Kea Fieldwork: What it Takes to Save Mountain Parrots (part 2 with Lydia McLean)

“I hold hope for the future of kea in that they are smart and adaptable birds, but we really need to act to help them on their way.”

And it takes a special kind of people to do exactly that: you need equal parts physical endurance, technical mountaineering expertise, and adaptive problem-solving in some of Aotearoa’s most challenging environments.

Picture this: walking a thousand metres straight up alpine terrain with tramping packs loaded with camping gear and scientific equipment. Then spending days catching and banding kea, or triangulating radio signals with directional aerials through unmarked backcountry to locate a single nesting female. This is the reality behind the data points that drive kea conservation.

In this episode of the People Helping Nature Podcast, Lydia McLean from the Kea Conservation Trust (KCT), takes us behind-the-scenes and reveals what really happens in the rugged reality of alpine conservation fieldwork.

KCT’s projects range from nest survivorship studies, where motion-activated cameras reveal what's happening around individual kea nests, to understanding entire population trends. Through collaborative trials with DOC and Ngāi Tahu, KCT also supports the testing of breakthrough predator control methods that could transform how we protect kea.

This hands-on approach proves that protecting the world's only alpine parrot requires innovation matching their intelligence - and demonstrates why understanding the realities on the ground is essential for effective conservation at scale.

Key topics discussed:

• What a typical day of kea field work looks like.
• The diverse range of projects KCT leads and supports.
• Differences between eastern and western kea populations.
• How kea are threatened by predators.
• The importance of landscape-scale predator control.
• Testing a new method of using 1080 and why it’s needed.
• How to report your kea sightings and get involved.
• And much more…

👩About Lydia:

Lydia (PhD, MSciComm, BSc) began working with kea in 2017 after deciding to put her tramping and mountaineering experience into conservation. Her PhD focused on kea foraging behaviour and diet to better understand how to protect them from traps and poisons intended for predators. She now works for DOC in Fiordland as well as managing the KCT’s field programme in the Southern South Island.

🔗Learn more:

• KCT’s website: www.keaconservation.co.nz
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/keaconservation
• https://newzealandecology.org/nzje/3599
• https://www.jstor.org/stable/26775032
• https://newzealandecology.org/nzje/3341
• https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03014223.2021.2021249

🎙️Learn more about the podcast at www.conservationamplified.org