How a farmer shooting a burglar led to a major conservation discovery

It's a conservation story unlike any other.

By Peter de Graaf of RNZ

How did a high-profile crime that had the nation's farmers up in arms and a visit to an out-of-the-way rubbish dump lead to the discovery of critically endangered native bats in a Northland forest?

The tale begins late one night in 2002, when Kawakawa farmer Paul McIntyre disturbed three men trying to steal a quad bike from his shed.

As the would-be thieves sped away, McIntyre fired a shot at their ute - he said he was aiming for the tyres - but hit Sam Hati in the neck instead, leaving him critically injured.

The two other offenders fled, leaving their injured cousin behind.

Among the police officers who responded that night was Senior Constable Wayne Mills, then the officer in charge at Paihia station.

Mills was guarding a cordon on Oromahoe Road, a winding, unsealed road that runs through the middle of Ōpua Forest.

"I was on the roadside in the forest and I was standing outside my car, and that's when I heard some noises, which were unusual," he said. "I couldn't describe them now, but as I looked around, I could see these very small things darting around the trees."

Mills was flummoxed at first.

"It was the early hours of the morning, but you could see them flapping around. I wasn't aware that there were bats up here, but I didn't think that what I was seeing or hearing was birds, and that's why I thought, 'What else could it be?'

Then I thought, 'Well, maybe it's bats'."

Mills never reported what he saw, but he did tell a few mates.

Years later, the story finally reached the ears of Brad Windust, a founder of local conservation group Bay Bush Action.

Windust heard the tale in the most unlikely place - Whangae Transfer Station, near Kawakawa.

"I was at the dump one day and I was chatting away to the guy there, and he said to me, 'Oh yeah, there's bats in Ōpua Forest. A policeman was here once and he told me there'd been a shooting, where a farmer had shot an intruder, and he was waiting to see if there were any other intruders trying to make a getaway'.

"'Then he had the strangest thing happen, he's sure he saw little bats flying around him'."

That casual chat at the dump was a revelation for Windust.

"I was just absolutely thrilled to hear it, because we'd been doing pest control in Ōpua Forest for years and we didn't know these critically endangered bats were in there."

The tale had grown during the intervening years - in the version Windust heard, the bats were flapping around the police officer who, alarmed by the mysterious creatures, had his hand firmly on his gun.

Mills said the story had been embellished over time, but the bats did leave a lasting impression on him.

By then, a decade had passed since Mill's sighting and Windust feared Ōpua Forest's bats may have become extinct.

"We got some bat recording devices and we put them up where the cop car had been sitting. After two weeks of recording, we picked up one bat flying past, so we knew they were still there."

Since then, Windust said, Bay Bush Action had rolled out multi-species pest control to all 1700 hectares of Ōpua Forest, greatly reducing the numbers of rats, feral cats and stoats that were the bats' greatest threats.

Right now, a band of volunteers, with support from DOC, was installing bat detectors throughout the forest to find out if the bats had managed to survive - and hopefully multiply.

Windust said the survey was concentrating on the edges of wetlands, where long-tailed bats, or pekapeka-tou-roa, like to feed.

He described New Zealand's native bats as "absolutely incredible".

"They've evolved on these islands for millions of years and they're tiny. They've got long fur to keep them warm when they're hibernating in the winter.

"They're incredible fliers. They fly like a swallow, catching their prey on the wing."

Windust said bats used sonar to find insects, sending out 100-200 clicks a second and listening for the rebound to locate their prey.

He said the short-tailed bat was "like a Transformer", able to fold up its wings and turn them into an extra set of legs to walk around the forest floor.

Native bats had just one pup a year, which made them highly vulnerable to introduced pests, as did their habit of roosting in the hollows of old puriri trees or northern rata.

Forest and Bird Northland conservation manager Dean Baigent-Mercer said bats were New Zealand's only native land mammals.

"They used to be very common from the 1800s back into time, but as soon as the mammalian pests came and people started chopping down native forests, they disappeared really rapidly. What is left now is the last of the last."

Baigent-Mercer said one of the three species of native bat was already extinct.

"The other two are very, very rare now and we're lucky enough to find them popping up in all sorts of places, but in very low numbers. They are critically threatened with extinction."

That would be a tragedy, Baigent-Mercer said.

"They're just wonderful creatures and part of the whole diversity that was here before humans came. They give us a view into the past, but also what the future could be."

The two surviving species differed in size, the length of their tails and their feeding habits.

"Long-tailed bats are insectivorous and they'll fly up to 20km from their roosts. They dart out at dusk and go along streams, and eat mosquitoes and moths and whatnot.

"The short-tailed bats have really large communal roosts and also eat nectar. They'll fly down to the ground and walk along on their elbows, feeding on a parasitic flowering plant called dactylantus."

Baigent-Mercer said bats clung on in small numbers around the country, from the slopes of Mt Ruapehu to Henderson on the edge of Auckland city.

In Northland, they were known to survive at Omahuta, Herekino and Maungataniwha, among other places.

If you were wondering what happened to the farmer McIntyre, he was charged with shooting and injuring Hati with reckless disregard for the safety of others.

He was found not guilty in a jury trial at Kaikohe District Court.

In a separate retrial, he was also found not guilty of a lesser charge laid under the Arms Act.

Upset that McIntyre had been charged for what they saw as an attempt to protect his property, Northland farmers raised more than $20,000 to help cover his legal costs.

Moerewa man Hati pleaded guilty to theft and possession of a firearm without a licence, and was sentenced to 250 hours' community work and 12 months' supervision.

Hati told the court the incident had changed his life and he had vowed to steer away from crime.

The judge said he would have gone to jail, had it not been for his life-threatening injuries.

He died of an unrelated medical issue five years later, according to a report in the Northern Advocate.

Co-offenders Raymond and Ned Brown were sentenced to six months' jail and 150 hours' community work respectively.

As for former police officer Mills, he said he was stoked to play a part in the discovery of a rare species.

"I think it's awesome, just awesome," he said.

The results of the Ōpua Forest's first-ever formal bat survey will be known in the next 2-3 weeks.