Awards

August 14 2025

First Place: Young Writers’ Competition

ashleyriver Awards, black-fronted tern, Competition, nesting

Endangered Birds

By Roman Furer – Age 12 – Ashley Rakahuri School

I strutted along the warm rocky surface, searching for mayflies. The sun poured over the small stream ahead of me. I let out a loud “SCREECH” as a rumble of something struck me from behind. I flew upwards towards the sky, my wings flapped against the breeze. I glanced down and saw a motor bike driving along the Ashley Rakahuri Estuary, splashing through the braided streams, all connecting to the main river flowing out to sea. The motorbike sped away to the other side of the estuary. I slowly lowered myself down towards the rocky terrain, but to my horror I could hear the loud screams of another black fronted tern in trouble. I darted through the air and landed with a thud. The poor bird had a clear shiny thing stuck on its head. Instantly I recognized what it was – PLASTIC! To my horror the bird lay lifeless on the rocky surface. I was too late. So many birds and other animals have died from plastic and other litter. I turned around and flew towards my home on the west side of the estuary.

My partner will be silently incubating our three little eggs.

I plummeted down and landed silently next to her. “Did you have fun exploring?” she asked, giving me a smile.

“No – another tragedy.” Tears swelled in my eyes.

The sky grew darker as the sun set beyond the horizon. My partner moved off our nest made amongst the stones. Three little grey eggs were placed neatly in the middle. All of them were roughly the same size. I looked up. The stars and majestic half moon lit up the obsidian black sky. All of a sudden, I heard a loud screech of a ferret as it lunged towards the eggs out of the darkness. Then a deafening “PEK” of a gun shooting in the distance. The ferret – in mid air – fell to the ground lifelessly. I let out a long slow sigh of relief. Our eggs were somehow safe. But for how long?

How long will we survive?

How am I going to protect my Whanau?

I wish someone could help us!

January 23 2025

Opportunity for young writers to stand up for an ‘ecological gem’

ashleyriver Awards Competition

Competition runs from Saturday 01 February – Friday 11 April.

The Ashley-Rakahuri Rivercare Group (ARRG) is giving young writers the opportunity to stand up for an ‘ecological gem’ in need of help.

The group is holding a competition to highlight the Ashley-Rakahuri River Estuary at Waikuku Beach. The Ashley-Rakahuri River Estuary Young Writers competition is open to all North Canterbury primary school pupils, including home-schooled children, and entrants will be asked to write a short story or poem of up to 400 words about the estuary. It is hoped that the young writers’ stories and poems will raise awareness about this taonga/treasure and also encourage the formation of a local volunteer group to provide the urgent protection it needs.

ARRG members believe that the formation of such a group is ‘an absolutely key ingredient’ to improving the natural environment of the estuary.

An ARRG spokesman Nick Ledgard says the estuary is an ‘ecological gem’ and should be regarded as the jewel in Waimakariri’s biodiversity crown.

“It is one of the most important habitats for migratory shore birds in the South Island,” he says.

“This is due to its significant expanses of tidal mudflats compared to other east coast river mouths.

The estuary attracts a huge variety of bird species, such as the native white heron, black and pied stilts, wrybill, banded dotterel, black- and white-fronted terns and oystercatchers, plus international migrants such as the godwit, sanderling, red-necked stint and ruddy turnstone. It is this, together with its outstanding natural beauty and its accessibility, which makes it extra special,” Nick says.

“Apart from the passing migrants, it also acts as a staging post for braided river birds (such as wrybill/ngutu pare) before and after they breed on the braided rivers of Canterbury. A number of bird species nest at the estuary—two of the most often seen are the banded dotterel/pohowera and variable oystercatcher/torea pango.”

The estuary has been “a superb bird habitat for thousands of years”, says the Group’s operations manager, Grant Davey. However, the bird numbers are now in decline and the estuary is under serious threat from human activity in the form of vehicles, pedestrians (especially those with dogs) and sometimes planes. “This has increased over recent years and is probably the main reason for the decline in bird numbers,” Grant says.

“For example, a popular recreating area is the spit, where the number of banded dotterel/pohowera breeding has dropped from 30 plus in the 1980s to just three today.”

The Waimakariri District Council’s Northern Pegasus Bay Bylaw 2024 lays down regulations to protect the estuary environment and its many endangered inhabitants, but enforcement has proved difficult and signs in the area outlining the rules are often ignored.

Prizes

The winner will receive a weekend’s accommodation at the Waikuku Beach Holiday Park for a family of four plus a guided tour of the estuary by an AARG member.

Second prize will be a family pass to Willowbank Reserve in Christchurch and third prize will be a family pass to Rangiora Town Hall Cinemas.

