Kerry-Jayne Wilson MNZM and Dr Thomas Mattern have completed a comprehensive review of the state of NZ penguins and it has been released today.
“This is a review of all that we know, and don’t know about all six NZ penguins, with a list of research and conservation management priorities for each species” said Kerry-Jayne.
Based on this review, Dr Mattern is leading a group of experts to work towards research and conservation goals outlined in the report under the banner “NZ Penguin Research & Conservation”. For a start, they will be focusing efforts on Little or Blue penguins/kororā and Fiordland penguins/tawaki.
Their goal is to work with community groups to establish a unified monitoring approach throughout NZ.
Dr Mattern explained: “We plan to develop a centralised database that is scalable to the level of monitoring the various community groups want to commit to. Apart from developing this database, we also plan to engage with community groups to train and assist them with their activities. We envisage that each group ultimately will be able to work autonomously towards a common monitoring strategy.”
“In the medium-term we are also thinking about establishing community-based monitoring of Little penguin foraging behaviour. However, at this stage we only plan to trial the viability of this idea
on the West Coast, working with the West Coast Penguin Trust.”
The State of NZ Penguins has been presented in website form: https://sop.penguinarchive.org/
Click here for a pdf of the “The State of NZ Penguins”.
