February
2017  

Environmental Educator report 

 The Trident prefect training camp was held at the Manawahe Eco Centre at the end of Jan.
The new head boy and head girl with all their prefects stayed for three days to prepare themselves for their leadership roles at their last year at
school.  In addition to activities at the old school location, they had great fun with a raft building competition at
Lake Rotoma. They also ran a cross country fun run, through some neighbouring properties. Many thanks to the Jones's and Wennink's for letting these students run over their land.

This summer the Manawahe Eco centre is not only used for school groups, but also for other groups. To be able to provide better services to these groups we have installed a large projector screen.

On behalf of theManawahe Eco Trust, I have visited The Edgecumbe Lions, Whakatane High School and the HALO group. These organisations are all interested in conservation issues in Manawahe. Teachers from Otakiri School and St Joseph school in Opotiki have been to visit our centre. Most schools do require teachers to do a location visit before they can take their students out.

Manawahe Multisport Race

This event will take place on April the 4^th and will involve orienteering, a cross country run, a bike and a mystery lake activity. The feedback to this race has
been very positive and I expect around 50 participants from 7 different secondary schools in the Eastern Bay and Rotorua.

Upcoming visits     
1 March QE11 workshop organised by Kokako Trust      
2nd March St Joseph school, Opotiki        
7 March Beef and Lamb workshop       
4 April summer multisport race for secondary schools.       
12 April Whakatane Intermediate school     
27 November - 1 Dec St Joseph School, Opotiki.

Liddy Bakker; email: educ.met@gmail.com  Ph: 0275699022 and check us out on Facebook!

Development Co-ordinators report

A quiet month with the main tasks being showing new volunteers around trap lines and trialling some new kind of cat trap for EBOP. We have six of the traps, one in Karaponga, two up at the cell tower and three at Mackintosh's. They are a double set of modified Timbs traps set in a large plywood tunnel that the cats
access from the top.  It looks like we will get two new volunteers, one working on Mackintosh's to bolster up the effort there and the WHS group taking on the Karaponga line which Liddy has been doing on her own up to now.

 I have arranged with the Regional Council to get new DOC 250 taps to start replacing our older traps starting in the cell tower. I have also replaced a couple of traps on McIvor Road, one had been crushed? And one needs fixing. I have also serviced the Goodnature resetting traps putting
in new bait bottles and new CO2 cylinders.

A great evening on 3rd March where we hosted a BBQ for our volunteer trappers. Without these people we could not continue with our work in the Manawahe area. So our grateful thanks to them!

Peter F