South Island week 2: Nelson Lakes

In Nelson Lakes we learned about beech forest ecology and invasive mammals, doing day hikes through the surrounding forests to look at traps. There were mammal traps ALL over this area, it was supposed to be a high-intensity control area. Basically, they are trying to eradicate every mammal from NZ, we also received a somewhat disturbing speech/video about how they kill deer (it involves a helicopter chasing them around the mountains with a shotgun...)

 This is my favorite view of New Zealand yet. All the coastal cliffs and bluffs are amazing, but the mountains are my FAVORITE part. Pittsburgh is pretty mountainous, but not like this.

Most of the beech tree trunks were covered in this black tree fungus (which loves the honeydew. See all the sugary, silky strings coming off the trunk? There's a sweet drop on the end of each one). It made the forest look very spooky, because all the trunks were black with little bits of white showing through.

Overall, this week was fairly slow compared to other weeks, we were all just kind of antsy to start our spring break and not be supervised for a while.