Dr Danielle Shanahan | Zealandia Te Māra a Tāne | Wellington New Zealand Ep 2

How about hollows? I know in Australia...

Hollows are a big problem.

We're chopping down old trees and then invasive species are moving into the hollows that we do have.

Is that a similar problem in New Zealand? It's

incredibly important in New Zealand.

So for you, a lot of it is mammals and some birds as well.

But many of our birds are cavity nesters.

So in Wellington itself, we haven't yet seen a lot of issue with invasive birds.

We

think that will come.

That's not too far in the distant future.

The other interesting thing we have is there's a place like Zealandia.

It's about restoration.

So this forest was once completely cleared, completely burned.

So it's still growing.

It's still very young.

It's actually missing many of the cavities and hollows that a forest needs to support.

good populations

of

birds.

So, yes, there's something we do do, actually, a couple of different things.

One is we provide artificial nest boxes.

And the other thing that our very clever team is doing, led by Joe Leadington, is creating hollows using some tools, actually, from Australia to create hollows in some of our pine trees, for example, which are exotic, but provide an opportunity to create some more natural cavities.

Yeah.

I think people often are like, it's a weed or it's not native, but there's the importance of replacing it instead of removing it and leaving nothing.