and public areas) always have cards in them (all year round) and are monitored weekly. If an incident occurs (rodent prints are found) then traps will be put out in the area that they were found.

This method works really well at Lake Rotokare.

Last Sunday saw 10 volunteers (including me) and lake staff  start the mammoth task of putting the cards out. During this week we have continued to put them out. This Sunday we will hopefully get a really good turn out of helpers and will be able to gather most of the cards back in.
I'm really hoping that I will stumble across some lizard prints!!!

Below are some photos of the team in action.


Jenny and Chauncy cutting up rabbit meat and the cards all sorted into bundles

 



Many thanks to Ray for bringing his boat to rapidly deploy us into the field! about 2 minutes to get from one side of the lake to the other instead of a half hour walk. Lots of work time saved!

 

looking back to the office buildings across the lake.

Was super excited to meet this wee one while I was out. There are very few Robin at Lake Rotokare.

 

While out with Litchie this week he also pointed these out to me ....
read on to find out what they are, next photo might give you a clue

Litchie checking a burrow on the side of the walking track- it was well cobwebbed over.

 

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Each card has a lot of information written on it- this is really important when we look at the cards after they have been collected. If there are prints we want to investigate we know exactly where the card came from.

Re-labelling each tunnel is an important part of the process. Each tunnel is labelled with the name of the area, line number and tunnel number. This tunnel is number 60 on the lake edge (that's what the L stands for) All this information is written onto the card that goes inside.

 

 

I certainly found out about muscles I didn't know I had this week while out 'tunneling.' It was pretty physcial work and made me realise how mega unfit I am! However I didn't complain I just got on with this vitaly important job. This monitoring is integral to maintaining the 'pest-free' status that Lake Rotokare is proud to be able to call itself.

 

 

Tracking tunnels are a really great way to find out what critters are living in your very own backyard. Lots of schools make their own and have them out and about for students to monitor what is in their school grounds..

If you are intersted in making your own here is a link on how to:

http://www.doc.govt.nz/getting-involved/home-and-garden/track-down-your-garden-pests/

Real world learning for our kids- another easy way to get them interested in science :)

 

ps- those funny holes in the ground- kiwi probe holes!!!