Professor Carolyn (Kim) King has spent a lifetime studying New Zealand’s introduced mammalian predators and is recognised as an international expert on mustelids. She’s worked closely with weasels in England, and stoats, ferrets, and rats in New Zealand, since starting as a grad student at Oxford in 1967. In that time she’s got to know their key attributes and survival strategies. She knows their strengths and she knows what can make them vulnerable.

Kim is a very strong supporter of the conservation work being done by community groups to help make New Zealand predator-free.

“I am 150% on the side of community groups! They are the only people who can make a difference on a large enough scale,” she says. “DoC can’t do it on their own.”

Kim is careful to emphasise, when talking about New Zealand’s predator-free aspirations, that it is misleading to say simply that “predator free New Zealand is impossible.”

“It is impossible now, but that does not mean it will be impossible in the future. The second part of the sentence is important,” Kim explains. “We don’t know what future technology will be. I’m all for a predator free future. We just can’t imagine technology different enough to do it. It’s like the difference between an electron microscope and a light microscope.”

Kim recalls a meeting she attended in 1976, not long after arriving in New Zealand from the UK, to work for the DSIR (Department of Scientific and Industrial Research).

“It was a ‘rats in nature reserves meeting’. All the experts present concluded that you can’t get rats off islands of more than 1 ha. Now we’re eradicating them from >11,000 ha. People back then couldn’t imagine the future technology, and we can’t imagine it either. The past doesn’t necessarily predict the future, so we don’t know what will be possible in 25 years time.”

In the meantime, Kim has good advice to offer community groups trying to make their own area predator free.

“You must pick battles you can win,” she says. “Protect an area that is defensible. Minimise reinvasion. Have a core area and a buffer zone.”

“Community groups are,” Kim emphasises, “doing a wonderful job! Anything done to prevent damage to birds during their breeding season is good, even if the pests come back later. It is always worthwhile.”

Becoming predator free is about more than just killing pests, as Kim explains.

“You need to ask a different question,” she says. “You need to ask ‘how many are left?’ and ‘how quickly can the population recover?’.”

Kim is also cautious about investing too much optimism initially, which then can’t be lived up to, resulting in people giving up and saying ‘it will never work’.

“We have to be judicious about (predator-free) expectations. It’s one step at a time, not all at once. Defensible areas, one at a time, learning from every step.”

Defensible areas can be peninsulas or islands, for example, where predators have limited pathways to reinvasion. Researchers are already testing how well those pathways – a narrow point joining a peninsula to the mainland or an island beach facing the mainland – can be defended against reinvasion once the resident predators are removed. Fenced sanctuaries also provide a defensible area – but erecting a pest-proof fence is only the beginning.

“Fences are wonderful,” Kim says, “but they’re very high maintenance.”

A few years back, one of her Masters students, Trevor Connolly, looked at how long it would take predators to reinvade a sanctuary if there was a breach in the fence. With the generous cooperation of Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust, who had just completed their predator-proof fence, Trevor cut holes in the brand new fence, placed secure cages behind the holes so that the sanctuary was not put at risk, and set up video cameras to monitor what happened.

“The results amazed everyone,” says Kim. “It was a nasty shock! If a tree falls on the fence and breaks it or a stream door sticks open, you have less than 24 hours to close the breach – in summer it’s much less than 24 hours. You need people on hand all the time.”

The research showed that the most likely invader would be a rat.

“All pests in the surrounding area spent a lot of time cruising the fence, attracted by the smells and sounds. The fence was under siege.”

A camera fixed to the hood of the sanctuary fence was also revealing.

“There’s a little gutter inside the hood where insects gather. Rats get inside the hood and cruise along looking for insects to eat.”

If the fence was to break, those rats would be immediately on hand to discover it.

Another issue with making a core defensible area pest-free is that some predators are untrappable. Stoats are particularly wary of traps and tunnels.

“On Secretary Island there is a hard core of untrappable adult female stoats,” says Kim. “Every year for 5-6 years DoC have tried, but they can’t get the last breeding female stoat off that island.”

She has some advice for community groups trying to remove elusive stoats.

“An individual will learn to avoid one thing,” she says. “You must try different things. Stoats are shy of tunnels and devices,” she explains, “and evolution is on their side.”

Those that survive through extreme caution may well be passing their cautious nature onto their offspring.

For stoats, however, 1080 can kill those device-shy individuals.

“A dying rat is irresistible to a stoat,” says Kim, “and eating the rat is natural behaviour.”

That explains why occasional 1080 operations can have a beneficial effect on kiwi breeding, even in areas where trapping has been happening for years. Even the most cautious of stoats can’t turn down the chance of an easy (poisoned) rat meal, although they probably wouldn’t take bait directly from a station themselves.

There are other possibilities for stoat control in the future.

“The most exciting potential development is CRISPR, a programme which in theory can allow editing of the genome of a species,” says Kim. “Stoats are very vulnerable in their reproductive cycle. They only have one litter per year. They have delayed implantation lasting 9-10 months. If we can interfere with that process, so that the female tries to implant the fertilised ova during the delay period, before the uterus is ready to receive them, then she will lose the the whole year’s production. She can’t mate again until the next spring – and may not live that long.”

Most stoats only live 1-2 years and may only have one chance to breed, although a few individuals may live 5-6 years, even up to 8 years in areas that are never trapped.

“We might be able to get rid of stoats,” says Kim. “There are only a few hundred thousand of them in most years. But rats – there are tens of millions of rats.”

In fact it is large populations of rats and mice that determine the number of stoats in an area.

“Stoats can’t survive long without mammalian prey,” Kim says. “Rats, mice, possums and rabbits provide the most meat in their diet. If you remove them, stoats will eat a lot of birds over the short term, but they can’t maintain a large population long-term only on birds.”

One example Kim gives, is when efforts were first made to save North Island kokako populations.

“All predators – including stoats – were targeted at first. Including stoats made a lot of extra work that wasn’t necessary,” says Kim. “They found that if they got rid of rats and possums it was enough to raise the breeding success of kokako. Kokako weren’t worried by stoats enough to justify targetting them as well.”

