15 February 2022:

Two Fulton Hogan projects in Canterbury have been attracting big crowds.

During lockdown in August last year up to 750 endangered black billed gulls (tarāpuka) made the Blakes Road, Belfast, storm water basin their home. Fulton Hogan is building the storm water system for Christchurch City Council, and the team needed to down tools while the gulls bred. With the bird’s work done, they’ve vacated the site and Fulton Hogan’s work has begun again.

Meanwhile, further south, another colony of the gulls has been nesting on a mound on the banks of the Ashburton river created when Fulton Hogan repaired the SH1 bridge after recent floods.

Fulton Hogan’s Canterbury Environmental Manager Marsha Mason says because the birds in Belfast mistook the works for a braided river, a challenge was to mimic a braided river environment. This included keeping the water level in the stormwater basin deep enough to sustain the insects the birds feed on, and not too high to flood the nests.

The maximum time for monitoring visits was 10 minutes – the longest the birds can be off their nests. The water also acted as a moat, helping keep predators away from the nests. Council park rangers set a trap line around the site to stop rats and other predators from threatening the young chicks.

DOC senior ranger Anita Spencer says it’s unlikely the gulls will return to the basin because, by next breeding season, the project will be completed and the environment changed. She says she hopes the gulls will return to their natural home in braided rivers.

“The rivers are the best they‘ve been for years because the floods cleared out the weeds, so there is nowhere for the predators to hide.”

Incidentally, Fulton Hogan has been recognised for its work in fragile braided river environments. In 2016, Fulton Hogan received accreditation from Braided River conservation group BRaid (www.braidedrivers.org) for habitat creation work on the Orari River.

Marsha says the Blakes Road experience is a reminder of the importance of being mindful of what’s happening in your work area.

“The gulls/stilts turned up while we weren’t there during lock down, and it was a surprise when they’d been identified as nesting when we returned.”

Marsha says the team also learned a lot about how a modified environment can be temporarily re-modified to meet the needs of wildlife.

“The ornithologist and the rangers helped us understand the importance of ‘the why’, and it was good to see how the Wildlife Act came into play, and how it interacted with the Resource Management Act.”

And although the team became fond of the little gulls, Marsha says her favourite was the 30 or so pied stilts that also joined the throng.

“With their little white faces they’re rather cute.”

And in a positive postscript to this story, the black billed gull has just been re-classified by DOC as “At Risk, Declining’ from ‘Threatened Nationally.’