Daniel
Daniel boosted
Bob LeFridge :tinoflag:
@BobLefridge@mastodon.nz  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

St Barnabas rest home in Saint Clair is in lockdown as the eighth Covid wave spreads through NZ.

Recently two residents of another Dunedin home contracted Covid-19 — one was the result of an infected family member coming to visit, with symptoms that they didn’t take seriously enough at the time.

Complacency can kill.

And here's a shocking stat. Prof Michael Baker says "10%-15% of our cases in New Zealand were acquired in hospitals.

Our Health service used to be more professional than this.

I miss Jacinda.

https://archive.ph/gkSlX

#NZ#Covid#Dunedin
Jon Sullivan
@joncounts@mastodon.nz  ·  activity timestamp 4 days ago

Perhaps the biggest highlight of today's run up through the Ōtautahi Port Hills was just how many more korimako (NZ bellbirds) there are about now compared with when I started doing this survey.

I just checked and on my July 2017 run, I made 54 korimako observations. Today, on the same route, I made 249(!). That's just the mapped points. Some of today's observations were of about 50 birds singing at once.

Check out the two maps to see the big difference.

Huge credit here goes to the City Council Port Hills rangers and the volunteers of the Summit Road Society. Both groups have been helping the native forest to regenerate and have been controlling the pest mammals that eat the birds. It's working!

#UrbanEcology #EcologicalMonitoring #birds #nz#Christchurch #map#ChristchurchCityCouncil#SummitRoadSociety

A map of my 12 km run route from the edge of the housing in the Cashmere suburb of Christchurch up into the grasslands and forests of the Port Hills (climbing 374 metres). There is a satellite image underlay that shows the land cover. Yellow dots on the map indicate each observation I made of one or more korimako (NZ bellbirds). This map is from my July 2025 run and has 249 yellow points on the map. The natural native forest to the south of the map (the highest part of the run) is now thick with yellow points.
A map of my 12 km run route from the edge of the housing in the Cashmere suburb of Christchurch up into the grasslands and forests of the Port Hills (climbing 374 metres). There is a satellite image underlay that shows the land cover. Yellow dots on the map indicate each observation I made of one or more korimako (NZ bellbirds). This map is from my July 2025 run and has 249 yellow points on the map. The natural native forest to the south of the map (the highest part of the run) is now thick with yellow points.
A map of my 12 km run route from the edge of the housing in the Cashmere suburb of Christchurch up into the grasslands and forests of the Port Hills (climbing 374 metres). There is a satellite image underlay that shows the land cover. Yellow dots on the map indicate each observation I made of one or more korimako (NZ bellbirds). This map is from my July 2025 run and has 249 yellow points on the map. The natural native forest to the south of the map (the highest part of the run) is now thick with yellow points.
A map of my 12 km run route from the edge of the housing in the Cashmere suburb of Christchurch up into the grasslands and forests of the Port Hills (climbing 374 metres). There is a satellite image underlay that shows the land cover. Yellow dots on the map indicate each observation I made of one or more korimako (NZ bellbirds). This map is from my July 2017 run and has 54 yellow points on the map.
A map of my 12 km run route from the edge of the housing in the Cashmere suburb of Christchurch up into the grasslands and forests of the Port Hills (climbing 374 metres). There is a satellite image underlay that shows the land cover. Yellow dots on the map indicate each observation I made of one or more korimako (NZ bellbirds). This map is from my July 2017 run and has 54 yellow points on the map.
A map of my 12 km run route from the edge of the housing in the Cashmere suburb of Christchurch up into the grasslands and forests of the Port Hills (climbing 374 metres). There is a satellite image underlay that shows the land cover. Yellow dots on the map indicate each observation I made of one or more korimako (NZ bellbirds). This map is from my July 2017 run and has 54 yellow points on the map.
Jon Sullivan
@joncounts@mastodon.nz  ·  activity timestamp 4 days ago

Today I did my monthly biodiversity run up into the Port Hills of Ōtautahi-Christchurch city, NZ. That takes my out of the Cashmere suburbs through the planted native forest and grasslands of Victoria Park and up into the old growth and naturally regenerated native forest of Sugarloaf peak.

