Meet the ecologist spreading her wings in New Zealand to save seabirds

euronews (in English)

"You can't expect to save a whole species in a month. Don't give up. We need to keep fighting. The alternative is to just let it all crumble. We can't do that."

Transcript

00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:02 I never thought I would be standing on a cliff,

00:05 poking my hand into burrows and pulling birds out of it,

00:08 for sure.

00:11 But I've always had this idea that my work

00:13 would be quite adventurous, interesting, and dynamic.

00:15 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:18 I have field work, but I'm also in front of the computer.

00:21 It's very fulfilling and very intellectually stimulating.

00:27 I feel really lucky.

00:28 Not many people can say that they've had that chance

00:30 to take their results and make a difference.

00:33 My name is Maida Fessardi.

00:34 I'm a seabird ecologist.

00:36 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:55 Seabirds are the most threatened group of birds in the world.

00:59 But great-faced petrels are pretty special,

01:02 because they are one of the only seabird species in New Zealand

01:05 that's still living in mainland.

01:08 They are actually doing relatively well,

01:10 compared to all the other seabirds.

01:12 They are one of the only species of seabirds in New Zealand

01:15 that are not threatened.

01:16 We want to find out why they're doing so well,

01:18 even though other birds are not.

01:21 We know the kind of habitat the seabirds like to nest,

01:25 and we're going to go into this habitat.

01:29 I grab the bird from the burrow and do a visual health check.

01:33 I do just general measurements.

01:35 So I weigh them and measure the part of their leg,

01:38 wing length as well.

01:41 We ID them to make sure that we can check them yearly.

01:44 After I finish all of that, I will put the birds back

01:47 into the burrow, hopefully use that information

01:50 to restore seabird populations.

01:52 We have to be careful.

02:04 We just need to minimize stress to those birds.

02:06 We're doing it for them, but we also

02:09 can't add to the threats that they're facing.

02:11 So we need to be respectful of it.

02:15 Maida and I have been working on a number of projects

02:19 that they're all seabird-based.

02:21 I've been a mentor with Maida pretty much from the start.

02:24 She was one of our summer students in our program.

02:30 She eventually would do a master's.

02:33 When I was doing my thesis, I was

02:35 looking at feather brightness as a monitoring tool.

02:39 That got incorporated into the Auckland Council Seabird

02:41 Monitoring Program.

02:43 So that was a huge milestone to me, to finish my master's

02:46 and start this job at council doing seabird monitoring.

02:50 We can actually tell a lot by just looking at a feather.

02:59 The spectrometer measures the reflectance

03:02 on feather pigmentation.

03:04 Just like us with our hair and our nails,

03:07 if they have good feathers with bright colors,

03:09 that means that they're probably doing well.

03:12 If they ingest heavy metal contaminants,

03:14 while they are growing feathers, that's

03:16 deposited in their feathers.

03:19 We can measure how much contaminants they've

03:22 been ingesting in their diet.

03:24 And they can tell us if that's a threat for the population

03:26 or if the area they are foraging is contaminated.

03:30 All this data that we are collecting

03:32 and all this information that we're gathering,

03:34 one day will be applied into management.

03:39 We spend a lot of time planning and strategizing

03:42 development of programs and the next steps.

03:44 Seabirds tend to breed along the coastlines

03:47 where the most desirable property is for humans.

03:50 So there's habitat loss that has occurred.

03:54 The wooden boxes are important because sometimes there's

03:56 quite a bit of competition between seabirds

03:58 for prime habitat.

04:00 They end up not breeding because they don't find it.

04:02 So the wooden boxes mimic the natural environment

04:04 of the burrow.

04:05 They will attract more birds to areas

04:07 that we're trying to repopulate.

04:09 Seabirds were perfect because they just

04:11 joined all my worlds together, both geographically

04:15 but also ecologically.

04:17 It really resonated with me and what

04:19 I wanted to do with my life.

04:20 The first thing that attracted me to seabirds

04:26 was to hear immigrants like me.

04:29 I was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

04:31 I was born in the United States.

04:33 I was born in the United States.

04:34 I was born in the United States.

04:35 I was born in the United States.

04:37 I was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

04:39 And I live in Auckland, New Zealand.

04:41 They breed in New Zealand, but they go all the way

04:43 to South America, for example.

04:45 That attracted me because I wanted to be able to work here

04:47 but also have an impact on where I come from.

04:50 It can be quite challenging.

04:59 There's a lot of weight bearing and some days of hiking.

05:03 It's 12 hours hiking, very tough terrains.

05:08 We go to some very interesting places.

05:10 It's a wonderful world to interact with it,

05:12 but it's also a lot of hard work.

05:16 There's a lot of negativity around conservation right now.

05:21 It can be quite depressing.

05:25 You can't be expecting to save a whole species in a month.

05:31 Don't give up.

05:32 We need to keep fighting.

05:34 The alternative is to just let it all crumble.

05:40 We can't do that.

05:41 I want to keep doing this work.

05:44 There's still an opportunity to make a difference here.

05:47 We can still save species.

05:50 [MUSIC PLAYING]

05:55 [MUSIC PLAYING]

05:58 (upbeat music)

06:01 (upbeat music)

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