The Fence Tourists Love to See

Down in New Zealand there’s a fence that people go out of their way to see. This fence was the first of its kind and was built to keep invasive predators out while conserving native species. The fence was built a couple decades ago and was specially designed to protect threatened species in New Zealand that were becoming prey to everything from cats to small mammals. Birds are loving it because their nests are protected while they can still fly away and gather food.

The sanctuary has become a significant tourist attraction in Wellington and is responsible for the greatly increased number of sightings of species such as t?? and k?k? in city’s suburbs.

Sometimes described as the world’s first mainland island sanctuary in an urban environment, the sanctuary has inspired many similar projects throughout New Zealand, with predator-proof fences now protecting the biodiversity of many other areas of forest. Examples include the 7.7-hectare (19-acre) lowland podocarp forest remnant of Riccarton bush/Putaringamotu, the 98-hectare (240-acre) Bushy Park, and the 3,500-hectare (8,600-acre) Maungatautari Restoration Project enclosing an entire mountain.

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One Amazing Fence

Fences can build good neighbours and fences can save the environment. One fence has done
wonders for protecting rhinos and water.

Colin Church, the chair of the Kenya-based Rhino Ark conservation group and a leading expert on African leading wildlife, said the fence, which took 21 years for local communities to complete, had failed to save the rhino in the uplands it surrounds.

However, it had succeeded in protecting a large forest area and the sources of four of seven of Kenya’s largest rivers, all of which rise in the Aberdares and provide electricity and water to major cities including Nairobi.

“In the early days, the motivation was to protect the black rhino, but then we all woke up to the fact that the farmers [who lived near the fence] were celebrating, and the reality is that this forested mountain area was the lifeblood for millions of people. We realised the whole ecosystem was at stake,” he said.

“Our thinking had to change.The Aberdares are now the most secure mountain ecosystem in the whole of Kenya and maybe Africa.”

Keep reading at The Guardian.

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