It’s a different story for kiwi. Their flightless young are very affected by stoats.

“Many arboreal birds in beech forests are killed after a good seedfall,” says Kim, “but not so many at other times. It’s not that individual stoats are each eating more birds in mast years. It’s because there are more stoats around, because there are more mice, and all those extra stoats are each eating the usual number of birds per head.”

So what advice can Kim give community groups when they do need to remove stoats?

“The Goodnature A24 self-resetting trap is the best available at the moment,” Kim believes.

Kim currently has a Masters student who is using the lure that Goodnature developed for the A24 in a camera setup to see what animals come to investigate. While the animal sniffs the bait, the camera takes its picture. The camera/bait set up is being used in native forest, pine forest and agricultural areas for comparison of what predators are present in each habitat. So far the lure is working well.

“It’s getting good results with rats, cats, ferrets weasels and stoats,” Kim says.

Research continues – it’s all about finding the best times of year to control predators effectively, better ways to attract mammalian predators to control devices, new ways to make them vulnerable, new ways to find out how many are left and how soon the reinvaders arrive…

“To remove a pest population altogether, every individual must be at risk and vulnerable,” Kim explains.

It’s one of the reasons that predator eradication is difficult in populated areas.

“You need every individual person to agree never to protect the pest animal, including on private property. Eradication is impossible if some individual animals are never at risk. If there are any refuges through human protection, behaviour (such as trap shyness) or reinvasion then eradication is impossible.”

To achieve a predator free New Zealand, we’re going to need a lot more innovation and EVERYONE on side. But what seems impossible now, may well be possible in the future.

“When it comes to predicting the future, experts are no better than anyone else,” says Kim, quoting Arthur C. Clarke. “We have to go beyond the limits of the possible…”

The post Prof Carolyn King is enthusiastic supporter of community efforts appeared first on Predator Free NZ.

When Craig Gillies from DOC’s Hamilton office first started studying feral cats at the University of Auckland, he visited Department of Conservation ‘old hand’ Dick Veitch – since retired – who gave him a piece of advice that has stuck with him throughout his conservation career:

“It’s not the ones you catch that matter,” said Dick, “It’s the ones you didn’t catch.”

Now, 20 odd years later, Craig is just wrapping up a 5½ year study of Goodnature self-resetting traps – evaluating new and better ways to catch predators. Between 2010 and 2014 he was also carrying out field work monitoring predators in the Whangamarino Wetland in North Waikato – finding the best ways to detect predators that haven’t been caught, as Dick advised. He also sits on NAEAC (National Animal Ethics Advisory Committee) to advise on environmental and conservation management issues. Add to that, his role as predator control advisor for the Kiwi Recovery Group and it’s clear that he is a busy man with his expertise on introduced mammalian predators also valued by community groups in the region.

Craig’s main research emphasis is on the ecology of feral cats, mustelids and rats and how best to control and monitor them. During his study, he’s seen an evolution in the development of self-resetting traps.

“We carried out field trials around the country on Goodnature A12 (possums) and A24 traps for rats and stoats. Initially there were problems with mechanical reliability and we had to structure the trial to cope with that,” Craig says, “Now there is vastly improved reliability. I’m really excited about the potential for rats. The automatic lure pump for rats has unlocked the potential for rat control. It’s a cool way to get to the end of the project.”

An independent engineering review of the A24 trap has also confirmed mechanical reliability. As yet there is no automatic lure pump for stoats, so in the last field trial for the Goodnature trap study, Connovation’s stoat lure ‘Erayz’ was used in A24 traps and refreshed every 3 weeks. Goodnature is working on a new stoat lure, but Craig has not tested it to date.

The most recent and final field trial on the self-resetting traps has been carried out with kiwi at Trounson Kauri Park, near Dargaville – the Department of Conservation’s first ‘mainland island’ in Northland. In the 2015/2016 breeding season 32% of the chicks in the study sample survived to reach a safe weight with A24 traps used to control stoats. That’s comparable to survival rates in previous years using ‘old’ methods.

“All that’s needed now is an automatic stoat lure pump like that used for rats,” says Craig. “It’s an effective stoat trap, but it needs a long-life lure. If we had an effective long-lifelure, we could definitely control stoats more cost effectively, so I’m excited by the potential for stoat control,” he says.

The self-resetting project is coming to an end, but Craig won’t be retiring to his desk any time soon. There’s still more predator monitoring trials to follow-up on from the Whangamarino work to lure him out of the office.

When he started the Whangamarino project in 2010, not much was known about the pest mammal guild in wetland habitats.

“We didn’t know how to monitor mammal pests in a big wetland,” Craig explains. “The research brief was to develop, test and validate small mammal monitoring techniques and to see how predators responded with the water level was very high.”

The project began with 17 live trapping sessions over a 3-year ‘pre-control’ period to establish what predators were present and in what numbers. Animals were captured alive, marked and then recaptured. Every mammal predator was found; the only ones we weren’t live capturing were possums but there were heaps of them in there too.

Monitoring techniques were then investigated.

“For carnivores – that’s feral cats and mustelids – camera trapping was used,” says Craig. “Peanut-scented wax tags were used for mice and rats.”

The results were fascinating – and distinctly different that the situation found in forests.

“We found that the predator guild was dominated by ferrets, then feral cats, then weasels, then relatively few stoats,” says Craig. “We ended up catching hedgehogs as well, but not as many rats as expected. The ratio of ship rats to Norway rats was 60:40. In a forest it’s about 90% (or higher) ship rats.”

Then there were the mice.

“Teeming” is how Craig describes mouse numbers in the parts of the wetland where he was working.

“The trail cameras were excellent for monitoring ferrets and very good for cats,” Craig says, “The lure was fresh rabbit.”

There weren’t enough stoats and weasels detected, however, to assess how well trail cameras worked for them and this is the work he’d like to follow-up on in forested environments for his next project. Camera spacing may not have been right for weasels, Craig thinks.

“We caught a lot of rats. The wax tags were good for rats and excellent for mice.”

