Jason van Zanten has been the official Manager at Penguin Place – conservation reserve and the unofficial psychologist for birds for about four years. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Jason about the essential mahi they do at Penguin Place.
Q. For someone who would like to work with indigenous species like yellow eyed penguins/hoiho, what would you recommend they do?
A. We do like people to go to university and get an understanding for the ecology of the birds and the other species we look after. Everyone starts at the bottom and does tree planting and a lot of people that come here plant trees for the first year. It’s how I started.
Q. What does Penguin Place primary do?
A. We look after hoiho. We have a monitoring programme at three separate beaches all with a hoiho population. We look after them during the breeding season, and the moult, which is going on now. We have a rehabilitation centre and look after sick, injured and starving hoiho and other crested species. We see approximately half of the mainland population every season; there is less than 500 of these guys left on the mainland now, so we aid 200 – 250 every year. The work we are doing here is critical to the species survival.
Q. After they have been here for rehabilitation, do you release them into the wild?
A. Yes, they all go back to the wild. Unfortunately, hoiho do not handle captivity at all, so you will never see them in a zoo. That does present problems for us in our captive facility, so we look after them short-term. The average turn-around is about two – two and a half weeks; we are very quick and efficient at getting these guys in, fit and healthy and then putting them back where they were found.
Photo: Hoiho by Sian Mair.