A flood of interest in our April meeting

Our meeting was called “What happens when there’s droughts and floods in Kaikorai Valley” and it generated a flood of interest! Civil engineer Natalie Veale spoke to us about characteristics of the Kaikorai catchment, and how both droughts and floods would affect it.

One interesting tidbit was that when rain lands on earthy substances, like grass or forest, it takes about 400 days for the water to reach the stream. But when rain lands on concrete, like driveways, the water immediately runs off towards the stream. This means that paved surfaces increase the likelihood of floods.

Being prepared for both droughts and floods is important, so it’s a good idea to have plenty of bottled water on hand - ideally 9 litres per person per day.

We also heard from Beth with her non-human inspiring conservationist, Sirocco Kākāpō! Sirocco shot to fame in 2009 when he appeared on a BBC tv episode with Stephen Fry, but his fame really helped the kākāpō’s cause. He continues to inspire us to learn more about kākāpō, and to trap predators. Kākāpō used to be found everywhere, up and down the country but now they only live in predator-free areas.

Ada treated us to some of her riflemen photography in her bird of the month presentation. Riflemen, also known as titipounamu are New Zealand’s smallest birds, weighing only 6g. Unfortunately they’re not found in Kaikorai Valley at the moment, but they’re likely to return if we keep trapping, and enabling forest habitats to thrive.

Overall it was a fascinating evening and everyone learnt a lot! Thank you to everyone who made a contribution to running the meeting. Our next monthly meeting is at 5.30pm on Thursday 14 May where we’ll be having a guest speaker talk to us about our perceptions of pest species.