Elusive elegance greens up Tiritiri Matangi

A desire to return moko kākāriki (also known as elegant gecko or Auckland green gecko) to Tiritiri Matangi Island is one step closer with the ‘soft’ release of 49 individuals last weekend. A soft release is when geckos are released into an enclosure before eventual release in to the wild.  In this case it was a 1200-square metre enclosure in Lighthouse Valley on Tiritiri Matangi.

Moko kākāriki were once thought to be present on the island before the land was cleared for farming in 1840.  This led Supporters of Tiritiri Matangi (SoTM) to include geckos in their Biodiversity Plan for the island. In 2016 they were issued a ten-year permit for the rescue and transfer of moko kākāriki from the Hunua Quarry, south of Auckland, prior to vegetation clearance for quarrying operations. Since then, with support from the New Zealand Herpetological Society (NZHS), the rescued animals have been held in captivity on Tiritiri Matangi in a breeding programme to build numbers up.

Moko kākāriki are found in the northern part of the North Island, up to the Bay of Islands. Establishing these geckos on Tiritiri Matangi will provide a future for the Hunua Quarry population, as well as an ‘insurance’ population against catastrophic events such as fire, pest invasion or disease on the mainland. Insurance populations is a proven strategy that has seen more than 40 predator-free islands established in the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park/Ko te Pātaka kai o Tīkapa Moana to protect and grow self-sustaining populations of threatened and at risk species.

Precipitated by Covid-19 restrictions, the release took place marginally earlier than planned, enabling the geckos to live naturally without needing people to feed them. The ‘soft’ release, where they joined 20 other individuals released in December 2019, helps them easily find mates to further build up their population before they are fully released onto Tiritiri Matangi.

Moko kākāriki are notoriously difficult to find, averaging 20 hours of searching per individual in the wild. But on the day, the release crew managed to find all but one adult and one neonate (young under 4 weeks), deciding to put all the contents of the cages into the release site just in case they were hiding.

The release was a quiet affair due to Covid-19 restrictions. For this reason, mana whenua were unable to attend. Moko kākāriki are a taonga species to local iwi who whakapapa to the Hauraki Gulf/Tīkapa Moana and Hunua.

Roughly half of the population released came from Hunua Quarry, with the remainder being born in captivity from the rescued adults. New Zealand lizards are unusual in that aside from the egg-laying skink, they are all are viviparous, meaning they give birth to live young. The eggs hatch in the female’s oviduct before the babies are born, thought to be an adaptation to New Zealand’s cooling climate during the ice ages.

DOC ranger Emma Dunning checked in on them the next morning, finding just three but counting that as a win, commenting, “It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack!”

SoTM’s moko kākāriki permit is valid until 2026, making it possible for further transfers from the Hunua Quarry to Tiritiri Matangi, and a continuation of the captive breeding programme, making further releases possible.

Tiritiri Matangi Island is located 4 km off the coast of Whangaparāoa Peninsula, north of Auckland in the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park/Ko te Pātaka kai o Tīkapa Moana. It is easily accessible by ferry as soon as services resume through Fullers 360.  The restoration programme, undertaken by Supporters of Tiritiri Matangi in partnership with Te Papa Atawhai (DOC), is one of the most successful community-led conservation projects in the world. Rare native birds such as the kōkako and the takahē (once thought to be extinct) survive and thrive in restored habitats within regenerating native forest.

Love it, Restore It, Protect It