Being wax, it also doesn’t matter if the wax tags get flooded. It’s a different story for trail cameras.

“I put the cameras as low as I could get away with,” says Craig.

No trail cameras were lost to flooding, although water levels did get very, very close. There were, however, a significant number of cameras lost due to another mammalian predator patrolling the wetlands. The cameras were being used in a study of lures and self-resetting traps that Craig carried out in parallel to his predator monitoring research.

“We needed to film pest behaviour at the self-resetting traps because so much of what is killed is scavenged even in a couple of days. So we had 300 trail cameras out in study sites around the Waikato. Most of them were well away from where people were likely to go, but we lost heaps.”

Trail cameras don’t come cheap. They can cost anything from $250 for a basic model to over $900 for the expensive ones.

“They’re like lollies,” says Craig. “We had a lot stolen in the Waikato, if it’s found – it’s gone. It’s just too much temptation.”

Many of the cameras were housed in security cases and well hidden in tight scrub. They were set out at a spacing of 1 every 100m.

“I don’t know how they found some,” says Craig. “Maybe they saw them being checked. One weekend we lost 19 camera traps on a line of 30.”

For Craig, it’s not just the cameras that are lost.

“There’s ½ to a week’s worth of footage and good quality rechargeable batteries.”

The cameras themselves are all password protected, so not a lot of use to anyone else.

“When the 19 camera traps were taken, we found alcho-spirit bottles at the same location. They’ve been finger-printed by the police, but the fingerprints aren’t in the system.”

It is frustrating as well as an expensive drain on limited budgets – and it’s a common problem where-ever trail cameras are used.

“I’ve even heard of some groups that are using cameras to monitor their cameras,” says Craig.

It may be the way to go.

With his research interests so closely aligned with the volunteer work being done by community groups, it’s not surprising that Craig is often called upon to talk to conservation groups in the community. It’s something he’s very happy to do – but, given his busy research schedule, it’s probably a good idea to contact him well in advance.

His advice to community groups beginning a new conservation project is to think, right at the start, about what conservation values you are trying to protect and what are the threats to those values.

“That determines what pests you need to target and when. It also allows you to determine whether your project is working.”

“Detail counts,” Craig emphasises. “Predator control must be done to a high standard. You need to keep up to date with developments and seek advice. Traps need to be set well; wooden trap tunnels need to be firmly seated on the ground with entrances kept clear. They need to be kept clean, well lured and well maintained. With every trap, think ‘how is the animal going to get in and get caught?’”

Good monitoring is also important.

“You might kill a lot, but it’s not the killing that matters. Predator numbers need to be low enough to allow native species to breed successfully,” Craig says. “You need to monitor natives and residual pest abundances. What you didn’t catch is important.”

Dick Veitch’s advice to Craig is still highly relevant to predator control today. ‘It’s what you don’t catch that matters…’

Finally, Craig also emphasises animal welfare – both the need to be aware of other animals that might be at risk from traps and the welfare of the pest species you’re targeting.

“Be professional. Use kill traps that are humane and that have passed the NAWAC (National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee) standards. Don’t lose sight of the fact that you are killing animals to protect others. Do things to the highest standard,” he says.

The post Mentor’s advice still relevant for Craig Gillies appeared first on Predator Free NZ.

Early New Zealand was noisy. Cook and his crew experienced a ‘cacophony of sound’ on their first voyage. It’s that loud, raucous, exuberance which Banks Peninsula engineer and inventor Grant Ryan is aiming to restore through an open source technology project he has initiated.

“There are two key defining features about the Cacophony Project that make it complementary to other predator eradication initiatives,” Grant explains. “The first key thing is that it’s open source. That’s how a lot of innovative technology gets developed – Wikipedia for example. Tools are developed which can then be used and improved. We can start the thinking, but we can’t solve everything by ourselves. Open source is a way the whole tech community can pitch in.”

Grant contacted David Lane, President of the NZ Open Source Society, early in the project’s development to ensure that Cacophony is a ‘best practice’ open source project.

The second key feature of Cacophony is a phenomenon well-known in the tech community but perhaps not so well understood by the wider public. It’s known as Moore’s Law.

“Using cameras, artificial intelligence, digital sound technology – it seems like it will be expensive. But Moore’s Law says that digital technology becomes ½ the price or twice as good every 18 months. So if you can build the ultimate device it will just keep getting better and cheaper.”

Grant and the Cacophony open source team are aiming high. They’re developing an artificial intelligence device that will identify a predator, lure the target and kill it – and work for every predator, every time – a 100% kill rate!

“We’ve done an analysis on Predator Free 2050 and we think it’s crazy!” says Grant. “We should be able to do this by 2040 or earlier!”

Grant’s basing that assertion on Moore’s Law.

“If something costs $20,000 now, even if the technology improves at half the rate that it has historically, we’ll still get there much earlier than 2050. Take a little computer with four processors – 12 years ago that was ‘military strength’ technology. Now you can get one for $40.”

It’s easy to assume that technology solutions are too expensive – and they can be – but only initially, when you’ve got Moore’s Law on your side.

“Technology solutions will make traps thousands of times better than they are now, so you’ll not have to have them in an area all the time. The technology is there for a couple of weeks, does the job (100%), then moves elsewhere.”

The team at Cacophony have put cameras in front of existing traps to see what happens.

“They work as little as 1% of the time,” says Grant. “Of 100 possums, maybe one is caught in the trap. Most walk by. Some poke their head in. Occasionally a trap goes off. Occasionally the possum dies.”

Scent vs Sound

The current use of food lures is also an issue – its species-specific (peanut butter for rats, rabbit meat for stoats). The food goes off or it gets eaten and the trap then sits idle. It’s essentially the same pest-catching methodology we’ve been using for centuries. As an inventor and engineer, Grant says there’s got to be a better, state of the art way of getting rid of predators. He thinks sound lures will be part of that solution.

“All predators have ‘social noises’,” says Grant. “They ‘talk’ to each other and its species-specific.”

The idea is to come up with a trap system that can play sounds to lure predators in then use artificial intelligence to digitally identify what the predator is (and ensure it is a non-target species), then kill it, probably with a squirt of poison which it licks off its fur.

