Christopher Jones

Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research · Wildlife Ecology and Management Team (WEM)

PDF available here: https://newzealandecology.org/nzje/3376 Roads and associated land transport activities can affect a wide range of indigenous terrestrial vertebrate species. National legislation, particularly the Resource Management Act 1991, requires that developers ‘avoid, remedy or mitigate’ the adverse environmental effects of their activit...

Indigenous peoples' roles in conservation are important because they offer alternate perspectives and knowledge centred on the quality of the human-environment relationship. Here, we present examples of Māori cultural constructs, mechanisms, legislative warrants and customary (traditional and contemporary) interventions fundamental to the developme...

Cross‐cultural environmental monitoring systems inform on a broad suite of indicators relevant to both scientific and local communities. In this study we used forest plot‐based survey measures developed by western scientists and a set of community‐based survey indicators developed by Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand (NZ), to compare the...

In New Zealand, as in other developed nations, community-led conservation groups work to maintain and restore ecosystems and conserve indigenous biodiversity. These groups receive support in the form of materials, technical advice and funding from central and local government and non-governmental organisations, who are required increasingly to demo...

Indigenous peoples and local communities interact with approximately two-thirds of the world’s land area through their worldviews and customary tenure regimes and offer significant knowledge contributions and lessons about sustainability. We worked with Tuawhenua Māori to document domains, concepts, and mechanisms within the worldview representatio...

Roading projects may have adverse effects on indigenous wildlife. In New Zealand the effects of roading on long-tailed bats (Chalinolobus tuberculatus) is an issue and projects have attempted to monitor and mitigate effects on bats populations. However, how to undertake monitoring and mitigation is unclear. The New Zealand Transport Agency commiss...

Different value-belief systems influence the importance placed upon ecosystem services (ES) and their benefits, in particular cultural ecosystem services. We mapped forest values to interview narratives across four biocultural themes deemed relevant by Tuawhenua Māori in New Zealand: (1) importance of place; (2) capacity of forest to provide; (3) c...

Our objective was to measure the concentrations of Hg, As, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Pb, Sb, V and Zn in the body feathers of grey-faced petrel (Pterodroma gouldi), fluttering shearwater (Puffinus gavia), little shearwater (Puffinus assimilis) and common diving petrel (Pelecanoides urinatrix) from breeding colonies in New Zealand between 2006 and 2013. The m...

Community groups play an important role in the protection and enhancement of biodiversity in New Zealand. Substantial funding for community-based conservation projects is provided by government and non-government organisations. Given the scale of the threats to biodiversity conservation and the limited resources available to mitigate impacts it is...

The underlying ethos of ‘nature’s benefits’ contributing to human wellbeing provides a common platform for understanding the function and value of biodiversity for stakeholders. Diverse societal worldviews however create differences in the way cultures relate to and understand the environment. The objective of this study was to identify community-b...

Following the removal of an introduced species, island restoration can follow two general approaches: passive, where no further intervention occurs and the island is assumed to recover naturally, and; active, where recovery of key taxa (e.g. seabirds) is enhanced by manipulating movement and demography. Steps for deciding between these techniques a...

Vertebrate consumers can be important drivers of the structure and functioning of ecosystems, including the soil and litter invertebrate communities that drive many ecosystem processes. Burrowing seabirds, as prevalent vertebrate consumers, have the potential to impact consumptive effects via adding marine nutrients to soil (i.e. resource subsidies...

Burrow-nesting seabird populations are vulnerable to predation by introduced rats, because of their nesting habits and slow life histories. We investigated whether control of kiore (Pacific rats, Rattus exulans) by removal trapping, and during an unsuccessful community-led island-wide eradication attempt, had any effects on nest survival of grey-fa...

We combine local knowledge of elders and environmental practitioners from two indigenous Māori communities and pollen evidence in soil cores from two islands and two mainland coastal sites to inform the planning of coastal ecosystem restoration initiatives in New Zealand. The Māori participants desired ecosystems that delivered cultural (e.g., supp...

The size and distribution of colonies of burrow-nesting petrels is thought to be limited partly by the availability of suitable breeding habitat and partly by predation. Historically, the availability of safe nesting habitat was restricted in New Zealand, due to the introduction of rats by humans. More recently, however, habitat has been restored b...

Burrow-nesting petrels (order Procellariiformes) are keystone species in island ecosystems, where they modify habitat through guano deposition and burrow digging. Burrowing petrels are among the most threatened groups of birds, yet robust long-term monitoring data remain scarce because of the financial and logistical constraints of working on offsh...

Indigenous peoples globally have relied on customary practices for safeguarding and optimizing harvest of wildlife populations, including seabirds. Increasingly, there have been efforts to engage these indigenous and local knowledge systems to inform responses to the global biodiversity crisis. We considered how customary harvest management as prac...

Attempts to establish seabird colonies at restoration sites using artificial visual and auditory social cues have had varying success rates, differing between sites and species. The biological mechanisms responsible for this variation are poorly understood. We used experimental call playback to test the attraction of three sympatric procellariid sp...

Introduced mammals have been eradicated from many offshore islands around the world, removing predation pressure from burrow-nesting seabirds and other affected wildlife. Nest-site selection in procellariiform seabirds is mediated by nesting habitat characteristics and social information, although it is unclear if, or how, nest-site selection will...

There are notable costs in maintaining a wildlife trapping program, primarily labor and travel costs associated with frequently and regularly checking large numbers of traps. Wireless sensor networks have the potential to significantly decrease operational costs of terrestrial wildlife trapping and monitoring programs, particularly those involving...

For long-lived bird species, estimates of productivity can be effective indicators of environmental change or responses to management. Such estimates are also valuable in modelling population growth. We report estimates of nest survival for burrow-nesting Grey-faced Petrels (Pterodroma macroptera gouldi) from four islands off the north-east coast o...

