More Shags Thanks to You!
- May 26
- 2 min read
Ngā mihi to everyone who has purchased or gifted a Chatham shag through our Gift a Shag campaign. Your support is making a real difference for one of the world's most endangered and range-restricted seabirds!
The Chatham shag exists nowhere else on earth. Found only in the Chatham Islands, this species faces significant pressure from small population size, limited nesting habitat and ongoing predator threats. Your support has helped enable predator control work with the Chatham Islands Landscape Restoration Trust, directly strengthening protection for nesting areas.
A key recent milestone is the installation of an AT220 automatic, self-resetting trap near a known nesting habitat. It targets rats and possums and operates continuously, requiring servicing only every three months. In the Chathams, where peat soils, weather and access constraints make regular field work challenging, that reliability matters enormously!
The work is led by a small, dedicated team. Hamish Chisholm serves as Project Lead and the Trust's only full-time staff member. Trustee Mike Bell has contributed significant volunteer time, including deploying traps across the network. This is conservation running on expertise, commitment and community.
Images: (left) new trap at Okawa Point. (right) Project Lead Hamish Chisholm and Trustee Mike Bell from Chatham Islands Landscape Restoration Trust.
While Chatham shags nest on small offshore rock stacks, their survival depends heavily on what is happening on the land around them. Predators moving through coastal margins can impact breeding success, and with so few alternative nesting sites, pressure on existing colonies is hard to absorb. Reducing that pressure creates space for the population to stabilise and potentially expand into additional nesting areas with greater resilience to storm events.
Every contribution to our Gift a Shag campaign helps translate public support into tools, time and field effort in some of the most logistically challenging conservation environments in the country. Ngā mihi to each and every one of you!
You can learn more or support the campaign here:
