June 2018

Penguin signs go up in the Bay

/ / School, Wildlife

Penguins could be one step safer at Pukerua Bay, with a new sign providing tips and information to visitors. Little penguins or kororā are occasionally seen and heard by residents at Pukerua Bay beach. Kororā usually come ashore in the evening and return to the sea in the morning. But when they are breeding or moulting they stay on land all the time. As their name suggests, they are tiny at around 33 centimetres long, and as they are flightless, they can easily be attacked by dogs.

penguin_kids

Children from Pukerua Bay School joined Councillor Dale Williams and local residents to celebrate this initiative on Thursday 14 June. The children planted around the sign and placed hand-painted penguins nearby.

penguin_sign

Designed by Pukerua Bay resident Anne Johnston, the sign has been adapted from a sign placed at Paekakariki by the Kāpiti Coast Biodiversity Project. The Pukerua Bay sign was created with support from the Hutt Mana Charitable Trust, the Department of Conservation, the Kāpiti Coast Biodiversity Project, Porirua City Council and the Pukerua Bay Residents’ Association.

 

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New highway pedestrian cross by shops

/ / Road safety

This Sunday night, 10 June, NZTA contractors will start building a crossing by the shops that pedestrians can use to get across the highway.

This is a proposal NZTA brought to the Residents Association over 18 months ago, and it’s finally being built!

As you can see in the picture, it is at the end of the car park, opposite Reds.

There is a 2.5m wide refuge in the middle of the road where pedestrians can stand, with rails on either side of the refuge, and 4m long islands running north and south.

The work will start 7pm Sunday night, and go until 5:30am. Night work will be spread over five nights, with some finishing work during the day, There will be stop/go traffic management in place during the work.

Once it’s built, vehicles will still be able to turn left out of the car park to go north, but won’t be able to turn right to go south from the toilet end of the car park. We’ll also have to get used to the refuge being in the middle of the road when turning right into Teihaha Road.

We’re pretty pleased, after many years of lobbying, to finally get some sort of safe crossing. It might not be perfect, but it’s better than the nothing we have at the moment!

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Kororā sign planting (Take 2!)

/ / Announcements, Biodiversity, Wildlife, Working Bees /

Next Thursday (14 June) at 10.30 am, Pukerua Bay School children will be planting the area around the new Kororā (Little Blue Penguin) sign on the beach, at the start of the coastal walk track. The sign is for promoting the protection and conservation of the penguins.

Come and join us!

Image CC-BY-SA courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

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