The scales of Maukahuka.

Source: NZ Department of Conservation

This evening we sit in a close circle, focussed on an A3 laminated map on the ground. We scribble coloured marker lines over the map, which depicts the landscape around Camp Cove. To discuss our plans, we have to raise our voices. Heavy rain hammering our canvas shelter makes it hard to hear.

The map we are looking at shows about 1,500 hectares of Maukahuka/Auckland Island. It sounds impressive until you realise it’s only around four percent of the island; four percent we will get to know really well. The four of us, each marked by a different colour on the map, plan to service the 82 trail cameras spread across this area on a 500m-by-500m grid. On paper, it’s neat: dots evenly spaced, straight lines connecting routes. In reality, it’s anything but.

Outside the shelter, the rain changes to hail. Overnight it settles on the ground and crunches underfoot in the morning as we set off to walk the lines we marked the night before.

A fine camp on the western cliffs of Auckland Island. We walked for an hour looking for a flat spot where the tents wouldn’t sit in a pool of water.
📷: DOC Blake Hornblow.

Maukahuka is big in a way that’s hard to explain until you’re walking in it. At 480m from the ridge above camp I can see 30km across fjords and ridges all the way to the northern-most point of the island. However, every ridge hides another line of tangled scrub; every plateau holds wet ground that sucks at your boots. Sometimes our progress while servicing cameras is measured at 200m an hour — crawling and fighting through scrub, climbing around basalt cliffs, sinking into bogs that look solid but definitely aren’t. Other times, while on open ground, we might cover three kilometres in an hour.

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500 meters above sea level looking north to the sunrise on the western cliffs of Auckland Island.
📷: DOC Blake Hornblow. * Or if its possible for you to embed a 360 panophoto into the blog use this image Western Cliffs, Auckland Island | Panoee.live

Between days servicing the camera grid, and as a reminder that our human scale doesn’t apply to most animals here, we spend a day collecting invertebrate samples from pitfall traps across different habitats. Most of the specimens are smaller than 1cm in length and perfectly adapted to utilise this challenging landscape. We are examining the abundance and distribution of these invertebrates. After eradicating pigs and mice, we expect the average size of invertebrates to increase, and that we will catch more of them, including more rare species that are abundant on the pest free islands nearby. These species are the ones that will be able to flourish once the mice and feral pigs are gone. Having baseline biodiversity data gives us the ability to accurately measure the impact of the restoration work in decades to come.

The challenge of eradication isn’t just finding the pests — it’s proving they aren’t there at the end. That means we need confidence across every kilometre of this varied terrain – and the island doesn’t give up answers easily. For the Maukahuka project we plan to have more than 2000 cameras across the island, collecting data and helping us build this assurance. However, when just four percent of the island takes days of effort, it’s easy to grasp how much work will be involved to check thousands of trail cameras across the entire Auckland Island archipelago.

One thing that’s changed how we work down here is connectivity. In the past, heading to the Auckland Islands meant weeks of limited communication with the outside world. This trip, thanks to DOC’s partnership with One NZ and their satellite capability, that’s no longer the case.

Being able to make daily scheds, share updates, and even make a WhatsApp call from such a remote place makes a real difference — not just for the coordination of our team in the field, but for safety too. While spread across a huge island in such varied conditions, quick communication allows us to change plans or even to ask someone else to cook dinner if we’re going to be home late! All making this vast place feel just a little more manageable.

DOC Ranger Kristen Clements sends a satellite text back to camp while tucked into the alpine tussock, Carnley Harbour below. 📷: DOC Blake Hornblow.

Looking ahead, the kind of data capability we have now with satellites opens new possibilities for how we work across an island of this scale. We have been working with developers for the past two years to test and deploy ‘Sentinel’ devices that allow near real-time classification of camera imagery onsite, with the ability to notify us remotely when a detection of interest occurs. Until now these have been restricted to terrestrial cellular reception – but with the ability to connect to Satellite-to-cellular data services, these devices could be used almost anywhere. With reliable data connectivity and the inclusion of the devices at each camera site, many of the trail cameras wouldn’t need to be checked manually. To read more about Sentinel devices follow this link: Conservation X Labs Joins Island-Ocean Connection Challenge, Commits to Deploy Transformative Technology to Protect Island Ecosystems. Data captured on these devices can be sent back to us multiple times a day, reducing time, risk, and effort required to move people around the challenging landscape. Detections could be received in near real time, allowing teams to respond quickly during the eradication of feral pigs, mice, and feral cats. On an island this big, speed matters. Better data could allow us to react to a detection immediately and give us a higher probability of success.

DOC Ranger Kristen Clements servicing one of the alpine trail cameras, basalt columns behind.

How would real‑time detections change the way your conservation project approaches pest control? The scale of Maukahuka has forced us to rethink how we monitor, detect, and respond. As the project progresses, we’ll be sharing the lessons we learn with the wider conservation community.

Getting to know Maukahuka is the first step toward its recovery—you can be part of this ambitious endeavour by supporting the project through the NZ Nature Fund, you can help turn every trail camera checked and every mouse trap set into a future Auckland Island free of introduced pests and full of thriving native wildlife.

Donate here

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