The Matiri Range and 1000 Acre Plateau Searching for a Needle in a Haystack A 5 day tramp from the Wangapeka River, along the Matiri Range to the 1,000 Acre Plateau and the Matiri River. Tony assured me that I would be able to find The Needle in The Haystack easily. Well, he wasn’t wrong but … Read more
I am not a superstitious man, but even I am loath to tempt fate by venturing out, away from civilization, on All Hallow’s Eve. On the night of Samhain, when the veil between the worlds is thinnest and the spirits of the dead are free to roam the earth, anything is possible, and good, sensible … Read more
‘Whio, whio’, I could hardly believe it—we had been walking for less than two hours and already my promise of sightings of the nationally vulnerable whio on this trip was coming true. I could see why the circuit we were tramping was called the Te Pua-a-Tāne Circuit—the name itself means the abundance or blossoming of … Read more
Great news – we’ve been granted $20,000 from the DOC Community Fund to intensify our trapping efforts in the Western Ruahines. Our goal is to put an A24 trap next to every DOC200 trap in the lines managed by WTMC, Lisa & Geoff Whittle and the Awarua Aorangi Trust. The $20K we’ve been granted will help … Read more
We’ve had an exciting year managing our Eastern Ruahines trap line. Not only have we fulfilled our target of checking the line every month but we’ve also added a new section of self-resetting traps down an untracked ridge, where we found evidence of kiwi. Since it was installed in March 2015, WTMC has been taking … Read more
In late June four of us headed up to the Ruahines to tend to the WTMC trap line. The tramping club adopted the line in early 2015 and it forms a circuit, with another line, to enclose a section of the Makaroro River where Whio (Blue Duck) live. The idea is to visit the line … Read more
Are you a ‘peak bagger’ a ‘hut ticker offer’? Do you love going out into the bush to satisfy your personal desire to experience our beautiful natural heritage? Let’s face it; unless you are leading a trip helping others, tramping is done for our own selfish reasons of personal enjoyment and experience. And there is … Read more
It is depressing to all those that love the outdoors that so many of NZ’s native birds are either recently extinct, or are now classified as nationally critical or nationally endangered. Kea that were once common in large flocks are now rarely seen on tramping trips in the South Island mountains, falcons and rock wrens … Read more