He Spent 9 Years Building a Fence Experts Said Could Never Work β What Happened Was Unbelievable
Treeline Journal
85,863 views
A brushtail possum claws at a curved steel hood two meters above the ground in Wellington and slides straight back down. It tries three more times. It never gets over. That failure is the whole point of an 8.6-kilometer fence wrapped around 225 hectares of forest β a barrier built to stop 13 species of mammal at once, with no electricity and no poison built into the structure itself. Just wire mesh, a steel cap, and a buried skirt, tested until it could not be beaten.
Nobody on Earth had built one like it before β so how did a man with no fencing background end up designing the template the rest of the world would copy?
πΏ In this video, we cover:
Jim Lynch's 1990 plan to "Bring the Birds Back to Wellington" after possums were stripping 400 tonnes of vegetation a year from Karori valley
Why a 1993 panel of 22 scientists and engineers scrapped every existing predator-fence design on the planet and started from zero
The five-centimeter strip of steel that saved the fence from a mouse using its own tail as a climbing tool
The eight-week operation that pulled three tonnes of possum out of the valley, followed by the first aerial predator-poison drop ever approved on mainland New Zealand
How 14 released kΔkΔ became a population of 800+ birds spilling out across Wellington β a phenomenon scientists now call the halo effect
Every claim is sourced from the Karori Sanctuary Trust (Zealandia), the New Zealand Department of Conservation, and Time magazine. This is not speculation.
Homemade guide: https://ecoharvest.gumroad.com/l/pvxfdq
Subscribe to Treeline Journal for more stories about the engineering that made mainland predator-free sanctuaries possible.
#TreelineJournal #Zealandia #Rewilding #NewZealand #Conservation #KΔkΔ #PredatorFree #EcologicalRestoration #WildlifeRecovery #NatureDocumentary #Tuatara #Kiwi
20 Comments
Make sure you return at night time with your ticket, for the night time tour. It's free for ticket holders.
When I took a look at the machinery at the damn adjacent the car park, I saw some Tuis in a tree. And I started counting. There were 31 of them, in one tree.
At night I saw so many Kiwis, it almost felt normal by the time the tour ended. During the day you'll get to be 1-metre away from active Tuatara along the walking track - something almost never ever seen.
The number of Kaka feeding constantly is amazing, and only they are heavy enough to open the feeding machines.
This truly is a magical place, and you will never regret going. I guarantee it.
There is another bird sanctuary north of Zealandia, and at our BnB we were delighted to be under the flight path of birds moving between the two locations. We saw a flight of 10 Kaka! I did not think I would ever see that in my lifetime!
He Spent 9 Years Building a Fence Experts Said Could Never Work β What Happened Was Unbelievable
Treeline Journal
85,863 views
A brushtail possum claws at a curved steel hood two meters above the ground in Wellington and slides straight back down. It tries three more times. It never gets over. That failure is the whole point of an 8.6-kilometer fence wrapped around 225 hectares of forest β a barrier built to stop 13 species of mammal at once, with no electricity and no poison built into the structure itself. Just wire mesh, a steel cap, and a buried skirt, tested until it could not be beaten.
Nobody on Earth had built one like it before β so how did a man with no fencing background end up designing the template the rest of the world would copy?
πΏ In this video, we cover:
Jim Lynch's 1990 plan to "Bring the Birds Back to Wellington" after possums were stripping 400 tonnes of vegetation a year from Karori valley
Why a 1993 panel of 22 scientists and engineers scrapped every existing predator-fence design on the planet and started from zero
The five-centimeter strip of steel that saved the fence from a mouse using its own tail as a climbing tool
The eight-week operation that pulled three tonnes of possum out of the valley, followed by the first aerial predator-poison drop ever approved on mainland New Zealand
How 14 released kΔkΔ became a population of 800+ birds spilling out across Wellington β a phenomenon scientists now call the halo effect
Every claim is sourced from the Karori Sanctuary Trust (Zealandia), the New Zealand Department of Conservation, and Time magazine. This is not speculation.
Homemade guide: https://ecoharvest.gumroad.com/l/pvxfdq
Subscribe to Treeline Journal for more stories about the engineering that made mainland predator-free sanctuaries possible.
#TreelineJournal #Zealandia #Rewilding #NewZealand #Conservation #KΔkΔ #PredatorFree #EcologicalRestoration #WildlifeRecovery #NatureDocumentary #Tuatara #Kiwi