“A sound lure works over 10 times the distance that a scent lure does (only 3-5 metres). That means a sound lure is effective over 10×10=100 times the area. What’s more the same trap can be used for all predators and there’s no need to rebuild it as the technology improves. As soon as you get better processes you can update it.”

Another advantage of using social sound lures is that they also target the very last, hardest to get predators. A food lure doesn’t work for this hard core. Their rivals are dead – they have plenty of food. With numbers so low, however, it’s even harder than usual to find a mate. Cue the social lure… Even if the sound lure only targets one sex of a particular species, it still solves the problem. By killing 100% of females (or males), the remaining sex are unable to breed.

Artificial intelligence

So how do you give a trap system ‘artificial intelligence’?

It’s all about pattern recognition.

“We’re recording videos of all predators then we run the footage through an algorithm (a sequence of automatic computer actions/calculations). Then we show the system a new video and it should be able to identify it,” Grant explains. “Then you recalibrate.”

Each time you go through the process, the artificial intelligence algorithm is being systematically improved and refined.

Engineer’s approach

The engineer’s approach to invention is often different from that taken by scientists, Grant reckons.

“Scientists start by trying to find out ‘why’ something is, then work out how to make use of it,” he says. “Engineers work out how to do something, then they (or the scientists) work out why it works later. Engineers invented the bicycle, but scientists are still discussing the details of why bikes work,” he says.

Using the ‘engineer’s approach’, Cacophony Project’s goal is to come up with a technological solution that is 100% effective – then Moores law will help make it cheaper.

“I’ve got a lot of respect for predators, having watched them,” says Grant. “They’re not stupid. We have to evolve and adapt faster than them. And there’s a massive Information Technology toolkit are there that hasn’t been systematically applied to this problem yet,” he adds.

Open source is about teamwork and a goal shared by a team who may never even meet each other.

“It’s a fun project that’s building momentum as more people start to contribute,” Grant says. “One of the cool things about hard core tech people who code is that they like to contribute to shared projects. We have a core little team and they then coordinate others who are chipping in for free.”

So what’s the appeal of this particular project?

“Becoming predator free is one New Zealand’s problem that really is internationally significant – we have one of the worst rates of species loss and a large proportion are still in decline,” says Grant. “As an inventor there’s lots I could be working on – but this is by far my main priority. Open source is a way that we can almost certainly make significant chunks of New Zealand predator free way before 2040 even! We don’t require breakthrough knowledge. We can plug into things that already out there and systematically test lots of things.”

It sounds like that noisy dawn chorus – Cook’s cacophony of sound – may be a little bit closer than we think. So exactly how noisy was it back in when the Endeavour was exploring our coastline? This is what Cook’s botanist, Joseph Banks wrote in his journal on 17 January 1770, when the ship was anchored in Queen Charlotte Sound:

This morn I was awakd by the singing of the birds ashore from whence we are distant not a quarter of a mile, the numbers of them were certainly very great who seemd to strain their throats with emulation perhaps; their voices were certainly the most melodious wild musick I have ever heard, almost imitating small bells but with the most tuneable silver sound imaginable to which maybe the distance was no small addition. On enquiring of our people I was told that they have had observd them ever since we have been here, and that they begin to sing at about 1 or 2 in the morn and continue till sunrise, after which they are silent all day like our nightingales.

Who knows, once predators are dealt with and the birdsong returns, future generations may have no further need for setting their alarm in the morning. Perhaps we’ll become a nation of very early risers…

The post Open Source is key to bringing back the cacophony appeared first on Predator Free NZ.

New Zealand is the albatross capital of the world, with more than a dozen varieties. So where do they all live and why are so many of them classed as vulnerable?

It can be difficult to imagine how big an albatross is until you’re standing next to one.

The Southern Royal albatrosses were nesting when I visited Campbell Island, one of New Zealand’s remote subantarctic islands, in mid-December with Heritage Expeditions. These days Campbell is uninhabited and human visitors are rare, yet the albatrosses were unfazed by our presence at the top of the rugged and windy Col Lyle Boardwalk, surrounded by regenerating tussock and burgeoning megaherbs.

A few of them soared above us in the grey sky, their wings slicing effortlessly through the cold air. New Zealand’s largest seabirds, graceful and glorious.

Life at sea

Apart from their remarkable size, which includes a wingspan of up to 3.7 metres, albatrosses have many other special qualities. They spend an estimated 85% of their lives at sea, using the powerful ocean winds to carry them thousands of kilometres with minimal exertion. When they finally return to land at around 5-6 years old to nest, there are some rough landings and they often struggle to walk for the first couple of days as they adjust to terra firma.

Albatrosses have been known to live for more than 60 years, but certain factors make them vulnerable. During their time at sea they’re at risk from long-line and net fishing, as well as plastic-filled waters in the northern hemisphere. A violent storm can wipe out a nesting site for years and cause untold knock-on effects such as the laying of thin-shelled eggs, which is caused by stressful nesting conditions.

They also take a long time to begin breeding – up to 14 years, in the case of the Wandering albatross – with widely-spaced breeding cycles and low reproduction rates: every 2-3 years an albatross lays on average just one precious egg, which involves about 70-80 days of incubation and then 140-170 (but up to 280, depending on the species) days of tending to their fledgling chick. If the egg is broken or stolen, it’s all over for the year.

Best mates

Albatrosses are very faithful partners: they form breeding pairs and mate for life. Their homing instinct is keen and they usually return to their place of origin to nest, often just a few dozen metres from where they were hatched.

To refine their courtship skills while on land, the great albatrosses also perform a ‘gamming’ display by facing one another, extending their large wings, dancing from side to side, raising their beaks to the sky and making small yelps and yapping sounds. ‘Gamming’ is an old sailing term, referring to the pre-Facebook practice of two whaling ships coming together at sea to exchange news.

Professional boundaries

But beware of tossing around words that humanise animal behaviour, warns Dr Chris Robertson, an ornithologist from Wellington who has been studying rare NZ birds for decades. One of his earliest bird-related memories is the thrill of a rare Australasian Coot sighting while visiting Lake Tūtira in the early 1950s with his father, who was a keen bird-watcher.

