B-1 - Area 1, Coromandel Forest Park – Assessment of Environmental Effects 65 vent raise from the underground rather than from the surface, vent raise design to maximise emission dispersion and location of the fan at the base of the raise to reduce noise); site management and timing (i.e. avoiding vent raise construction during nesting or active periods for fauna, minimising helicopter activity and using a small helicopter model); and using established hygiene and biosecurity control practices (i.e. local predator control around camp and construction sites, and testing, cleaning and surveillance practices to prevent kauri dieback introduction and spread). 5.2.2 Effects on Archey’s Frog Archey’s Frogs are an important endemic species. As one of only three native frogs, with a much-reduced area of suitable habitat available to it because of large-scale forest clearance over many decades, it is of conservation concern. Its remaining suitable habitat, mostly in the Coromandel area, is still a large enough area to support a viable and self - sustaining population, but this habitat is widely infested with mammalian predators, especially rats, and these comprise the greatest threat to the ongoing survival of the species. Given the importance of the species OGNZL has commissioned a team of ecologists to conduct research and provide advice on how Archey’s frog may be affected by the WNP and how those effects could be managed. That work is contained in a series of reports (RMA Ecology (2022), Boffa Miskell (2022b), Lloyd (2022) and Bioresearches (2022b)), a copy of which is included as Part H of these application documents and is summarised below. Collectively these reports are referred to as the Archey’s Frog Assessments below. Until recently, it was understood that the estimated total national Archey’s frog population was between 5,000 - 20,000 mature individuals. That limited population and the threats to it from predators together with the potential for further large-scale loss of preferred habitat from forest clearance supported the frogs being classified as At Risk under the New Zealand Threat Classification System and critically endangered under the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List (“IUCN Redlist”). That conservation status is at least in part because of the highly cryptic nature of these animals and logistical challenges in undertaking robust searches for them. In other words, because they are small and hard to find, concentrated efforts to properly understand their distribution and abundance have been lacking, and as a result it was assumed the population was small and that as a consequence the frogs were believed to be in a precarious position and at real risk of decline leading to potential extinction. As part of the WNP, OGNZL has commissioned extensive native frog surveys within the Wharekirauponga catchment between 2017-2021 (96 potential drill sites and 4 potential pump sites, as well as distribution surveys). The findings of those surveys are that Archey’s frogs are widely, but not densely distributed throughout the catchment. Archey’s frogs
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjE2NDg3