Set your dates for the muster, newsletter and updates.
Our newsletter is a snapshot of our results and provides success storys, tips, updates and an equipment highlight.
Set your dates – for The Great Matuku-hūrepo Muster!
Weather in Spring is hard to plan for, with tight timeframes over one weekend some people just didnt make it out to join the muster in 2025.
After talking with DOC we’ve concluded that because most male bittern when trying to hold a breeding territory will stay in the same relative location, booming consistently and persistently, we can provide 10 day windows for you to select dates (and a postponement date) for you/your team to join the muster.
The dates for the muster in 2026 are:
- September Friday 18th to Sunday 27th (full moon 27th)
- October Friday 23rd to Sunday 1st Nov (full Moon 26th)
- November Friday 20th to Sunday 29th (full moon 25th)
nb. you still need your team to all listen at their stations/listening spots at the same day/ time and we reccommend you connect with neighbouring groups to synchronise as best you can across your district.
The Great Matuku-hūrepo Muster helps to:
- connect people to bittern and wetlands,
- estimate the population of bittern (local-, region-,nation-wide)
- identify potential breeding territories to focus protection and restoration.
Click here for more information about the muster (including last years results)
The single biggest thing you can do for bittern is to record them
Recording bittern any time of the year when you see or hear them (in eBird, iNaturalist or http://www.lovebittern.com) is the single biggest thing you can do for bittern conservation. This helps us understand how bittern are using the wider landscape to focus our conservation efforts around the network of fresh (to brackish) water habitats bittern use to thrive.
2026 Strategic Approach
Our goal over the first two years [2024,2025] was to activate our community groups and empower them to take action to help raise awareness and protect bittern and protect and restore their wetland homes.
It has been a huge success with over 300 groups nationwide and 1000’s of people joining our hui, workshops school visits and wetland walk and talks.
We’ve assessed 170 wetlands and set action on the ground to improve ‘habitat for hūrepo’.
And we’ve coordinated ‘ The Great Matuku-hūrepo Muster’ the country’s biggest citizen science project helping to drive bittern conservation in New Zealand.
This year we enter our next phase-strategic support. This will look like a mix of
- updated information and resources that can be accessed online anytime,
- less travel and more availability to help you and your teams when and where its needed (especially during the muster)
- strategic support in locations where we have bittern, but still dont have the capacity or capability to support them
- inviting, facilitating and/ or contributing to regional bittern management strategies in all 16 regions!
Thank you
We are just one voice helping our hūrepo, thank you all for the part you have played to support bittern!
Together, if we act now, we can save matuku-hūrepo our native bittern from the brink of extinction.
LOVE BITTERN PROJECT 