As part of his day job (over the years he has worked for NZ Wildlife Service, then with DOC, and in 2008 was awarded the Queen’s Service Medal for services to ornithology), Robertson has balanced on the precipices some of our wildest, most inhospitable offshore islands to observe rare albatrosses. However, despite his long-term relationship with them he baulks at the idea of favourite species or cute nicknames: no Jane Goodall-esque ‘Greybeard’ (or in this case, no ‘Sooty’ or ‘Pinkbeak’).

“I get very unhappy about that because it creates confusion. When you’ve got hundreds of birds to keep track of you can’t have names for all of them, and it’s dangerous to get emotional.”

Instead, coloured bands are used as identifiers so an individual can be referred to, for example, as “Yellow-Orange” (with “YO” being an acceptable abbreviation).

Crunching the numbers

There are about 24 varieties or taxa of albatrosses worldwide, most of which can be found near or on New Zealand’s remote offshore islands. But the exact number of taxa has been hotly debated over the years and Robertson argues that media and conservation groups often lump several taxa into what he calls the “corporate albatross” for simplicity’s sake.

New Zealand boasts more albatross species than anywhere else in the world. Our unique albatross taxa or groups include:

• Antipodean (wandering) albatross
• Gibson’s (wandering) albatross
• Northern and Southern Royal albatross (also known as the ‘Greats’; the biggest ones)
• White-Capped albatross
• Indian Yellow-Nosed albatross
• Chatham Island albatross
• Campbell Island mollymawk (a mollymawk is a small-to-medium-sized NZ albatross)
• Grey-Headed mollymawk
• Salvin’s mollymawk
• Northern and Southern Buller’s mollymawk
• Light-Mantled Sooty albatross

Of all the albatross taxa worldwide, three are considered by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) to be Critically Endangered, including the Chatham Islands albatross, and five are considered Endangered. All but two are considered to be vulnerable.

But conservationists sometimes have a habit of focussing on the short-term data, Robertson believes, and almost half a century of research has provided him with a broader perspective.

“Some albatross populations are clearly not comfortable. But look at all of the groups alongside one another: some are just starting out, some are at their peak, and some are declining and will one day disappear. Various things will affect that over time, including introduced predators, climatic events, and human behaviour.”

Extrapolating knee-jerk, “trigger figures” from a small sample can also be risky and misleading, says Robertson.

“There’s a tendency to get excited and jump to conclusions. It’s normal for populations to fluctuate [naturally] over a period of time.”

Controlling the predators

We may not be able to manipulate time, but we can control some things. In the stormy sub-antarctic, for example, Enderby Island has been returned to its former predator-free state thanks to the complete removal of introduced animals such as rabbits, cattle and sheep. Adams Island and The Snares have always been predator-free.

Albatross numbers on Campbell Island dramatically improved after the eradication of sheep and rats (although Robertson comments that it will be interesting to see the effect on nesting albatrosses of the regenerating scrub such as the dracophyllum, which was burned off during the 19th- and early 20th-century farming attempts on Campbell and Enderby Islands).

Meanwhile, on Auckland Island (the largest of the sub-antarctic islands at 443m2), the remaining wild pigs are still a threat to the nesting grounds of White-Capped and Wandering albatrosses. DOC has announced plans to remove the pigs and in May 2017 began recruiting for ‘project planners’ to help with the eradication.

On the New Zealand mainland there is a stable Northern Royal albatross colony at Taiaroa Head in Otago (there is a live webcam), but that hasn’t always been the case. The first major threat in the area was humans, who hunted the albatross for its eggs, then came the wild dogs, cats and ferrets. These days zealous trapping is still required to control the local stoats, which zoom in to snatch any exposed eggs.

But the Taiaroa Head albatrosses are also troubled by a much smaller, deadlier predator: the blowfly. Imported in the 1980s along with merino sheep from Central Otago, the miniature menaces hatch young maggots inside the slow-hatching albatross eggs. A somewhat effective solution has been adding peppermint to the nests because the scent deters the flies. Planting Pyrethrum daisies has helped for the same reason, and, most successfully, hatching the eggs in incubators.

Extreme bird-watching

Advances in technology have played a part in helping to protect albatrosses and other rare birds. But DNA research, while certainly validating several of Roberton’s earlier, tricky-to-prove claims about distinct albatross taxa, is not enough in itself, he argues, and nor are satellite-based observations of bird colonies from space.

“That’s very limiting. You don’t know what’s happening on the ground and you’re taking shortcuts, usually to save money. You need that time on the land and at sea to really get the full picture.”

Robertson has spent much of his life researching the physiology and behaviour of rare birds, often from hair-raising vantage points. Because albatrosses often favour steep clifftop locations for nesting, on isolated islands surrounded by wild, inhospitable seas, this has made for some logistically challenging and uncomfortable workdays.

“The islands also have seals that don’t take kindly to you walking through their patch. We had shepherd’s crooks and sometimes had to use them to bonk the seals firmly on the nose.”

Many albatrosses, including Northern Royals, nest on the smaller, uninhabited Chatham Islands – such as the Sisters and Forty-Fours – and Robertson frequently had to battle seasickness and lug heavy equipment and supplies, including a month’s worth of drinking water to last the visit, up steep cliffs to get there. He once camped on a “particularly inhospitable” precarious, downward-facing slope on the tiny Pyramid Island to observe Chatham Island albatrosses; another time he was forced to share a tiny pup tent with another scientist on the Pyramid for 11 days. To pass the time, he says, “there was a lot of discussion about albatross taxonomy”.

It wasn’t unusual to lose equipment and Robertson also had some near-misses of his own.

“I used to carry all my cameras in big tupperware containers to keep them dry. We didn’t wear life-jackets then, so whenever I fell out of the dinghy I was relying on my tupperware box to keep me afloat. In the 1990s I almost got polished off when we tried to land on the Forty-Fours. We were late in the day getting there – that’s always a mistake – the wind had picked up, I had to climb over slippery bull kelp on the rocks and I fell into the water. The top popped off the tupperware box, so I was slowly sinking and I was also getting swept into a gulch. One man jumped in to save me, but he landed on top of me! By the time we finally got back to the island, 95% of our gear had been washed away.”