I've been doing this route monthly since 2016, mapping and counting out birds and butterflies and assorted plants and fungi.

Here are some of today's highlights.

I had a close encounter with a kererū, perched about 1 metre from me (always a treat): https://inaturalist.nz/observations/297848998

A kahukura (red admiral) was feeding from exotic Viburnum flowers: https://inaturalist.nz/observations/297849009

Some scarlet pouch fungi were lighting up the forest floor on Sugarloaf: https://inaturalist.nz/observations/297848989

The one taramea (Aciphylla subfabellata speargrass) that I know of is still up by the Summit Road and looking healthy: https://inaturalist.nz/observations/297848991

#nature#WildCounts#UrbanEcology #EcologicalMonitoring

A photo looking down from head height at a thin-leaved spiny plant. This is a taramea, a kind of NZ speargrass (also called spaniard). They're no longer common in the Port Hills, as they're susceptible to grazing by introduced mammals. I map out all the ones I find and add them to iNaturalist. My full-res photo is at https://inaturalist.nz/observations/297848991
A photo looking down from head height at a thin-leaved spiny plant. This is a taramea, a kind of NZ speargrass (also called spaniard). They're no longer common in the Port Hills, as they're susceptible to grazing by introduced mammals. I map out all the ones I find and add them to iNaturalist. My full-res photo is at https://inaturalist.nz/observations/297848991
A photo looking down from head height at a thin-leaved spiny plant. This is a taramea, a kind of NZ speargrass (also called spaniard). They're no longer common in the Port Hills, as they're susceptible to grazing by introduced mammals. I map out all the ones I find and add them to iNaturalist. My full-res photo is at https://inaturalist.nz/observations/297848991
Jon Sullivan
@joncounts@mastodon.nz  ·  activity timestamp 4 days ago

Here are some photos of the route to give you an idea of the terrain. The Port Hills is an incredible asset to Christchurch city, and it's a large part of why our city's gardens are visited by native birds.

Plus, there are so many walking and biking tracks to explore!

#Christchurch#NZ#PortHills

A photo of track down off the top of Sugarloaf peak through sheep grazed native grassland. In the background are the forests of Victoria Park and behind them the built city of Christchurch spreads out across the Canterbury Plains. The Southern Alps mountains rim the horizon.
A photo of track down off the top of Sugarloaf peak through sheep grazed native grassland. In the background are the forests of Victoria Park and behind them the built city of Christchurch spreads out across the Canterbury Plains. The Southern Alps mountains rim the horizon.
A photo of track down off the top of Sugarloaf peak through sheep grazed native grassland. In the background are the forests of Victoria Park and behind them the built city of Christchurch spreads out across the Canterbury Plains. The Southern Alps mountains rim the horizon.
A photo of part of Latters Spur track, heading down towards the city. Bowenvale Valley is on the right. This section of track is grass with sheep pasture on the right and a weedy mess of Scotch broom, boneseed, tree lucerne, and wilding pines on the right (mostly out of view of this photo).
A photo of part of Latters Spur track, heading down towards the city. Bowenvale Valley is on the right. This section of track is grass with sheep pasture on the right and a weedy mess of Scotch broom, boneseed, tree lucerne, and wilding pines on the right (mostly out of view of this photo).
A photo of part of Latters Spur track, heading down towards the city. Bowenvale Valley is on the right. This section of track is grass with sheep pasture on the right and a weedy mess of Scotch broom, boneseed, tree lucerne, and wilding pines on the right (mostly out of view of this photo).
Jon Sullivan
@joncounts@mastodon.nz  ·  activity timestamp last week

I’m generally a bit skeptical of de-extinction plans, when we have so many wild species on the brink of extinction that need our help. Still, I find myself excited at the prospect of Peter Jackson helping to bring back NZ’s nine species of moa. Peter can spend his money however he likes, and this is much better than buying another big yacht or a social media company.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/south-island-giant-moa-de-extinction-plans-sir-peter-jackson-teams-up-with-colossal-biosciences/5M5QPE2VWVBYRAXPWH6OWOO4DY/

#deextinction #moa #nz #birds #conservation
Jon Sullivan
@joncounts@mastodon.nz  ·  activity timestamp last week

Yesterday afternoon I was at the #ChristchurchBotanicGardens, with an undergrad student at #LincolnUniversityNZ who will be interning at the garden during the next teaching semester. Luke Martin, the curator of the native section of the garden, gave us a fascinating tour behind the scenes of the garden's native nursery, seed bank, and herbarium.

