Good bird poo

Breeding seabirds drive coastal forest ecosystems by depositing tons of guano and tilling the soil when they excavate their breeding burrows. Introduced predators like rats, stoats and cats severed these nutrient cycles when they eliminated seabird breeding colonies from New Zealand’s mainland and some offshore islands.

The Ecosystems Consultants team is subcontracted to Landcare Research’s Te Hiringa Tangata project to measure and simulate the amount of nutrient deposited by different types and sizes of petrels, shearwaters and albatrosses. Our computer models will predict how much effort and money is needed to restart and grow back the seabird colonies so that soil, plant, insect and bird populations are restored as quickly as possible to form a fully functional seabird forest ecosystem.