How to enter

Download background information (PDF)
Entry form and conditions (PDF)
See our Facebook page for the latest updates

March 7 2019

Film Premiere: “Rakahuri Recovery – saving the birds of the Ashley-Rakahuri River”

ashleyriver 4X4, annual survey, Awards, black-billed gulls, management, Predators, trail cameras, Trapping, Trapping, weeds

Book your tickets here

The award-winning efforts of the dedicated volunteers working to save the unique but endangered birds of the Ashley-Rakahuri River are celebrated in this short film.

The birds evolved to live on Canterbury’s braided rivers, which themselves are almost unique in the world. They include the wrybill plover, the only species in the world with a sideways bending bill. Other specialist braided river birds are the black-fronted tern and the black-billed gull.

The birds are threatened by introduced predators, exotic weeds and human disturbance, so in 1999 concerned volunteers formed the Ashley-Rakahuri Rivercare Group (ARRG) with the mission ‘of protecting birds and their habitat in the Ashley River / Rakahuri, while recognising essential river control works and sympathetic recreational users.

ARRG has been successful, and won awards for its endeavours – including the 2018 Practical Management Award given out by the Australasian Wildlife Management Society. Some say the Group has set an example of how conservation actions can be carried out by a community.

This 18 minute video by local film-maker Tony Benny follows a year’s activities, with stunning footage of the birds and their breeding stages, along with the challenges they face. It includes interviews with river users about how awareness by the general public is being improved.

The cinema will be showing this documentary free of charge, however as it will be on screen between between paid movies, attendees do need to be at the cinema by 6.00pm sharp.

January 7 2019

ARRG wins a trans-Tasman award for practical wildlife management

ashleyriver Awards, cats, management, Predators, trail cameras, weeds award, cats, management, predators, trail camera, trapping, traps, weeds

Conservationists throughout Australasia have recognised the work of the Ashley Rakahuri Rivercare Group (ARRG), to protect the unique braided river environment of the Ashley-Rakahuri River.

ARRG have won with the Australasian Wildlife Management Society (AWMS) annual award for practical wildlife management.

Out of eight finalists from throughout Australasia, the North Canterbury Group won the award for its practical work to protect and enhance the populations of endemic braided river birds in the Ashley-Rakahuri River, including such threatened species as the wrybill, black-fronted tern, black-billed gull and the banded dotterel. All of these birds nest on clean shingle banks and islands within the river environment.

“What I like about this award,” says ARRG Chair Nick Ledgard, “is that the judges would have known nothing about us before we entered, so we were competing in a ‘clean slate’ arena”.

For 14 years, ARRG has run a predator trapping programme along an 18km stretch of the Ashley-Rakahuri River from just West of Rangiora to where the river crosses state highway just north of Waikuku Township. Additionally, the group has annually surveyed the population of braided river birds in the protected area, compiling an important record of bird population and nesting success data. It has also conducted extensive public awareness campaigns to advocate for the protection of the riverbed and its inhabitants. One of the results of its advocacy is a local agreement to keep off-road vehicles out of the river during the bird breeding season.

“On the award certificate,” Nick says, “it reads, ‘in recognition of outstanding best practice in wildlife management’. We were told we had won from a strong field of entrants. The AWMS goes out of its way to support applied conservation research and management. I was told we were exactly the sort of community group they wanted to support.”

There were more than 100 presentations at the annual conference and it was clear conservation challenges in Australia are quite different to ours because of the presence of native land mammals in Australia, an issue New Zealand does not have (apart from two species of bat).

“The most talked about predator of interest to us was the feral cat, which is arguably their major problem and, of course, in a river that runs through urban areas such as Rangiora, a major problem for us too.”

Nick adds that one of the main ideas he took from the conference was the use of trail cameras to not only measure the activity of the protected animals, but also of their predators. “The trail cameras show behaviour we don’t normally get to see. This is particularly the case for feral cats which are most active at night. Knowing how, where and under what conditions feral cats predate our birds would be a great help in designing methods to maximise our control of these predators.

“I was also shown some thermo-imaging cameras. Open riverbeds would be ideal for these, and at night we could get to know every visitor (right down to mice). But the cost is still huge for the best gear and obtaining funding for such equipment would be too much for us.”

When asked what he considered to be ARRG’s biggest challenge for the future, he replied, “I felt it was keeping on top of invasive weeds, which can quickly reduce suitable bird feeding and breeding habitat. Our surveys show that we can keep on top of the predators in the controlled area with trapping, but weed control is an ongoing and repeated issue if we are to maintain the clean shingle areas the birds need to breed.”