
Suzanne Hills co-ordinated the community patrol this fledgling season, which included Christmas Day.
She says they are a community collective of local people dedicated to rescuing grounded Westland petrels. They set up an on-line roster with three areas to check each night/morning. Usually people patrolled alone, some in pairs, and over Christmas and New Year, they were joined by visiting friends and family to make a "very unique holiday experience".
They would head out at 11 o'clock each night for Punakaiki village, from the Pororari River to the Punakaiki River including the streets, beach and river spit, as well as the Coast Road between Waiwhero Creek and Pororari River, with a detour to check the beach at the end of McMillans Road. This took until about 12.30am.
They repeated this at 6am, adding in the beach from Razorback Point through to Hibernia Creek.
Patrols started on November 24 and finished last Saturday.
They set up a WhatsApp online group to share experiences and feedback on problem lights and grounding hotspots.
"The WhatsApp group was a very powerful tool for keeping the group engaged with a strong sense of collective responsibility, motivation and autonomy."
The late Bruce Stewart-Menteath from the Westland Petrel Conservation Trust began the community patrols last fledgling season.
"We built on this and expanded it for this fledgling season. 2023-24 was the first organised community effort (of course before that local people have long been rescuing petrels) with an organised check of the Coast Road," Ms Hills said.
"Because that was successful and local people were very keen to be involved in a more organised effort, we expanded the patrol to include the Punakaiki village and the northern end of the beach on the Barrytown flats."
The Department of Conservation says 71 birds were rescued this year, compared with 28 last year.
The Community Petrel Patrol rescued 57 live birds. A further 16 dead birds were recovered, about half of which were killed on the Coast Road.
"The commitment to very late nights and early mornings for seven solid weeks, including over the holiday period by so many local people is an impressive collective effort," Ms Hills said,.
"Wonderful caring people were out patrolling, even on Christmas and New Year Days. It demonstrates the depth of care and responsibility people feel towards our special Westland petrel/taiko. People found the experience of rescuing individual birds a very intimate experience and a fulfilling one in the knowledge that every healthy bird was released to begin its life at sea."
Many of the rescued birds were in very good condition ready for immediate release — possibly because the community patrol were picking up the birds soon after grounding and they had not spent hours (or days) exhausting themselves.
"We found birds on the Punakaiki streets, on beaches, in rivers, in the surf zone (getting rolled around), on the Coast Road, on bridges, in vegetation, under buildings … we looked, we found."
Members of the public are asked to look out for fledglings for the next few weeks as the very last of the petrels leave their burrows. They are also asked to drive slowly on the signposted 4km section of the Coast Road (Waiwhero Creek to McMillans Road) during the hours of darkness, and to rescue any downed petrels.