A lot of work is being done at the Gardens to learn about and safeguard Aotearoa New Zealand's botanical taonga. New natural history knowledge is being figured out about Canterbury's most threatened native plants so they can be kept safe in the seed bank and glasshouses, in case some of the Department of Conservation's valiant efforts in the wild fail.

Some of Canterbury's most threatened plant species only exist in the wild in patches of a few square metres in remnant vegetation on private farmland. The work Luke and colleagues are doing may prove exceptionally important for the survival of some of these species.

There's a lot more to the botanic gardens than a place to see pretty flowers.

#Christchurch#NZ #botany#ChristchurchBotanicGardens#BotanicGarden

A photo of a printed aerial photo of what the Christchurch botanic gardens looked like around 1935. It's amazing how many tall trees there are here, when the city was only founded in 1850 and the gardens in 1863. On the left there's a small lake with two islands in it the shape of New Zealand (that was too hard to maintain and no longer exists).
A photo of a printed aerial photo of what the Christchurch botanic gardens looked like around 1935. It's amazing how many tall trees there are here, when the city was only founded in 1850 and the gardens in 1863. On the left there's a small lake with two islands in it the shape of New Zealand (that was too hard to maintain and no longer exists).
A photo of a printed aerial photo of what the Christchurch botanic gardens looked like around 1935. It's amazing how many tall trees there are here, when the city was only founded in 1850 and the gardens in 1863. On the left there's a small lake with two islands in it the shape of New Zealand (that was too hard to maintain and no longer exists).
A photo of a thin-leaved daisy plant in a small pot on a glasshouse bench. This is the swamp Celmisia from Travis Wetland in Christchurch city. It is similar to Celmisia gracilenta but likely a new undescribed species, which will likely make it an endangered species.
A photo of a thin-leaved daisy plant in a small pot on a glasshouse bench. This is the swamp Celmisia from Travis Wetland in Christchurch city. It is similar to Celmisia gracilenta but likely a new undescribed species, which will likely make it an endangered species.
A photo of a thin-leaved daisy plant in a small pot on a glasshouse bench. This is the swamp Celmisia from Travis Wetland in Christchurch city. It is similar to Celmisia gracilenta but likely a new undescribed species, which will likely make it an endangered species.
A photo of me (foreground, older white guy with glasses) and Luke Martin (bearded younger man) standing next to a glasshouse bench covered in pots. Each pot contains a threatened NZ plant. This work is a collaboration with the Department of Conservation to prevent NZ's rarest plants from going extinct (some species are right on the edge at the moment).
A photo of me (foreground, older white guy with glasses) and Luke Martin (bearded younger man) standing next to a glasshouse bench covered in pots. Each pot contains a threatened NZ plant. This work is a collaboration with the Department of Conservation to prevent NZ's rarest plants from going extinct (some species are right on the edge at the moment).
A photo of me (foreground, older white guy with glasses) and Luke Martin (bearded younger man) standing next to a glasshouse bench covered in pots. Each pot contains a threatened NZ plant. This work is a collaboration with the Department of Conservation to prevent NZ's rarest plants from going extinct (some species are right on the edge at the moment).
The native plant curator at the Christchurch Botanic Gardens, Luke Martin, standing next to an enormous single leaf of the (definitely not NZ native) titan arum. The leaf is twice as tall as Luke. The photo is in the tropical section of the glasshouses.
The native plant curator at the Christchurch Botanic Gardens, Luke Martin, standing next to an enormous single leaf of the (definitely not NZ native) titan arum. The leaf is twice as tall as Luke. The photo is in the tropical section of the glasshouses.
The native plant curator at the Christchurch Botanic Gardens, Luke Martin, standing next to an enormous single leaf of the (definitely not NZ native) titan arum. The leaf is twice as tall as Luke. The photo is in the tropical section of the glasshouses.
Jon Sullivan
@joncounts@mastodon.nz  ·  activity timestamp last week

