Scientist honoured for native duck research
Published by Communications and Development
28 August 2009
A University of Canterbury PhD student whose research has given some of New Zealand’s most endangered wildlife a better chance of survival has been recognised as a Young Scientist of the Year.
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UC PhD student Amy Whitehead |
Amy Whitehead won the Understanding Planet Earth category award and was the overall runner-up in the 2009 MacDiarmid Young Scientists of the Year Awards presented in Auckland last night for research centred on the Whio, or native blue duck, an iconic species of New Zealand’s mountain rivers.
She was one of four UC researchers recognised at the awards. Senior lecturer Dr Jason Tylianakis was runner-up in the Understanding Planet Earth category for his research into food webs in coastal Ecuador. PhD researcher Petra Hoggarth was runner-up in the Science and Our Society category for developing techniques to test the driving abilities of people over 70. Dr Hadley Cave was a finalist in the Future Science and Technologies category for designing a fast, flexible and accurate gas flow modelling method that runs on standard computer equipment.
Titled “Get more ducks for your bucks”, Amy’s research combined population and habitat surveys with computer modelling to assess whio numbers, habitat quality and the effectiveness of predator control programmes. Whio numbers have declined from hundreds of thousands in the 1800s to an estimated 2,500 due to predators and loss of habitat.
To carry out her research, Amy drove 14,000 kilometres and walked more than 1,000 kilometres along river beds from Fiordland to Bay of Plenty to locate whio populations and record data about them.
Department of Conservation (DOC) Scientist Graeme Elliott, who works closely with Amy, says her research is at the core of DOC’s whio conservation strategy.
“Whio numbers are declining rapidly in most places, largely because of stoats. We have trapping programmes in place but it’s very difficult to know if we are trapping in the right places and if our efforts are stabilising whio numbers.”
Amy’s research has discovered that whio are restricted to fragmented areas of marginal habitat, occupying just a fraction of the river environments where they were found historically.
Amy’s work uses a science-based approach to assess the effectiveness of management techniques and identify areas of high quality habitat where management will provide the greatest benefits.
“Conservation is expensive, so we need to make sure that predator control is applied in places that will benefit whio the most,” she says.
“One of the things that defines us as New Zealanders is our natural history - it’s a big part of our identity so we need to make sure we don’t lose any of our threatened species. If we can make them more accessible to the general public by ensuring there are more of them then people can see science doing something useful and practical.”
The MacDiarmid Awards are New Zealand’s top accolade for emerging researchers and are presented annually by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology in partnership with sponsors. The awards are named after New Zealand-born, Nobel Prize winning scientist, the late Professor Alan MacDiarmid.
For further information please contact:
John MacDonald
Corporate Affairs Manager
University of Canterbury
Ph: (03) 364 2910
Mobile: 021 417 289
john.macdonald@canterbury.ac.nz