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A ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Experience In Ancient Kahikatea Forest
World Wetlands Day 2007 on Saturday 10 February in the Waikato

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A stroll through 250-year old towering kahikatea trees, festooned with lianes, skirting limpid pools thick with swards of Dr Zeuss-like Carex sedges, ensures a surreal ‘Lord of the Rings’ experience on World Wetlands Day (WWD) on Saturday 10 February.

The WWD 2007 Waikato field trip gives a rare chance to experience the North Island’s premier example of mature floodplain kahikatea swamp forest on the western side of the Kopuatai Peat Dome.

Participants will see an ancient scene: majestic trees much as their ancestors looked over 200 years ago with thick passion vines dangling from branches 40 meters above the ground, epiphytes reaching to the sky, pigeons’ whistling amongst branches creaking in the dense canopy, and swards of sedges ringing enormous tangled buttress roots where pools of water persist for most of the year.

Each year World Wetlands Day is celebrated with a host of events throughout the country when Fish & Game NZ leads a range of organizations in creating varied wetland experiences around that year’s WWD theme, chosen to highlight an issue facing wetlands internationally.

This year’s theme is ‘Fish for Tomorrow’, focusing on over-fishing of the world’s marine and inland fisheries, all of which depend on healthy functional wetlands as the nursery grounds for freshwater and marine fish species.

"Flooded kahikatea forests used to be a major habitat and food source for native fish on the Hauraki Plains,” says Keith Thompson, wetland ecologist taking the WWD field trip.

“There are now only 15 hectares of flooded swamp forest left, and we will show how the enormous changes in land-use over the last 150 years have affected our fish fauna with experts demonstrating fish catches conducted in the Waitoa Canal beside the kahikatea swamp.”

The WWD field trip leaves from the car park opposite the Rangiriri Hotel at 9.15am on Saturday 10 February in several buses. Participants are asked to be there by 9am and to park in the car parks along each side of the road excluding those in front of the Heritage Café.

The buses return by 1.30pm for a barbeque lunch in the Rangiriri Hotel’s Garden Bar where the National Wetland Trust will give an illustrated talk on the design and development of the National Wetland Centre in Rangiriri.

The Centre’s innovative design will feature a series of uniquely constructed wetlands – geothermal, restial bog, peat lake, saline, kahikatea swamp, braided river, alpine tarn and sphagnum bog – taking the visitor through an extensive range of wetland types formed in the landscape.

A series of pavilion style buildings set amongst these and connected by a boardwalk will provide enclosed spaces for temporary and permanent wetland interpretation displays.

The main entrance building on Rangiriri Rd will include a Café, as well as an Interpretation Gallery and Theatre for visitor education.

The National Wetland Centre’s site at Rangiriri has been purchased with a grant from WEL Energy Trust and the Waikato Trust, and a major fundraising campaign is now underway to raise money for the construction of the Centre, which will be used to raise public awareness of the value of wetlands by wetland organisations throughout the country, as well as a base for tours to local wetlands – many of which contain a great diversity of flora and fauna – by school and public groups.

There are five Ramsar listed wetlands in New Zealand, three of which – the Firth of Thames, the Whangamarino Wetland and the Kopuatai Wetland - are near the Centre’s site.

WWD celebrates the signing of the International Convention on Wetlands in Ramsar, Iran in 1971. The Convention came into force in 1975 and New Zealand became a signatory in 1976. It provides a framework for national action and international cooperation for the conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources.

In the Waikato WWD is being celebrated by Fish & Game NZ, the National Wetland Trust, Department of Conservation, Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society, Mighty River Power, Iwi, and Regional and District Councils.

To register for the WWD Field Trip & Barbeque Lunch please email or phone
Shonagh Lindsay, Public Awareness Advisor, Fish & Game NZ by Monday 5 February.

ENDS

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