Yesterday afternoon I was at the #ChristchurchBotanicGardens, with an undergrad student at #LincolnUniversityNZ who will be interning at the garden during the next teaching semester. Luke Martin, the curator of the native section of the garden, gave us a fascinating tour behind the scenes of the garden's native nursery, seed bank, and herbarium.

A lot of work is being done at the Gardens to learn about and safeguard Aotearoa New Zealand's botanical taonga. New natural history knowledge is being figured out about Canterbury's most threatened native plants so they can be kept safe in the seed bank and glasshouses, in case some of the Department of Conservation's valiant efforts in the wild fail.

Some of Canterbury's most threatened plant species only exist in the wild in patches of a few square metres in remnant vegetation on private farmland. The work Luke and colleagues are doing may prove exceptionally important for the survival of some of these species.

There's a lot more to the botanic gardens than a place to see pretty flowers.

#Christchurch#NZ #botany#ChristchurchBotanicGardens#BotanicGarden

A photo of a printed aerial photo of what the Christchurch botanic gardens looked like around 1935. It's amazing how many tall trees there are here, when the city was only founded in 1850 and the gardens in 1863. On the left there's a small lake with two islands in it the shape of New Zealand (that was too hard to maintain and no longer exists).
A photo of a printed aerial photo of what the Christchurch botanic gardens looked like around 1935. It's amazing how many tall trees there are here, when the city was only founded in 1850 and the gardens in 1863. On the left there's a small lake with two islands in it the shape of New Zealand (that was too hard to maintain and no longer exists).
A photo of a printed aerial photo of what the Christchurch botanic gardens looked like around 1935. It's amazing how many tall trees there are here, when the city was only founded in 1850 and the gardens in 1863. On the left there's a small lake with two islands in it the shape of New Zealand (that was too hard to maintain and no longer exists).
A photo of a thin-leaved daisy plant in a small pot on a glasshouse bench. This is the swamp Celmisia from Travis Wetland in Christchurch city. It is similar to Celmisia gracilenta but likely a new undescribed species, which will likely make it an endangered species.
A photo of a thin-leaved daisy plant in a small pot on a glasshouse bench. This is the swamp Celmisia from Travis Wetland in Christchurch city. It is similar to Celmisia gracilenta but likely a new undescribed species, which will likely make it an endangered species.
A photo of a thin-leaved daisy plant in a small pot on a glasshouse bench. This is the swamp Celmisia from Travis Wetland in Christchurch city. It is similar to Celmisia gracilenta but likely a new undescribed species, which will likely make it an endangered species.
A photo of me (foreground, older white guy with glasses) and Luke Martin (bearded younger man) standing next to a glasshouse bench covered in pots. Each pot contains a threatened NZ plant. This work is a collaboration with the Department of Conservation to prevent NZ's rarest plants from going extinct (some species are right on the edge at the moment).
A photo of me (foreground, older white guy with glasses) and Luke Martin (bearded younger man) standing next to a glasshouse bench covered in pots. Each pot contains a threatened NZ plant. This work is a collaboration with the Department of Conservation to prevent NZ's rarest plants from going extinct (some species are right on the edge at the moment).
A photo of me (foreground, older white guy with glasses) and Luke Martin (bearded younger man) standing next to a glasshouse bench covered in pots. Each pot contains a threatened NZ plant. This work is a collaboration with the Department of Conservation to prevent NZ's rarest plants from going extinct (some species are right on the edge at the moment).
The native plant curator at the Christchurch Botanic Gardens, Luke Martin, standing next to an enormous single leaf of the (definitely not NZ native) titan arum. The leaf is twice as tall as Luke. The photo is in the tropical section of the glasshouses.
The native plant curator at the Christchurch Botanic Gardens, Luke Martin, standing next to an enormous single leaf of the (definitely not NZ native) titan arum. The leaf is twice as tall as Luke. The photo is in the tropical section of the glasshouses.
The native plant curator at the Christchurch Botanic Gardens, Luke Martin, standing next to an enormous single leaf of the (definitely not NZ native) titan arum. The leaf is twice as tall as Luke. The photo is in the tropical section of the glasshouses.
Jon Sullivan
@joncounts@mastodon.nz  ·  activity timestamp last week

