The sun is beating down as a group of rafters make their way down the Tongariro River. They're on a welcome calm stretch of water, after several hair-raising sections of whitewater rapids.
Then a murmur ripples through the group. Standing on rocks at the edge of the river is a breeding pair of whio, also known as blue duck.
They're rare, there's fewer than 3000 throughout New Zealand. But now they're calmly watching the rafters drift past on the water.
It's a sight that's becoming more common, thanks to the community stepping up for a monumental pest-trapping effort.
Nine years ago two breeding pairs of whio were on the Tongariro River.
"I didn't really want to plant trees, because there's plenty of people planting trees," Oakden said.
"[Singers] suggested trapping rats and stoats, and all I could think was 'how on earth are we going to do that'?"
Parts of the Tongariro River are only accessible by raft, and other parts take a long time to walk to.
The answer turned out to be the perfect marriage of technology, community, and business.
The group decided to use a mix of traditional one-use traps, and the self-resetting A24 trap, developed by Wellington company Goodnature and which could kill 24 pests before needing to be reloaded.
Workers from Tongariro River Rafting cleared and reloaded some of the traps, hunters were responsible for others, and inmates at Rangipo Prison took on the rest.
With that, the Blue Duck Charitable Trust was born.
Rafting guides will help out clearing the traps, while tourists get to see more of the rare blue ducks. Photo / Frances Cook.
"It involves almost everyone socio-economically through the [Turangi] community, which is pretty cool," Oakden said.
"The way that we've done it means it can be constantly worked on, in a sustainable effort.
"If we stopped, probably within six months we would be back to where we started."