Natural forces

Each taxa is unique, with its own physical and behavioural traits. A Wandering albatross, for example, often has to travel long distances on feeding trips which makes it more vulnerable to natural events that affect its breeding cycle.

A dramatic cyclone in the 1980s threatened the Buller’s and Northern Royal albatrosses on the Forty-Fours. It destroyed their vegetation and they had to pack more tightly together in viable areas, causing thin-shelled eggs that were prone to breakage. The dry conditions also resulted in what Robertson calls “gladwrap eggs”, with a thin membrane inside them which had dried out and trapped the hatching chicks. Breeding success dropped to almost zero.

But while one ecologist predicted the recovery to take 300 years, it has taken just 30 for the islands’ vegetation and chick populations to bounce back, mostly thanks to the “natural fertiliser” of albatross poo.

“Sometimes nature is wiser than we are. Humans can’t fix everything,” says Robertson.

Human threats

Albatrosses live to be 35-40 years old on average, and can even make it to over 60. But their time can often be cut short by plastic-polluted waters (in the northern hemisphere) and overfishing, as well as long-line and net fishing. Robertson’s autopsies on dead albatrosses revealed from their stomach contents that they swoop down on fishing boats to steal the offal discharged from the fish factories on board, which probably seems like a fast-food win, but they risk getting hooked by the beak or wing, hit by trawl wires, or trapped in nets being hauled from the deep.

A memorable presentation by Robertson to the NZ Seafood Industry Council in 2005, when he took along an array of birds’ heads to show the damage from fishing practices, caused a ripple effect of widespread changes to the industry. These days heavier hooks are used to weigh down the bait, which has substantially reduced the death toll from longlining. With better processing of the fish itself, much less ‘tempting’ offal is being discharged as well.

“The industry has been good at listening, and the problem can be significantly reduced as long as certain practises are followed. But you’re never going to get a zero bycatch. Unless fishing stops completely, there will always be a reason for a bird to get stuck.”

The post Wind beneath their wings appeared first on Predator Free NZ.

WARNING: [stomach] contents may disturb sensitive readers.

When Jamie McAulay opens his mail in the morning he often finds “a lovely, delightful, maggoty mess!”

Jamie is a Masters student in the University of Otago’s Zoology Department and lately conservation volunteers and professional trappers from Nelson to Fiordland have been posting him their dead stoats.

‘How kind’, you might think, ‘another smelly rotting corpse’ – and goodness knows what the postal service thinks – but Jamie is deeply appreciative of the efforts of his stoat suppliers.

“Volunteers from Friends of Cobb’ and ‘Friends of Flora’ check the traps, collect the rotten stoats, carry them down the mountains in their backpacks, put them on ice and post them to me. Then I boil up the bones and chemically extract the collagen. You can imagine how good it smells!” he adds cheerfully.

Jamie also extracts the keratin from stoat claws. It’s all part of his research into the diet of alpine stoats. He’s collecting stoats from the alpine zones of four different national parks: Nelson Lakes and Kahurangi at the top of the South Island where the volunteer groups are his suppliers and Fiordland and Aspiring in the lower South Island, where professional trapping contractor ‘Mammalian Corrections Unit’ collects and sends their stoat catches to him.

“Mammalian Corrections have been a huge help in getting stoats,” he says.

Jamie first became interested in the impact of stoats as alpine predators when he was working for the Department of Conservation on a rock wren project.

“We had cameras on nests which we would check. We’d see the eggs, then the chicks hatching, then the chicks getting their pin feathers. But nest after nest was being nailed by stoats.”

Research gaps

There are big gaps in the research on predators in the alpine zone and he’s hoping his research will shed some light on exactly what’s happening.

“The alpine zone has traditionally been seen as safe,” says Jamie, “But species-specific monitoring has shown that’s not the case. Rock wren, kiwi, takahe, kea and kakapo have all shown signs of stoat predation. There’s a huge alpine zone that needs protecting,” he adds, “700,000 hectares – but we don’t have the tools. We know about bush trapping and if it works okay in the bush, we do the same up in the tops.”

Jamie is working with the Terrestrial Ecosystems Unit at DOC, with Jo Monks at DOC, Deb Wilson from Landcare Research and Phil Seddon from the University of Otago’s Zoology Department as his Masters research supervisors.

“I’m trying to discover more about where and when predation risk is high in the alpine zone in order to target where to put the money to make the most difference,” he explains. “What drives the chance of a stoat getting something? My research looks at diet – how it varies across different areas of the South Island and in different seasons. I’m also looking at what different stoats eat,” he adds. “Are some stoats specialising (in native species) or are they all eating the same things? Does their diet vary over time – with events such as tussock masts – does it vary in different places?”

Last meal

If the stoats are sufficiently ‘intact’ when retrieved from their traps and sent to his lab, Jamie can tell what their most recent meal was by looking at their stomach contents. It can be a shockingly vivid revelation.

“Of the nine stoats I got in January from Nelson Lakes, seven had intact stomachs,” Jamie says.
“And four of those seven stoats had eaten skinks. One stoat had 19 skink feet inside it and that only represented the last meal of that one stoat. The long-term predation must be incredible!”

Jamie consulted experts to see if they could identify the species of skink that had been eaten.

“The skink people were unsure, so the EcoGene Laboratory in Auckland is going to try and genetically ID the feet.”

Alpine stoats are known to eat mice, rats and – surprisingly, hares. Possibly they prey on leverets, rather than adult hares, but either way, stoats are very effective predators. While the introduced mammals can be considered ‘natural prey’ for stoats, some stoats clearly aren’t sticking strictly to the standard diet sheet.

“A monitored (native wildlife) population will be doing okay, then suddenly it will get nobbled,” says Jamie. “But does that mean we need to control all the stoats or just some (rogue) individuals? A lot of ground weta get eaten but they have quite a patchy distribution. So where there are not so many weta, does that mean there’s a bigger chance birds will get eaten?”

