Shaun Lee – Page 19 – Mostly just stuff I am doing to help the planet

November 11, 2016December 30, 2016

Fire on Browns Island

Just after the fire was put out on Browns Island I kayaked over to check on the shorebirds. I went for a short walk and was quite upset by the damage done to the reptiles.

I found so many burnt corpses. In places near the edge of the fire (where I think it was less hot) there was a native skink corpse (I checked the head scales) every meter or so. While sad it is nice to know so many lived on the island. — I found so many burnt corpses. In places near the edge of the fire (where I think it was less hot) there was a native skink (I checked the head scales) corpse every meter or so. While sad it is nice to know so many lived on the island.

This rare moko skink survived despite having her tail badly burnt. While other surviving skinks can live of the fat reserves in their tails while their habitat recovers this one will have to work harder. — This rare moko skink has survived despite having her tail badly burnt. While other surviving skinks can live of the fat reserves in their tails (while their habitat recovers) this one will have to work harder.

Although it was sad to see these golden bell frogs roasted alive, they are are not native. I was surprised to see them in multiple spots high up on the crater rim. Some seem to have survived under the rocks. — Although it was sad to see these golden bell frogs roasted alive, they are are not native. I was surprised to see them in multiple spots high up on the crater rim. At least one survived under a rock in the crater.

The rest of my photos here. Hopefully some good comes out of it.

UPDATE 30 DECEMBER 2016:
Six weeks later the grass has largely rejuvenated, however without the smothering grass, many seeds that lay dormant in the soil have germinated. Most of the new arrivals are invasive weeds, I saw wooly nightshade, apple of Sodom boneseed and moth plant. However the center of the crater is more interesting. From under the rocks bracken has emerged (how long could it have waited there?) and I think the reptiles will enjoy the extra cover.

October 21, 2016

Seacleaners

I had a great day out yesterday with Seacleaners (sponsored by Watercare in Auckland) and Wilkinson Environmental.

Plastic Pellets — Simon took a lot of photos of small plastic pellets (used in the manufacture of plastic products) that littered the foreshore. Unfortunately we could not clean these up.

Full boat — We loaded up most of the boat in less than an hour or two, we had to stack up the back of the boat to balance the load.

Bottle with black bottom section — I remember these bottles from my childhood, amazing how long it takes for plastic to breakdown.

September 25, 2016October 21, 2016

Development

I have always assumed when humans ‘develop’ land, some of it ends up in the ocean. I had a look at some of the Glen Innes development in the rain today to see what was going on.

A failing silt fence holding back cubic meters of muddy water

The local creek is suspiciously the same colour as the water at the development site

It was good to see development companies trying but unfortunately all this mud ends up smothering marine life and poisoning the Hauraki Gulf. Not such a nice development.

September 11, 2016January 13, 2019

Ambiance Impex

This is so gross – documented here for Auckland Councils Pollution Response Team.

Location:

Please click on the thumbnails to see the full image.

Shows how they have to exit to do the dumping.

View from the dump site down into the stream

Paradise brand name clearly visible

View from the opposite side of the stream.

The Ambiance Impex brands dumped into the stream are all branded Paradise.

When I first noticed the dumping in March and reported it to council the dumping was not so bad.

I wonder if the tires are from this dodgy looking bridge which is no longer there but is still visible in the council satellite imagery.

Even tho this site 120m from the Manukau (West coast of NZ) it flows through the Tamaki Estuary to the Hauraki Gulf (East coast of NZ).

UPDATE: 27 November.
Eight months later and the site is still sending plastic like these Paradise branded ‘cut green beans’ into the harbour. I am giving the council regular updates on the site but I don’t know how much (if any) is being cleaned up by Ambiance Impex or if its just getting washed into the ocean.

UPDATE: 23 Feburary.
Ambiance Impex still show little regard for the environment sending further plastic into the stream.

UPDATE: January 2018.

Happy to report that after constant reporting the business has finally cleaned up their act.

September 8, 2016September 8, 2016

Swimmable

I had a lot of fun illustrating this comic which explains what swimmable means.