In N ew Z ealand and A ustralia, rural landowners believe that local predator control to protect indigenous biota exacerbates E uropean rabbit O ryctolagus cuniculus problems on their land. We assess the validity of their concerns by reviewing the published literature on effects of predators on rabbit abundance. In N ew Z ealand, where rabbits and...

Seabird eggs, chicks, and adults have significant value for many cultures, but delayed maturation, low reproductive rates, and ease of exploitation at breeding colonies make these species especially vulnerable to overharvest. In New Zealand, indigenous Māori placed a moratorium over the harvest of grey-faced petrel (Pterodroma gouldi) chicks in the...

Eradication of introduced mammalian predators from islands has become increasingly common, with over 800 successful projects around the world. Historically, introduced predators extirpated or reduced the size of many seabird populations, changing the dynamics of entire island ecosystems. Although the primary outcome of many eradication projects is...

Context Community-based conservation managers and their funding providers must apportion limited resources to potential projects that provide varying biodiversity benefits. Funding applicants must demonstrate that proposed projects are likely to provide positive conservation returns on investments. Aims We investigated the practical usefulness of t...

Context. Control of introduced pest species is based on the premise that there is a relationship between pest abundance and impact, but this relationship is rarely defined. Aim. We investigated the impacts of introduced European hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) on two species of small endemic skink (Oligosoma spp.) and flightless, nocturnal endemic...

Context. Management of suites of invasive mammal species can lead to perverse outcomes, such as meso-predator release, or can achieve desirable reductions in the abundance of top-order predators by controlling their prey. Predictive models for predator–prey systems require estimates of predator functional responses, i.e. predation rates as function...

We estimated apparent annual survival of adult and young grey-faced petrels (Pterodroma macroptera gouldi) and age of first return to the natal colony of young birds from 2 colonies in the Bay of Plenty, NZL, between 1991 and 2008. We analysed the capture histories of 5844 adult birds and 928 chicks in a mark-recapture framework. The apparent adult...

We describe the diet of introduced European hedgehogs Erinaceus europaeus (Linnaeus, 1758) in a New Zealand dryland system and provide the first quantitative analysis of food selectivity for this species. We also describe and compare the diets of nine hedgehogs and measure dietary overlap between these individuals. The most commonly eaten foods wer...

There has been much debate about the use and acceptability of toe-clipping as a means of permanently marking reptiles and amphibians during scientific surveys. Trapping studies of reptiles and amphibians are frequently, although not always, compromised by low probabilities of recapture of individuals following their initial capture and marking. Low...

Traditional knowledge from indigenous cultures about wildlife populations can offer insights beneficial for management in the face of global climate change. Semistructured interviews and workshops conducted with Maori elders from the Tuhoe tribe in the Te Urewera region of New Zealand provided knowledge about traditional management strategies for N...

We describe changes in age composition and body condition of a sample of 310 otter carcasses collected between 1982 and 1994 in Scotland. There was a decline of mean age and death in NE Scotland, which was absent in some other areas. The decline was present especially in females, and due to an increase in numbers of immature otters. However, mean a...

Investigations of nest predation are often limited by the researchers' inability to identify nest predators accurately. I tested a chemical bait marker, Rhodamine B (RB), as an indicator of egg predation at artificial ground nests. In a pen trial, the presence of characteristic fluorescent bands in one or more facial vibrissae from all treatment an...

Predation by introduced hedgehogs Erinaceus europaeus is a significant cause of nest failure in threatened endemic wading birds nesting on the dry gravel beds of braided rivers in New Zealand's central South Island. Night-time movements of 10 hedgehogs (four male; six female) were investigated during the 2002 bird breeding season using spool-and-li...

European hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) have recently been identified as a conservation threat in New Zealand. Hedgehogs were kill-trapped at 14 wetland and braided riverbed sites in the upper Waitaki Basin between late October 1997 and early February 1998 and their gut contents described. The most commonly eaten prey were Coleoptera (present in 8...

We review ways of individually identifying stoats (Mustela erminea) and similar small mammals from visits to bait stations or to monitoring devices in the field. Tracking devices are the cheapest and most practical method currently available of measuring the presence of a particular species, but there has been little research on the recognition of...

New Zealand's native avifauna is threatened by introduced mammalian predators. Native species are often not the primary prey of these predators, which depend on introduced mice and rabbits as their primary food source. Theoretical models predict that predation risk for a subsidiary, or “secondary” prey species is inversely proportional to its popul...

Breeding colonies of sooty shearwaters ('muttonbird', tïtï, Puffinus griseus) on mainland New Zealand have declined in recent years. New data on burrow occupancy and colony productivity for seven sooty shearwater breeding colonies on the coast of Otago, New Zealand for the 1996-97 and 1997-98 breeding seasons are presented and analysed as part of a...

New Zealand's native birds constitute the supplementary or ‘secondary’ prey of introduced mammalian predators. Predation on secondary prey is inversely density dependent. Small populations will therefore be at greater risk of extinction than large, which escape due to the buffering effect of their size on predation impact. A matrix model of a mainl...

A survey of 170 km of the mainland Otago coastline was carried out in the 1997/98 breeding season in order to determine the current status of breeding colonies of sooty shearwater (Puffinus griseus). The locations of breeding colonies, as defined by the presence of burrows, are described and compared with historical records. Numbers of colonies wer...

Many mammals, such as otters, live in close association with rivers and streams, feeding in them, or using them as a place of safety or means of escape from predators. The distinct adaptations that riparian mammals have evolved in order to live in these environments also handicap them for living elsewhere. They are therefore threatened by alteratio...