Te Pūnaha Hauropi: Investigating Ecosystem Change

You need: an old aerial photo from Retrolens or an old photo from DigitalNZ · a recent photo or map of the same place · tracing paper · coloured pencils

1. Find the same features (rivers, roads, bush edges) in both pictures.
2. Trace the bush, wetland and water outlines from the old photo, then lay the tracing over the new one.
3. Shade what has been lost in one colour and what has been gained in another.
4. Estimate the change using a grid: count squares of bush then and now.

How you'll know: You can say what changed, roughly by how much, and suggest two possible causes to test.

Go further: Ask a kaumātua, a long-time local or your partner group what they remember. Does it match the photos?

You need: 10 tracking tunnels with inked cards · lure the school approves · flagging tape · footprint guide · map

1. Place five tunnels inside the trapped or fenced area and five outside, about 50 m apart, on one fine night.
2. Bait each card with the same small amount of lure.
3. Collect all cards next morning and label them with date, place and tunnel number.
4. Identify prints and work out the tracking rate: tunnels with rat prints ÷ total tunnels × 100.
5. Repeat on two more nights and average the rates.

How you'll know: A clearly higher tracking rate outside the trapped area suggests trapping is working, if the two areas are otherwise similar.

Safety: Wear gloves and follow the school's allergy plan for lures. Do not touch droppings or dead animals. Wash hands afterwards.

Go further: Graph tracking rates across the seasons using your partner's records. When are rats most common, and why might that be?

You need: bird count sheet · NZ Birds Online on a device · stopwatch · map with count points marked

1. Stand still and quiet at a marked point. Wait one minute for birds to settle.
2. For five minutes, record every bird you see or hear, and where it was.
3. Move to the next point, at least 100 m away, and repeat.
4. Count on another day at the same time, between 9 am and 3 pm, with no rain or strong wind.

How you'll know: Compare counts between points and days. Differences that show up every time are worth explaining; one-off differences may be chance, noise or weather.

Go further: For each bird, note what it eats. Do insect-eaters, fruit-eaters and nectar-feeders show different patterns?

You need: quadrat (1 m square) · tape measure · weed and plant ID guide · camera · gloves

1. Run a tape from the edge (path, stream bank or fence) into the patch.
2. Place the quadrat at 0, 5, 10 and 15 m.
3. In each, estimate the percentage cover of the weed, native plants and bare ground. Count native seedlings.
4. Photograph each quadrat from directly above, then repeat in two weeks.

How you'll know: If weed cover is highest at the edge, falls further in, and native seedlings are fewer where the weed is thick, that points to the weed spreading and smothering.

Safety: Wear gloves (some weed sap irritates skin) and wash hands. Stay on firm ground near water.

Go further: Find out how the weed arrived in NZ and what controls it, including biocontrol beetles.

You need: the Bushy Park wasp story reading · data cards with published results · graph paper or spreadsheet

1. List what wasps eat in a forest (insects, spiders, honeydew) and which birds need the same food.
2. Graph the 2015 DOC trial results for the drop in wasp activity after protein baiting: Rotoiti 94%, Falls River (Abel Tasman) 98%, Craigieburn 96%, Pelorus Bridge 94%, Bottle Rock Peninsula 97%. Then add the lure-trap finding: traps caught wasps but did not reduce wasp numbers.
3. Explain why: foragers killed in a lure trap are quickly replaced, while protein bait is carried back into the nest.
4. Evaluate the claim 'Our garden wasp trap caught 200 wasps, so it is protecting the forest.'

How you'll know: You can explain why counting dead wasps is not the same as measuring fewer wasps, and why a reserve would reject traps that also catch native insects.

Safety: This is a data activity. Never approach a wasp nest. If a wasp lands on you, stay calm and move away slowly.

Go further: Design a fair field test that would show whether a control method worked: what would you measure, where, and before and after what?

You need: cardboard or thin card · scissors · tape · ruler · objects that model animal sizes (a pea for a wasp, a marble for a large wētā, a cotton reel for a gecko)

1. Read the design brief: a box about 120 × 80 × 100 mm, mounted on a tree, holding a bait tray. It carries no poison in this activity.
2. Sketch two entrance ideas: different hole sizes, tunnels or baffles.
3. Build one as a card model and test which model 'animals' can get through and reach the tray.
4. Swap with another group for feedback, then improve your design.

How you'll know: Your best design lets the smallest model through and stops the larger ones, and you can explain why that protects non-target species.

Safety: Take care with scissors. No real bait, poison or wasps are used.

Go further: What else must the station do (keep rain out, stop the bait drying, be easy to check)? Add one feature and test it.

You need: 100 paper dots or toothpicks in five colours (20 of each) · a patch of lawn or leaf litter · stopwatch · tally sheet

1. Scatter all 100 'prey' over the patch. These are generation 1.
2. Hunters have 30 seconds to pick up as many as they can, one at a time.
3. Count the survivors of each colour. Each survivor 'has offspring': add one more of the same colour for every survivor.
4. Scatter again and repeat for three generations. Graph the number of each colour over the generations.

How you'll know: Colours that match the ground become more common each generation. That is natural selection: variation, a selection pressure (the hunters) and inheritance.

Go further: Change the background (from lawn to bare soil). What happens to the winning colour? Link it to peppered moths.

You need: access to horoeka (lancewood) or pōkākā in a garden or reserve, or good photos · tape measure · ruler · recording table

1. Find three or more horoeka of different heights.
2. On each, measure the length and width of five leaves at the bottom and five at the top.
3. Note the height where the leaf shape changes, and describe the leaves: stiff or soft, toothed or smooth, colour.
4. Plot leaf length against height on the tree.

How you'll know: If the long, stiff, toothed leaves stop at about 3 m, you can test the idea that this form protected young trees from browsing moa, which could reach about that high.

Go further: Moa died out centuries ago, but horoeka still grow juvenile leaves. What does that tell you about how fast evolution works?