NOT blind<\/a>. Even for frogs they\u2019re strange \u2013 they have no external ear drums, don\u2019t call or croak much, aren\u2019t good jumpers and have no webbing between their toes. Their young emerge from eggs as almost fully formed tiny frogs and then climb onto their dad\u2019s back to complete metamorphosis. \u201cThey pre-date dinosaurs,\u201d says Richard Gibson, Auckland Zoo\u2019s head of animal care and conservation, \u201cand they\u2019ve barely changed for maybe a couple hundred million years\u201d.<\/p>\n![\"Left:](\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP\/\/\/yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7\")
A frog that allows us to glimpse the past (Images: Auckland Zoo)<\/p>\n
Archey\u2019s frogs, each with individually patterned skin, are tasty meals for rats, mice, pigs, stoats, hedgehogs, possums, cats and potentially bigger introduced frogs. Once Archey\u2019s frogs were more widespread around the North Island, but now there are just two natural wild populations\u2013 in the Coromandel and Whareorino Conservation Area \u2013 and a translocated population in Pureora Forest Park. Archey\u2019s frogs are seriously threatened, and \u201cthere is not a single Archey\u2019s frog living in the wild anywhere safe,\u201d says Gibson. While DOC runs extensive predator control in Whareorino Forest, it\u2019s not foolproof.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t really planned\u201d when Archey\u2019s frogs arrived there about 20 years ago, says Gibson. Frogs that had been used for research, including into Chytrid fungus, a newly arrived infectious amphibian disease, needed a home and DOC asked the Zoo. They\u2019re a \u201ctricky\u201d species to maintain, being only about 80% frog and 20% \u201ckind of weird\u201d according to Gibson. Knowledge about frog keeping and breeding was limited in New Zealand at that time and their husbandry had to be trialled and adjusted over time.<\/p>\n
The Zoo\u2019s work has hugely increased our understanding of these frogs: their biology, breeding habits, natural history, and veterinary care. \u201cThis is all part of understanding what makes an Archey\u2019s frog tick,\u201d says Gibson, \u201call sorts of things are being squirrelled away as useful learnings.\u201d These learnings are used each year in Whareorino and the Pureora forests when a contingent of Zoo staff join DOC to survey the frog populations there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Handle with care (Image: Auckland Zoo)
\nTara iti | New Zealand fairy tern\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tara iti are dainty birds. Fully grown they weigh less than a deck of cards at just 70 grams. A dark cap, eyeliner and bright orange beaks grace their heads. Chicks look like scruffs of fluff in various windswept states and have black beaks and eyes. They blend perfectly into nests which are scraped into exposed, low-lying areas of shell-covered sand. \u201cThey\u2019re very vulnerable to storm surges and predators,\u201d says Julie Underwood, Auckland Zoo\u2019s lead keeper Ectotherms and fieldwork coordinator.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tara iti in adult and juvenile stages (Images: Darren Markin, Auckland Zoo)<\/p>\n
Tara iti are the most endangered endemic breeding birds in Aotearoa. At last count, in March, there were less than 40 adult tara iti. This was good news \u2013 monitoring after the 2023-2024 breeding season only recorded 32 birds. This increase is thanks to DOC\u2019s Tara Iti Recovery Programme. Auckland Zoo plays a key strategic role in the programme, which has seen a record-breaking 19 fledglings take to the skies this past season.<\/p>\n
The last four Decembers, DOC rangers have made special deliveries to Auckland Zoo \u2013 tara iti eggs. The speckled eggs are collected from monitored wild nests where another is almost always laid. At the Zoo the eggs are incubated for about 22 days before they hatch. Specialist keepers hand-rear the chicks on tiny live k\u014dkopu, salmon or trout.<\/p>\n
Young tara iti (Images: Shelley Ogle, Auckland Zoo)<\/p>\n
After two weeks the chicks are taken to a fenced area at north Auckland\u2019s Te Arai beach where they may join wild fledglings. The fenced area has no roof. Wild, adult tara iti fly overhead. About a week later, the chicks \u201cstart following the wild birds and learning to feed alongside them,\u201d says Underwood. Still, a daily whistle from keepers working alongside DOC rangers at the fenced area indicates a free feed for any hungry chicks.<\/p>\n
Eventually, the tara iti fly out into the world. This year some Zoo-reared birds were fitted with satellite tags. They surprised the team with their adventurous flights, one going all the way to New Plymouth and back.<\/p>\n
Awak\u014dpaka<\/p>\n
\u201cI doubt there\u2019re many people in the entire country who have any idea that this skink exists,\u201d says Underwood, \u201cbut it\u2019s a very cool skink\u201d. Only about 20 awak\u014dpaka have ever been spotted in the wild since they were discovered in 2014. The largest is 77mm long \u2013 likely shorter than your index finger. Their name, translating to \u201cskink that lives in the footprints of mighty glaciers\u201d, alludes to the few hectares of steep rocky alpine habitat near the Homer Saddle in Fiordland where they\u2019ve been found.<\/p>\n
Awak\u014dpaka (Images: Auckland Zoo)<\/p>\n
Awak\u014dpaka are on the highest tier of endangerment: nationally critical. When a beech and tussock masting event (when plants produce heaps of seeds), expected to bolster mice populations, was predicted in 2023, Ng\u0101i Tahu and DOC decided to translocate some awak\u014dpaka to Auckland Zoo while they established a mice suppression programme.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea is to have a research population at the Zoo,\u201d says Underwood, \u201cto learn more about the species and develop husbandry practices should we need a full-on breeding programme\u201d. First came five males in November 2023, then two more last year, one of which was a pregnant female. In April she gave birth to four tiny offspring that weighed 0.32-0.42 grams \u2013 about a third of a paperclip each. Three are progressing well, but one has died.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Looking after and weighing awak\u014dpaka (Images: Auckland Zoo)<\/p>\n
When the skinks arrived, next to nothing was known about the species. \u201cThat\u2019s a real fun kind of challenge for us,\u201d says Underwood. Poo analysis on arrival already revealed new information on their diet \u2013 mainly beetles and spiders. The team had a wealth of experience from previous successful programmes with cobble and Kapitia skinks from the South Island\u2019s West Coast. The Zoo was a safe refuge for both species when their habitats were unsafe. Populations were secured, maintained and significantly increased at the Zoo and then returned to the wild (cobble skinks) or a dedicated predator-free reserve (Kapitia skinks).\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a facility that mimics the fluctuating temperatures and humidity of awak\u014dpaka habitat, the team are adapting what they learned from other skinks. \u201cWe will be trying to breed them, knowing that we have some females now,\u201d says Underwood. The goal will always be to secure the species in the wild, but when and how that can happen depends on DOC being confident that mice won\u2019t decimate them. \u201cWe\u2019re waiting on long-term mouse monitoring results and to see what they ask of us,\u201d says Underwood.<\/p>\n
Some of the Zoo\u2019s team and their DOC colleagues (Image: Auckland Zoo)<\/p>\n
For Underwood, who has worked at the Zoo for 17 years, the partnership projects with DOC have been career highlights. \u201cWe\u2019ve got the same goals, passions, and we dovetail our skills, abilities, resources and knowledge, and it creates really successful conservation programmes,\u201d she says. \u201cThey teach us, we teach them.\u201d Meanwhile, tara iti hatch, and awak\u014dpaka and Archey\u2019s frogs are kept safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A dainty bird, a little-known skink and a tiny, \u2018strange\u2019 frog \u2013 meet three species worth fighting for.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[1388,1389,1390,1391,111,139,69,143,147,406],"class_list":["post-823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-auckland-zoo","tag-conservation","tag-department-of-conservation","tag-frogs","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-partners","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}