Meet Budyong, Forest & Bird Volunteer

About once a month, Budyong Hill packs a lunch and heads to Pelorus Bridge Scenic Reserve in his electric car. After the 40-minute drive from Renwick, he services a predator trapping line for at least five hours, covering about 18 hectares. Or sometimes, he helps Forest & Bird’s predator control officer Lucie Daniskova with other tasks.

It’s his job as one of the many volunteers with Forest & Bird’s Te Hoiere Bat Recovery Project—at least his job for now. He’s held several since he began volunteering with the group in 2013 to help control predators of pekapeka (long-tailed bats). These species are threatened-nationally critical, facing an immediate high risk of extinction.

Budyong says that he volunteers his time and energy because humans have a responsibility to protect native species. After all, humans have caused the most damage to their habitats, he says.

“Nature needs a lot of help at the moment,” he says. “We’re helping a little population of pekapeka, but it’s more than that. It’s helping nature to maintain its viability. I’m inspired by the concepts of kaitiakitanga and guardianship. We’re a part of Te Taiao and Mother Nature, not separate to it. We must be very careful not to forget our place in the natural world.”

Although Budyong was servicing the traps once per month, he doesn’t need to now. Through generous donations, Forest & Bird was able to buy a new generation of auto traps for the area that he services. These are more efficient than traditional snap traps and can go as long as six months without servicing. Budyong, however, is taking a cautious approach to getting the revised trapping line established. For the first few months, after deployment of the new traps, he checked them monthly to monitor catch numbers and trends but is now only checking them every three months.

“Matai and other native species have fruited extensively this year, so the population of ship rats has boomed with the additional food source over the winter. This doesn’t happen every year, maybe every five years or so,” he says, adding that these rats are the top predator for pekapeka in the reserve.

Now at age 70, Budyong welcomes the next generation of traps, not only for their efficiency for predator control but because they also reduce the emissions impact of volunteers’ travel from Blenheim and Nelson to the reserve. As more auto traps are added, volunteers will be able to go a few months without having to service the traps, which automatically reload bait.

For the past decade, Budyong has serviced other lines in the predator trapping network and volunteered at most of Forest & Bird’s annual planting days at neighbouring Ronga Reserve. He’s also helped to plan and coordinate volunteer activities for predator control. One such project in the Rai Valley trialled banding mature podocarps to keep rats and possums from climbing into bat roosts on Department of Conservation land. Since 2015, Budyong has written and distributed a Bat Stats newsletter for volunteers and supporters working in Te Hoiere/Pelorus.

For Budyong, a life of service has just come naturally. He was born in Fiji and grew up in Western Australia, meeting his Kiwi wife, Lesley on the West Coast in 1975. For over two decades, they lived on the land with their three sons. Here, they helped to preserve lowland forest with the Native Forest Action Council in an area that would later become Paparoa National Park. Budyong and Lesley, moved to Marlborough in 2011, settling in Renwick.

“Lesley and I have always had a close connection with nature. During our time on the West Coast, we lived in the forest. This was our opportunity to help biodiversity,” he said.

As the technology for predator control gets better, he says, so will the outcomes for biodiversity.

“I’m encouraged about the next generation of pest traps. These are smart. They can send messages to one another and sense if the predators are still around,” he says.

While the technology improves, people still need to be part of the solution for biodiversity and climate challenges. Budyong urges future generations not to lose their connections to nature—even in those periods of life where they feel stretched.

“The modern world asks us to consume so much, that we don’t even think about it. Even if you can’t get out and take action on conservation, you can take inaction on unnecessary purchases. We rely 100% on nature for everything we need for survival—water, food, energy—and we are burning it away. It’s only when we think we are separate from nature, that humans are able to do the damage that we do.”

What’s the last book that you read?

I just finished “Juice” by Tim Winton. The book is set in the future centuries from now., after a climate breakdown. It was somewhat nostalgic, looking into the future, as I grew up in Western Australia and that was the backdrop of the book.

I’m now reading “The Ancients: Discovering the world's oldest surviving trees in wild Tasmania” by Andrew Darby. It's a bit of a different theme from Tim Winton's book!

What else have you been involved in, locally?

I’m an original member of Climate Karanga, and I still do the newsletter. I used to chair the Renwick Water Group, after experiencing firsthand water restrictions in our own garden. This is where I began to develop relationships with Council and Council staff.

Volunteering in Fiji

Born in Fiji, Budyong returned later in life with Lesley (2005), taking care of logistics for travelling medical staff. “We’d pack everything up, go to a village, pack it up again and then move to the next village. The teams would see 500 people a day for medical problems, from skin issues to heart disease. We met these two gynaecologists that were working in Australia, and they had a dream of opening a free health centre in Fiji. The doctors bought land, and Lesley and I volunteered to coordinate the build of the health centre. It’s still operational, in partnership with the Government. It now services about 1,000 people per week.”