Goat control on Arapawa Island Scenic Reserve
The Department of Conservation carries out goat control on scenic reserve on Arapawa Island, in the Marlborough Sounds, to protect the reserve's important remnant Cook Strait forest communities and plant species which today only survive in a few areas. The island is free of possums but goats and pigs have a significant impact on this vegetation if left unchecked.
The reserve's distinctive Cook Strait vegetation
The native vegetation in the Arapawa Island Scenic Reserve is representative remnants of forest that was once more widespread in the Cook Strait area. It is shaped by the distinctive climate of the Cook Strait narrows - wind, humidity and salt spray - combined with rugged and spectacular topography. The composition of the native bush is an unusual mix of subtropical kohekohe, warm temperate tawa and montane beech-podocarp-broadleaved forests, in distinct altitudinal zones. It is rare in New Zealand to have possum-free kohekohe forest on such a scale.
DOC's goat control programme
The department's goat control programme on Arapawa Island is focussed on the scenic reserve and some adjoining private land with the agreement of the landowner. Control of goats on the scenic reserve to protect its distinctive native vegetation has been ongoing since 1978. The area in which goat control takes place comprises about one-third of the goats' range on the island which is mostly on private land.
In part of the reserve that is fenced and protected from goats and pigs there is impressive re-growth of understory shrubs and trees transforming it into more natural, healthy forest. Seedlings are now abundant whereas before the forest floor was almost bare of new growth due to grazing by goats and pig rooting.
There is little fencing between private land and most of the reserve, goats and pigs regularly spill over into the reserve from the private land. Consequently in these parts of the reserve goat and pig damage to the native vegetation is still occurring and control is needed to reduce their numbers to low levels.