We've just come ashore on Pigeon Island and you can see Resolution Island across there and of course it's just started raining again so we're probably going to have to get the rain jacket on but we've come to this island in particular to talk about the history of conservation and RTO. This is kind of where it all started so let's go and have a look at the historical site. So you're now in quite a special place. Darren has brought you to this area to talk about the history of conservation and Darren is from the Department of Conservation. He works with Credit to Control and helping communities do their own Credit to Control projects. So this is kind of where conservation all started. The name Richard Henry is famous in conservation and this is where he lived for a time. Oh absolutely this is an amazing place because he came to Richard Henry came to this tiny little island and the middle of nowhere in Fjordland and about 1892-1994 and he was first ever ranger in New Zealand and he was given the task of coming here and protecting the birds and he really didn't really know what that meant but he did know that already Stokes were in New Zealand and predisels were in New Zealand and they were having an effect on the mainland and so what he thought he'd do was he'd build his house here and he built a little house and he built a gave him a boat and he built a little slipway down in the bay and he spent the next 14 years living here. Growing around these amazing islands and these places, catching birds on the mainland where he thought they were unsafe and bringing them onto these islands and this little pen here that was standing beside all these this remnant. This is actually a remnant of his pen where he kept the birds before he'd release them onto the islands. Wow so it's a a kakapool pen basically. It's the first ever probably kakapool pen. And neat to see it preserved and that's had an impact on how conservationists have worked ever since. Totally. In the islands, incredibly such an example of that impact because the field and lobster company and the fishermen in this part of the world, they founded one of the early projects probably 10 or 15 years ago to restore this island using Richard Henry's example. So we've put traps all over the island, we've taken off all the stokes off this island and then we've reintroduced robins and I was total white and tia kia and yeah it's an amazing place we can hear them calling and they're bouncing around that's why we're talking here today. So it's neat that you've been able to reintroduce those species and you might have seen that total white just before picking away at insects in the ground but you can also take those birds once they're doing really well and move them to other places. Totally and that was Henry's biggest goal was he was wanting to bring the birds to these safe places and then one day he thought we would solve the problem on those unsafe places and then you could take the birds back and it's exactly what we're doing now. We're now catching birds off of this island and we're in because this place is now referred to really as one of the bio banks of Fjordland and we release them to other community projects around New Zealand. Pretty exciting. Yeah and they need to think that you're boosting populations elsewhere as well and that does that help the health of the species overall in terms of the whole population across RTOR? Oh totally yeah if we left them in remote places now and would know what a total white was or a cuckaball was yeah our goal really led by Richard Henry and those early in that early work he was doing we want cuckaball to be and we'll back yard. Wouldn't that be cool? Yeah that's awesome. Pleasure.