There are plenty of questions to be answered, but looking at recent stomach contents only gives a limited picture of very recent diet.

“We’ve looked at 50 stoats from over the South Island,” he says. “It’s hard work – but the last meal is not that meaningful. Of those 50 stoats, if 1/20 had eaten hare for their last meal, does that mean all stoats eat hare for 1 meal in 20 or does it mean that 1 in 20 stoats lives mostly on hares?”

Gutting gives an extra level of calibration because it can be compared with past studies, but Jamie hopes that biochemical assays will give a broader view of stoat predation over a longer period of time.

You are what you eat

The biochemical technique used is called stable isotope analysis. Stable isotope analysis looks for chemical signatures of different animals from their tissue such as keratin and bone.

“If we can identify chemical signatures for stoats and their prey items, we should be able to tell which prey category or food chain level the stoat has been feeding on,” Jamie explains.

The first samples have just been submitted to the Chemistry Department at Otago to be put through their mass spectrometer – the product of all that boiling up of bones. As well as extracting collagen from bones, Jamie has also extracted keratin from stoat claws.

“The collagen and keratin mean that I can look at two different timeframes,” he explains. “Keratin is inert so the chemical makeup is from just the period when it was grown, but bone is constantly replenishing, so several years of diet are represented in bone collagen.”

Samples have also been obtained from prey species.

“Mice and hares were killed to get samples from their muscle tissue and for weta, a sample of exoskeleton was used. A very tiny (12 millionths of a litre) blood sample was taken from small birds,” says Jamie. “It’s considered more ethical to take blood from birds than to take a feather sample – less chance of longterm harm,” he explains.

He also regularly posts his daily activities on social media, to share his research process and experiences.

“I know it’s a bit of a jump to trust biochemical assays,” Jamie explains, “And it’s so powerful. I want to bring people on the journey so they’ll trust the results. I think it’s cool that you can get so much information from bones.”

On the day we spoke, for example, he was preparing collagen to be freeze-dried.

“First you demineralise the bone in hydrochloric acid, then you put it in the oven to denature. The collagen then goes into solution and you freeze-dry that. It comes out as this fluffy white polystyrene stuff,” he explains.

It sounds macabre, gory, sinister, fascinating… and smelly.

“It’s really cool,” says Jamie, “But it’s so hard to study stoats. Their territory can be a square kilometre and a few animals can do a large amount of damage, so you need to catch a lot of stoats over a large area.”

And as many volunteers will agree, catching stoats is never easy.

Jamie is full of praise for the local DOC staff, contractors, and ‘Friends of Cobb’ and ‘Friends of Flora’ volunteers who have been helping him.

“I leant so much about trapping by spending a week in a hut with them, asking questions.”

If all goes well, Jamie hopes to have information of his own to share once his research is complete. But in the meantime, there are gruesome parcels to be opened, bones to be boiled… work to be done.

Follow the progress of Jamie McAulay’s research on: Instagram

The post Stoat research is not for the squeamish appeared first on Predator Free NZ.

Monitoring cryptic animals is one of the big challenges of becoming predator free, according to Auckland-based Landcare Research scientist, Dr Al Glen.

“Predators are cryptic,” he says, “and when they’re in low abundance, it’s very hard to detect the last few. Better monitoring is a priority.”

Al’s recent research has involved both motion-triggered camera traps and detector dogs. When cameras are compared with canines, the dogs have some distinct advantages.

“A dog can find the one stoat left in a sanctuary,” he says. “Where there’s a single incursion, a dog is brilliant. What’s more, a dog can also help catch predators. A camera can tell you a predator is there, but it can’t help catch it.”

Better motion-triggered cameras and a better understanding of the best ways to use them are an important tool as we work towards a predator-free future. There is, however, no single, simple answer to how camera traps should best be used.

“It depends on your target species, the size of the area you’re monitoring, whether you’re monitoring for relative abundance (eg ‘are there fewer predators after a control operation than there were before it?’) rather than absolute predator numbers, whether you’re trying to obtain behavioural information or trying to find out what predator is killing chicks,” Al explains.

As part of his advisory work, Al gets a lot of emails and phone calls from community groups seeking advice on how to monitor predators. He also gives presentations at workshops, conferences and hui. The importance of monitoring is becoming better understood, he believes.

“We need to do more monitoring, but it’s going in the right direction,” he says.

Why monitoring matters

Stretched resources are often an issue for community groups, limiting the amount of monitoring they feel they can do.

“It’s an understandable feeling,” Al admits, “Groups don’t want to spend money, time and volunteer effort on monitoring when that time and money could be spent on kill traps and bait stations. But it doesn’t make sense not to monitor,” he argues. “If you’re not monitoring as well then you don’t know if what you’re doing is working. You could be wasting ALL your resources!”

“It is absolutely vital to monitor the number of pests that you’re trying to control and the response in biodiversity. It is a waste of time if you’re not seeing a biodiversity response.”So what can monitoring tell you?

“Monitoring will tell you if you need to do more trapping,” Al says. “It can direct your trapping to particular locations. It might even tell you that you’re ‘overdoing it’ and save you some money.”

Camera costs

For small community conservation groups keen to do more monitoring, funding for equipment is likely to be an issue, although like most technology, camera traps are getting better and coming down in price.

“You can get a very good trail camera for $200,” says Al, “But the number of cameras you’ll need depends on the size of the area and the mobility of the species you’re tracking.”

For feral cats and mustelids, the recommended spacing is one camera every 500 metres. Cameras might need to be in place for 3-6 weeks.

“If there’s a control operation planned, you’d have cameras in place for 3 weeks beforehand and leave them in place for three weeks afterwards,” Al says.

Shared system?

The short period of time that a group might need to use monitoring cameras means that some sort of shared system could be possible.

“There’s a lot of demand for a trail camera ‘hire pool’,” agrees Al, “A lot of people have had a similar idea and there is a need out there. But there is no hire pool at the moment. Camera theft would also be an issue,” he adds, “particularly if the cameras were visible in a publicly accessed area.”

