Wetland birds feature in Whanganui Nature Talk

Photo Paul Gibson (left) and Tony Whitehead (right)

New Zealand has lost most of its wetlands, so how are our wetland birds doing?

Massey University Associate Professor Phil Battley will answer this question in the last Nature Talk of the year for Whanganui. It's in the Davis Lecture Theatre at 7.30pm on November 20.

Battley is an expert on water birds, especially the migratory godwits and knots that visit New Zealand every year.

New Zealand has lost about 90 per cent of its former wetlands. They help improve water quality and control its flow, as well as providing a home for birds, fish, insects and plants.

The wetlands that remain are often under threat of drainage, or they can be degraded by pollution. The water available to some is reduced, by water takes upstream or by commercial forestry.

Battley will explore what the loss and degradation of wetlands has meant for the true swamp dwellers - bitterns, rails, crakes and fernbirds - birds that can live nowhere else. He'll explain what special characteristics they have, for living in wet places.

He'll also talk about other birds that used to live in our wetlands when they were more extensive. He'll know which of those birds survive, both in this area and nationally. He'll talk about how they are doing, and what they need for their continued existence.