ARTICLE : Chris Hopkins – 2005 Conservation Award

 Chris Hopkins – Conservation Award – September 2005

The following text is derived from Chris’s speech, after he received a Conservation Award in the Legislative Chamber, Parliament Buildings, on 4 August.

In the 1930s, people who visited Tararua Forest Park told of beech trees ablaze with red-flowered Peraxilla mistletoes.   Since then, the mistletoes have become rare in the park, and extinct in the Aorangi and Rimutaka Ranges.   Elsewhere in Wellington Conservancy, seven plants are known, six in the Hutt catchment, and one at Eastbourne.

Mistletoes can be used as indicators of the health of native forests, because they are browsed by possums.   If a mistletoe is defoliated, it takes three years before it can flower again, though some plants never recover, and die.   Rats eat ripe mistletoe fruit, and prevent dispersal of seed.   Stoats kill native birds which pollinate and disperse mistletoe seed.   Even if these pest animals are controlled, mistletoe seed still has to strike a suitable host tree to produce a new plant.   Added to this, climate change will put more stress on their habitat, with increased frequency of windthrows and slips.   DOC staff face a challenge fostering the recovery of these plants from their present low numbers.

I have been involved with mistletoes for five years, starting when I was walking the Gentle Annie track from Holdsworth roadend, and noticed mistletoe petal-fall on the track.   Since then, I have had the good fortune to locate, or share in the location of, twenty-nine Peraxilla mistletoes in Tararua Forest Park, one in Keith George Memorial Park, and one in Witako Reserve, in the Hutt Valley.

My purpose in locating mistletoes was to ensure that these rare plants are brought into management by DOC, to prevent further decline.   Most of the host-trees bearing these mistletoes have been banded to exclude possums.   I check the plants annually, and report any problems to DOC, and complete a “Species Record Sheet” for new plant finds.

In December 2004, I helped DOC staff to set up a “Mistletoe Recovery Programme” at the two remaining mistletoe hotspots in Tararua Forest Park.   One of these sites is in the Atiwhakatu catchment, which contains mainly Peraxilla tetrapetala / red mistletoe, and a smaller number of Peraxilla colensoi / scarlet mistletoe.   The other site is in the Blue Range which contains almost exclusively Peraxilla colensoi / scarlet mistletoe.   Forty-six mistletoes were taken into the survey to be monitored annually by DOC staff for dimensions, volume, percentage foliage cover (from a national standard chart), flower intensity, pollination success, possum browse, insect browse, dieback, etc.   The recovery programme includes sowing mistletoe seed, using the best practices found to date, to see if this is a viable recruitment method.