One species Cooper has been looking for is the Cran's bully.
He knew of a population in Taranaki so when Bailey suggested a trip to the Tararua District, he jumped at the opportunity.
Spotlighting in the Wimbledon Stream, a team caught 40 Cran's bullies that are now in quarantine at Turangi.
Cran's bullies are significant because they are non-diadromous, meaning they do not need salt water to spawn or grow as fry, unlike most of our native freshwater fish.
Much of the Wimbledon Stream runs through Brian Hales' farm at Wimbledon. It is a tributary of the Wainui River and its headwaters are 22km from the river mouth at Herbertville.
In spite of that, the stream has numerous Cran's bullies, good populations of redfin bullies and inanga, and both short-and long-fin eels.
The Angora Stream, on the other side of his farm, also has the much rarer koaro.
"The initial reason for the visit was to assess the lone rata tree in the headwaters of the Wimbledon Stream. While doing so, Doug discovered the rare bullies in the stream below," Brian Hales told the Dannevirke News.
The Wimbledon Stream has a permanent flow, is spring fed and winds its way through a narrow gully, bounded by steep papa faces.
"The water began as snow on the Ruahine Ranges a million years ago," Hales said.
"In the 1880s and 1890s several timber mills were located along this stream, milling totara from the surrounding hillsides, mainly to be used for bridge building along the road from southern to central Hawke's Bay. Just two stands of virgin bush remain.
"The block of land surrounding the stream was a Patangata County Council reserve which the county could use to log and mill as their needs demanded.
"Each year, my great grandmother, Jemima, would go to the council office in Waipukurau where the grazing rights of the land would be auctioned and she would have to bid to enable her to graze the land. This continued until it returned to crown land in 1930."
Bailey and Hales teamed up last year for a project to identify, protect, propagate and plant northern rata.
Only 12 are known in the Wainui catchment, which was the eastern-most corner of Tapere-nui-a-Whatonga or Seventy Mile Bush.
Most are between 400 and 550 years old and are terrestrial trees, unlike the epiphytic form that northern rata are known for.
With rata being affected by the newly-established myrtle rust, Bailey has taken cuttings of the remaining trees as genetic copies and is raising seedlings at his Hastings nursery for replanting in the Wainui catchment.
"Somehow this area remains unspoiled," Hales said.
The area is a special ecological area of importance and in 2006 Weber schoolboy Khan Coleman and Hales discovered the peripatus on Hales' Wimbledon farm.
As the peripatus is the missing link between segmented worms and insects Sir David Attenborough had been hunting for, it was big news in the scientific world.
"The remaining native bush has a great variety of trees which support a healthy bird population and searchers have found puriri moths and other insects in addition to sighting uniquely camouflaged skinks and geckoes," Hales said.
"But, I feel as though there is still one more discovery to be made."
Hales well-known for his flocks of exotic and rare breed sheep, is hoping to display the findings of this unique environment at this year's exotic sheep shearing day on his farm at Labour weekend.
Hales' Wimbledon farm has a group of northern rata which are being overgrown by pines and while visible from a distance, a steep gorge prevents access to the pines
"An attempt will be made in the next few weeks to eradicate the pines from this environment," Hales said.
* You can follow the project, Wainui Rata, on Facebook, where you can also read about some of Wimbledon's other secrets.
Where is Wainui?
From 1858 to 1989, the Wainui catchment was in Southern Hawke's Bay.
The southern boundary of Hawke's Bay followed up the Waimata River to Taumata-o-te-atua, the hill at the head of the Angora Valley and then west, northwest to Mt Arthur and Pukehou, north west to Wahatuara on the Puketoi Range and west to where the Tiraumea River meets the Mangatainoka River, just upstream of the Manawatu confluence.
Wainui, known as Herbertville from 1883, was the southern-most settlement in Hawke's Bay.
From 1989, after the local government reforms, the Wainui catchment became part of Tararua District.
The northern boundary of Tararua District runs from Arataura on the coast north of Cape Turnagain to the saddle between the Waikopiro and Mangamairie Streams, on to Birch Rd North roughly following Birch Road East, north through Te Uri to just north of Norsewood and then west to the source of the Manawatu River in the Ruahine Ranges.
This northern boundary follows the boundary of the old Seventy Mile Bush remarkably closely. Herbertville is the eastern-most settlement in Tararua District.
