Got a wild, wild life

A day in the life of an Orokonui Ecosanctuary ranger is not all communing with exotic fauna, Kelly Gough tells us.

"What a great job you have!"

This is a line I hear fairly often during the summer months.

My job as a ranger at Orokonui Ecosanctuary is quite varied. It involves such tasks as fence monitoring and maintenance, weed control, species monitoring, planting, pest monitoring and trapping and track maintenance. Some tasks are carried out with the help of volunteers.

I would be among the first to admit that my job must look marvellous to visitors as they pass me by, as indeed it can be, especially on a lovely summer's day. Even when the work is tough, the environment is a delight. It's a privilege to work in native bush with rare and wonderful wildlife.

Then there is the not-so-glamorous stuff. No-one would envy a ranger's job on days of torrential rain, when manual checks of the culverts are required to prevent pests getting in. It can mean hours spent adjusting grilles and digging out silt from sumps. Or getting a call-out from the surveillance system at a horrific time of the morning if, say, a branch has fallen on the fence's hot wire. Commonly this can happen between 2am and 5am.

But apart from cultivating a tan and getting absolutely sodden, what denotes a typical day in the life of an Orokonui ranger?

The short answer is that there are very few "typical" days.

More often than not we are required to be very flexible, as many jobs are weather-dependent and the wildlife knows no schedule.

With so much to do, there is often a job for every type of weather day and seldom time to be idle.

Monday usually starts the way of most mornings - a weather check! Then I prepare sugar water to be taken around the upper tracks and distributed among the bird-feeder platforms. These feeders are usually a good place to see plenty of tui, bellbirds and kaka in the morning.

Then it's off to the aviary, where a pair of kaka are residing, awaiting their eventual release into the sanctuary. It certainly is a nice way to start the week.

Between 9am and 9.30am, our regular Monday volunteers arrive to help with the day's activities. A quick pow-wow between volunteers and rangers and everyone is divvied up as required and revving to go.

The highest priority on my "to do" list for the day is to check the mousetraps that we have on the inside of the fence (50m apart around the entire 8.7km perimeter). This can take a great deal of time, depending on how many of the little traps have caught something or need rebaiting.

Luckily I have one of our most experienced volunteers to help me. Most of the traps are rebaited with fresh peanut butter. Some Mondays we are delighted to report no mice caught.

We work the trapping programme in conjunction with a system of tracking tunnels, which will tell us where the hot spots are. Mice are devilishly hard to get rid of. Most fenced sanctuaries have them.

Arriving back at the workshop base, I'll make the most of a fine afternoon to do some spraying and mowing around the main tracks and the visitor centre to keep the weeds and grass in check. At this time I'm reminded of how much volunteer effort has gone into the planting of all the native species in the ecosanctuary. On our new tractor, it'll take me just a couple of hours to whip our grass into shape.

By the time I get back to base, my day is almost done. I'll catch up with the other workers on the day's accomplishments.

Then I'll scribble down a plan of action for tomorrow - to start with, perhaps a bit more spraying and a check of the fence alarm system.

• After doing a conservation course with the Department of Conservation, Dunedin-born Kelly Gough began working at Orokonui Ecosanctuary in July 2007, just as the predator fence was completed and the work of removing all mammalian predators began. The ecosanctuary was officially opened in October 2009.