August 21, 2016August 31, 2016

Trojans

I have been fascinated with biological population control methods ever since I heard about the Sterile Insect Technique being used to control mosquitoes and limit the spread of the Zika virus. The Tojan Female Technique (TFT) is the latest angle on this and it seems like magic. I read The Trojan female technique: a novel, effective and humane approach for pest population control (2013) but I am not good enough at math to understand it. How can this work? Surely biology is smart enough to not be unbalanced so easily? I had to understand it better – so I built a simulator.

Being a trapper I already knew a fair bit about rats so I knew roughly how much they had to move around and interact. Building in logic on lifespan, gestation, litter size and range was fun but the population kept clumping together around a core of less mobile females.

My first breakthrough came when I evenly distributed (invisible) food across the screen, I then also used food to control litter size and bingo I had a stable population model. I did not even need to introduce seasons, the population surged and wained very naturally.

However I was disappointed when I started introducing Trojans. I would add a bunch and wait and they never overtook the original population. I was sure something was wrong with my model but then I tried doing regular releases (like they do in the aforementioned paper). It worked! I still don’t really understand it, I thought there would be a tipping point or something but the whole thing is very steady, and fast! In most cases I did not need to simulate a 1080 drop to exterminate the population in less than 10 years – amazing.

There seems to be a sweet spot with about 1-5 releases every 30-90 days in a population of 200 rats. That’s about 100 females added which is 50% of the initial population. Luckily they are very cheap to make.

Trojan data — Trojan simulation data (averages after 10 simulations per scenario) raw data

I could make it more realistic by:

Simulating a 1080 drop which reduces the initial population to 5%
Reducing home ranges for females and immatures
Increasing range of males during breeding season
Getting more data on seasonal variations in range and litter size
Create a cost per release and a cost per rat released
Other stuff from reading about rat behaviour
Stop it from freezing (about 6% of simulations freeze for some reason)

However the simulation has proven the concept to me and I am more excited about the technique than ever before. You can play with it here shaunlee.co.nz/trojans

August 9, 2016August 30, 2016

Pure New Zealand

I love James Cameron’s 2010 TED talk which has been used in the latest 100% Pure New Zealand campaign.

Like Cameron, I too grew up reading and drawing science fiction and exploring nature. This year my ‘journey of discovery’ took me deep into the Waitakeres for my own Avatar experience.

There, in the moonlight, I crouched in the middle of a small stream prodding and splashing away like a child. Like Jake Sully I was enchanted with tiny animals that (unlike glowworms who glow for hours) release a bright burst of bioluminescence. The limpets I was teasing are called Latia and they release bioluminescent slime as a defensive mechanism.

You won’t find these alien limpets anywhere else in the world and you also will no longer find them in most New Zealand streams. They need clean water, and we have filled our lakes and rivers with too much sediment for them to survive. Our waterways are far from 100% pure. Most of the rivers that are pristine are high in the South Island where it is too cold for Latia to survive.

Our government wants to treat our streams and rivers like drains. The legislation they have proposed sets extremely low standards for our waterways. I agree with the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment – sediment is one of the three big issues affecting our waterways. Yet our Government has not included sediment as an attribute in the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, and we can’t manage that which we do not measure.

In the 100% Pure ad James Cameron tells us that ‘curiosity is the most powerful thing we own’. My curiosity has changed the way I see the New Zealand environment. It has altered my enjoyment of the New Zealand wilderness. Where before I just saw bush, now see invasive plants. Having heard the morning chorus in our wildlife sanctuaries I am let down by our silent mainland forests.

So a few years ago I started a personal project about the positive stuff – the things that make New Zealand unique. MostNZ.com is a website showcasing what we can celebrate about New Zealand, how to experience those things and most importantly how to keep them. It’s a lot more honest than the 100% campaign but it’s still advertises New Zealand.

We can grow tourism and the economy by growing, protecting and restoring our wilderness. But to do it we need more, James Cameron; more curiosity, more imagination, more vision.

Let’s at least try for 50% pure. Let’s focus on the quality not the quantity of our exports. Let’s start doing restoration at an industrial scale and let’s really invest in our scientists who dream of a predator free New Zealand.

Like the narrative arc of James Cameron’s blockbusters we have tasks to master, battles to win and transformations to witness. The New Zealand story must have our unique environment at its heart.
James Cameron ends his Ted Talk with ‘‘No important endeavour that required innovation was done without risk.” – “Failure is an option, but fear is not.”