Te Urewera National Park: the Waikaremoana Track and a Mainland Island

Deutsche

Te Uruwera National Park is a huge, 212,672ha national park that lies between the Bay of Plenty and Hawkes Bay.  The area is completely covered with native bush at a range of altitudes.  It can get pretty cold, and this is perhaps reflected in the name "Urewera" (burnt penis), which apparently relates to an incident where somebody slept too close to the fire!
There are some pretty grueling tracks in this national park.  Alice has never really forgiven a certain school teacher for dragging her and 60 other kids through some pretty harsh terrain when she was a kid.
However, there are also some fairly attractive walks and since the 1990s there have been a number of conservation restoration projects undertaken in parts of the Ureweras which should make it interesting to visit.
I should mention that I haven't been to the Ureweras yet; I've been far to busy with Moko and the beaches around here.  But people keep telling me about Lake Waikaremoana, so I thought I should find out more and make plans to go there.  The bush restoration projects around New Zealand are also very interesting.

Lake Waikaremoana is the biggest and most popular lake in the Ureweras, and there is a track called the Wakaremoana Track that follows the western shore of the lake.  You can see a map of it here. The track is one of New Zealand's 10 Great Walks, as listed by the Department of Conservation.  It is a 46km walk, described as a track of "moderate" difficulty which can be completed in about 5 days.  The beauty of the track is that it is often by the water, so you can swim or fish any time you like.  Another beautiful thing is that there are water taxis on the lake who can either give you a ride further along the track as a kind of short-cut, or can organise to deliver your gear for you, so that you don't need to carry 5 days of supplies on your back. There are huts and camp sites dotted along the track, and you book these when you buy your ticket (either online or at the visitor's information center at Aniwaniwa).  If you are only making a day visit to the park, you don't need to buy a ticket.  The best description I have found regarding the timing between huts and the quality of accommodation are at this website:  http://www.johnb.co.nz/tramps/lake_waikaremoana.htm

Another attractive prospect is commercial accommodation on the lake, such as Big Bush Holiday Park and Lake Waikaremoana Motor Camp.  Both places have a range of accommodation options, and the Motor Camp has a General Store for grocery supplies.  So, I could pack my espresso maker and buy fresh milk for my cappuccino, sipping it by the lake....

If you don't have a car, there is a bus that runs from Rotorua to Waikaremoana during the summer months (November - April).  The Rotorua Visitor's Information Center can organise it.

The other big attraction is Te Uruwera Mainland Island in the northern part of the park, near Opotiki.  This is a 50,000ha region where predator control and bush restoration is more intensive.  New Zealand has a problem with imported predators that native birds and plants haven't evolved to protect themselves from.  In the Mainland Island (or TUMI for short) there is intensive trapping of predators, and monitoring of native species.  Some very rare plants and birds have been reintroduced to the area, including the North Island Brown Kiwi,  the beautiful Kokako and the long-tailed bat.  There are two tracks that you can take through this area, and hopefully get an idea of what the bush was like before the arrival of introduced predators!  This area doesn't seem to have any accommodation nearby, so I guess you'd have to look in Waimana or Opotiki.

Here is a youtube video of a baby long-tailed bat:

Kiwi release ceremony

As I mentioned earlier, the Kiwi bird is the most popular bird of New Zealand but also the most threatened. Therefore people put an enormous amount of energy into helping these long-beaked little fellas to steadily increase their numbers. Volunteer members of the Whakatane Kiwi Project go through the bush searching for their eggs, collect them and transport them to breeding stations where people take care of them until the kiwis are old enough to be released into freedom. An even more important task for the volunteers is pest and predator control (the main dangers are rats, possums, stoats and cats).  Because the flightless kiwi nests exclusively on the ground, the eggs and chicks are an easy catch for predators.

Project manager Bridget Evans and her colleagues label every single egg and the eventually hatched Kiwi so that its heritage and trail can be traced back. 

Since 2001, Whakatane Kiwi Project was able to breed and release more than 100 Kiwis. When it comes to the point where the grown birds can go back to the bush, a shared ceremony of Maori and Pakeha takes place during which the kiwis get a blessing for their future life in the bush.
Last Saturday we took part in such a ceremony:

The man who is standing and touching the kiwis is saying a prayer and blessing for them.

The setting for the ceremony of the brother and sister kiwis took place at the back of the school in Ohope. I was stunned by the large number of people who wanted to share this experience. 

Also many children were at the ceremony who learned at an early age to appreciate the gems of their country.  Kids were given special privileges such as being able to sit much closer to the volunteers when they were putting the transmitters on the kiwis, and the volunteers were very generous in letting the children ask questions and touch the kiwis.

Here, the transmitter is being secured to the kiwi's leg.  This way, workers will be able to locate the kiwi, and hopefully find it's nest in the future!

Kiwis, I have learned, are the only birds who have their nostrils at the end of their beaks - just as mammals do with their noses. They are able to supply their complete water demand from food which enables them to survive even in dry areas. As Kiwis are nocturnal they protect their bodies from the sun, thereby also conserving water.
Unfortunately the ceremony didn´t happen in the same place where the release for the birds itself eventually  took place; it would have beenvery nice to watch them doing their first steps into freedom, but this was a private affair.
It has to be mentioned that even though a dog is part of the mission in field work (dogs who had to undertake a test for skills and harmless and have to wear a muzzle while on duty) , dogs are banned from Kiwi zones. Dog owners who ignore this ban have to pay a fine.
There are kiwi aversion training classes offered for dogs on a regular basis. They work in the following way:  An electro collar gets attached to the dog. The dog is allowed to wander and when he finds some carefully placed kiwi poop, he is given an electric shock.  After this is repeated a couple of times this `treatment´ should ensure that dogs stay away from Kiwis.