Tasman River

Part of the Upper Waitaki River catchment, the 25km Tasman River is an outflow of the Tasman, Murchison, Hooker and Mueller Glaciers in Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park. This video features the area on the Tasman River where black black stilt/kakī live, and where DOC is undergoing intensive predator management.

It is included here as a separate page because significant conservation activities are being undertaken in this conservation land, as part of Project River Recovery.

Important Bird Areas on Tasman River: links to 6-page PDF file that includes maps, habitat types, and threats relevant to this river. This document was extracted from Forest & Bird’s 177-page 20Mb file on all rivers, lakes, and coastal areas.

Water from the Hooker Glacier feeds into the Tasman River from the western side of Aoraki Mt Cook (centre background)

Conservation activities

• Project River Recovery and the Kakī Recovery Group are working together to test a catchment-wide predator trapping regime in the Tasman River. This project involves a range of predator control and monitoring techniques.
• Tasman predator control project
• Localised predator trapping regime to protect black-fronted tern colonies
• The breeding success of several braided river birds – wrybill, banded dotterel and black-fronted tern – is being monitored over five years to assess whether this level of predator control is helping these birds.

Tasman Glacier (foreground – darker areas are moraine over the ice) on the eastern side of Aoraki Mt Cook (right), and Tasman River (centre back)

More information

• Zone Committee meeting dates and venues Anyone interested in water management and use in this region should attend these public meeting
• River Report 24-hour Infoline

Research papers

• Project River Recovery : 12-page bibliography of all reports, theses, diplomas, Department of Conservation publications and scientific papers produced or supported by the Project
• Conservation strategy for New Zealand braided rivers: biodiversity values, issues and priority actions (DOC & Sanders Consulting PDF)
• Land Use Changes in Braided Rivers 1990-2012 (ECan)
• Braided River Ecology (DOC)
• Using models to understand and protect our braided rivers (Science blogs NZ June 2014)
• Modelling channel dynamics in braided rivers (NIWA February 2014)
• Braided River Systems – Ecosystems and Species in Crisis (PDF Forest & Bird p18)
• The impact of El Nino and La Nina on Canterbury water sources