New Zealand Semester Abroad: Orokonui

This last friday, I volunteered for the second time at the Orokonui Ecosanctuary, about 15 minutes from Dunedin. Last time I went it was pretty cold and rainy, but this time I was lucky enough to have a beautiful, sunny day (and I was able to take some pictures!). Orokonui is a 759 acre reserve surrounded by a massive fence to exclude most introduced pests. This allows the indigenous plants and wildlife, birds especially, to thrive. It's only a few years old, but it's already become an amazing place to visit and explore. However, they depend a lot on the help of volunteers to keep it running! My friend Dani has been volunteering there for a few months, and invited me to come along since she knew I was interested in conservation. The first time I went, we spent the first hour cleaning lichen off the outside of the fence (glamorous job, right?). It's important to keep it clean as the fence clean as the lichen provides the bit of traction that pests might need to get into the sanctuary. We spent the rest of the time doing some trail work, to keep tracks manageable for visitors. This last visit, we walked around for a bit putting out old fruit for the birds to eat (picture below), then helping to put together mousetraps. Thousands of mousetraps have to be placed all around the perimeter to make sure that not too many get in.

Orokonui really is a beautiful place, and I hope to be able to get out there at least a few more times before the semester ends. It's nice to know that I'm helping out by volunteering, but also very selfishly, it's just so wonderful to be spend a few hours in such a beautiful place with awesome people. If you want to know more about the sanctuary, their website is: http://www.orokonui.org.nz/ . Anyways, here are a few of the pictures I managed to snap during my last visit!