NZ SANCTUARY KEEPERS

This Wild South programme is about seven dedicated conservationists and the sanctuaries they look after to protect vulnerable species.
Dr Gerry McSweeny ecologist and farmer in the South Island high country did something neighbours regarded as eccentric and uneconomic: seven years ago he fenced off half his farm as a sanctuary for beech forest. He also campaigned to get protection for the kea.
Dr John McLellan is keeper of a kiwi sanctuary on a peninsular in Lake Waikaremoana. Outside sanctuaries like John’s the kiwi is facing extinction mainly because of predation of its young by stoats. Tūhoe elder Robert Waiwai runs a stoat trapping project on the peninsular.
Scientist Sam [Dufreinne] studies hectors Dolphin, the world’s rarest, in a marine sanctuary around Banks Peninsular.
Jim Caldwell is a volunteer sanctuary keeper for the yellow eyed penguin at Bushy Beach near Oamaru. Sometimes, young penguins during there first year at sea can’t look after themselves and they starve. At Katiki Point, just south of Oamaru , Janice Jones and her late husband Bob established a penguin hospital and sanctuary mainly out of their own pocket. Janice has hand fed more than 500 penguins.
At the southern tip of the South Island lies Cod Fish Island, a sanctuary for the critically endangered kakapo. One of the sanctuary keepers is scientist Jo Joyce who points out that without such island sanctuaries many NZ species would have become extinct.