I also learned on my visit to the #ChristchurchBotanicGardens that there used to a lake with islands the shape of NZ in it. Here's the aerial photo from about 1935 that was one the wall of the library in the Gardens.

The lake's NZ islands are not there any more.

#LandscapeArchitecture #nz #history#Christchurch
Jon Sullivan
@joncounts@mastodon.nz  ·  activity timestamp last week

The mayor of Christchurch city, NZ, Phil Mauger, is in the news backing the government’s proposal to cap councils’ rates increases. The article on #RNZ says that Mauger “agreed with [finance minister Nicola] Willis that councils had engaged in wasteful spending”.

Ah, you must be thinking, surely Mauger must mean our $683 million new stadium. That’s a big reason why Christchurch rates have gone up by on average almost 25% during the 3 years of Mauger’s term, while inflation had only risen about 8%.

No, of course not. He’s pointing at our cycle ways. “We've wasted money on how we have designed and built cycleways”. The council has budgeted on average $21 million annually over the next 10 years for cycleway and footpath maintenance and construction.

😔

Remember that it’s election year this year.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/566309/christchurch-mayor-backs-proposal-for-government-capped-rates-rises

#nzpol #BikeTooter#CycleWays#UrbanPlanning#Christchurch #nz
Bob LeFridge :tinoflag:
@BobLefridge@mastodon.nz  ·  activity timestamp 2 weeks ago

It's taken a while, but another NZ anti-vax doctor has finally been named. Suppression lapsed for Dr Sophie Jane Febery, currently practising in Mataura, when The NZ Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal released its decision yesterday.

In a series of what should have been career-ending acts of stupidity, Febery handed out vaccine exemptions, prescribed Ivermectin, attempted to import Ivermectin (later found to be sub-standard) and bodged medical records.

She appeared as a doctor at a Christchurch anti-vax rally, claiming the pandemic wasn't as deadly as scientists claimed.

The Tribunal decided "her public comments about the Covid-19 vaccine suggested a lack of research rigour." They found "her unlawful conduct amounts to malpractice and negligence."

She's on a tight rein for the next three years, has been formally censured and ordered to pay $67,196.52.

https://www.odt.co.nz/southland/gp-must-pay-65k-prescribing-ivermectin

#NZ#Cookers#AntiVax#Ivermectin#Febery
Jon Sullivan
@joncounts@mastodon.nz  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

One of the classics of NZ ecological science is this Auckland study by Sandra Anderson and colleagues. They showed, in extraordinary detail, how the loss of two endemic flower-pollinating birds from mainland Auckland (korimako and hihi), and the relative rarity of another (tūī), have caused the population to falter of the endemic bird-pollinated plant taurepo, Rhabdothamnus solandri.

Plus, Australian silvereyes, now widespread in NZ, were nectar robbers and damaged a lot of the flowers.

Everything is connected, and the effects of species declines can be unexpected and initially easy to overlook.

"Nectar robbing by silvereyes, revealed by slit corolla tubes, was always rare on islands (means 3.2% of flowers near Whangarei and 4.3% near Auckland) compared with the mainland (14.1 and 79.2% in Whangarei and Auckland regions... These data reinforce the conclusion that a shortage of visits by endemic bird pollinators on the mainland is the cause of the failure of seed production and that recently self-introduced silvereyes are not effective substitute pollinators."

Anderson, S. H., Kelly, D., Ladley, J. J., Molloy, S., and Terry, J. 2011. Cascading effects of bird functional extinction reduce pollination and plant density. Science, 331:1068–1071. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1199092

#BirdPollination #nz#TrophicCascade #ecology#SpeciesInteractions