Considering the importance of monitoring by community groups however, and the expense of cameras, a regional sharing system may well be something that needs to be looked at in the future.

Poutiri Ao ō Tāne

As a part of his research role at Landcare Research, Al Glen has been closely involved with Hawkes Bay Regional Council’s innovative, landscape-scale ‘Cape to City’ Project and with the earlier Poutiri Ao ō Tāne pest control programme which was a precursor to it.

“Landcare Research has been monitoring the abundance of predators for Poutiri Ao ō Tāne and the biodiversity response,” says Al. “The procedures used in ‘Cape to City’ were developed during Poutiri Ao ō Tāne.”

Skinks

One positive surprise during the biodiversity monitoring was the appearance of native skinks.

“There was a really strong response from native skinks. Before predator control, there were no skinks seen anywhere. Now they’re everywhere. For such a quick response, they must have been there all along,” Al explains. “And the increase in visibility was too quick to be a breeding response. They’ve become more active and more visible (in behaviour), so now we’re picking them up in tracking tunnels.”

The skinks are now tracking at 40-50% abundance in the predator controlled area.

Al’s monitoring cameras in the ‘Cape to City’ project have picked up “hundreds of thousands” of photos.

“It’s a lot of data to use,” he admits. “At the moment we’re concentrating on cats and mustelids (stoats, ferrets and the occasional weasel), but the cameras pick up any animal. We’ve actually got more photos of hedgehogs, rats and mice – and lots of photos of tui – and we will eventually use that information too. As ‘Cape to City’ progresses,” he says, “we hope we might pick up kiwi!”

Al uses scent lures at the camera traps.

Tip to share

“Most camera trapping doesn’t use lures. Instead, cameras are placed at likely spots such as fence-lines and roadsides. But predators are fast-moving,” he explains. “At full speed you can just get a blurry photo. With a lure they slow and pause and you get a good photo.”

The photos are just the beginning for Al and his team. The trap data is then fed into sophisticated mathematical models in order to estimate population density. Currently they’re looking at the data from Hawkes Bay in order to find the best combination of camera method and data analysis method for monitoring feral cats.

Community groups wanting to monitor predators and biodiversity using motion cameras, should not be alarmed however. Simpler methods of analysis are possible for everyday situations. You don’t need to have a PhD in statistical methods.

“Occupancy modelling is one technique,” Al explains. “Instead of calculating how many predators there are, you look at how much of the landscape is being used – so you might get a reduction from 90% to 40%. You can do a simple index – as with trapping tunnels – where you count the number of cats for example, per 100 camera trap days. The trick,” he adds, “is to count the number of separate encounters, not 20 photos of one cat!”

Community groups wanting advice on how best to use camera traps can contact Al Glen at Landcare Research, Auckland.

The post Al Glen captures predator portraits on camera appeared first on Predator Free NZ.

Behind the doors of ordinary Kiwi garages, some astonishing things are happening. Take, for example, a garage somewhere in the suburbs of Upper Hutt, where a robot is currently assembling circuit boards for the Econode designed remote trap sensor devices. Hard to believe – then check out the video of the high-precision robot at work.

Meanwhile, back at Econode ‘home base’ on Great Barrier Island, Matt Way is working in his own, solar-powered shed, designing the electronics and writing the software that will enable the “nodes” to electronically monitor each individual trap in a network using LoRa radio technology.

“The exciting thing about the LoRa standard is that it’s being deployed internationally as well as New Zealand,” Matt says.

Currently there are two providers of LoRa in New Zealand: KotahiNet & Spark NZ.

“The biggest challenge is the environment – keeping everything watertight,” says Matt. “The radio technology works well. Our new design has both the sensor and antenna internally mounted so we are very confident the nodes will stay dry in the harsh New Zealand bush.”

Like many examples of ‘kiwi ingenuity’, the innovative Econode project began when Matt and business partner Scott Sambell thought ‘there’s got to be a better way’ – in this case a better, more efficient way to check traps than tramping around looking at every single one. The SmartTrap device they came up with can be attached to most of the traps currently available, by attaching a magnet without any further modification needed. When a trap is sprung, a signal is sent to a base station (LoRa gateway) using the radio network, then uploaded to the internet.

“We didn’t want reinvent apps,” says Matt, “We worked with what was already available, so Econode can integrate with other systems such as Google apps, TrapNZ and ESRI/ArcGIS.”

Matt’s business partner Scott Sambell used to be the manager of the Glenfern Sanctuary on Great Barrier. But now works all over the country on biosecurity projects with everything from drones to dogs. (He was away in the Chathams with his rat-dog Milly, so wasn’t available to be interviewed.) Scott could see the value of a trap monitoring system. Matt had the electronic design and software writing skills to make it happen.

Matt and his family returned to New Zealand a few years ago, after living in Thailand, working for the oil and gas industry.

“With my daughter (who’s now 5), I wanted to get back to New Zealand and nature,” he says. “And I thought it’d be great to use my skills for conservation.”

It’s now about 3 years since the project started, with the Econode Ltd company formed two years ago and welcome financial support from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) helping to get things rolling.

One of the early conservation projects to trial the Econode devices was good friend Judy Gilbert’s Windy Hill Sanctuary.

Mulberry Grove School on Great Barrier are also early SmartTrap users. The community have been trapping on the foreshore adjacent to the school for the last 10 years and for the last 12 months have had Econode SmartTrap devices attached to each of their 18 traps. The pupils aren’t just learning about conservation – maths and statistics skills are being put to practical use too.

Mulberry Grove pupils will soon be linking up to fellow Econode users at Orphir Community School in the Orkney Islands, Scotland where they are trapping stoats and minks. They’ll be comparing biodiversity and pest control programmes in their two communities.

“We are planning on working with Mulberry Grove school to create ‘Flipped Classroom’ video presentations to be made available to other schools”, says Matt. “The support and encouragement from the community, Local Board and DOC has been very encouraging, and goes to show what can be achieved at a local level.”

Matt and the Econode team are also in discussion with a conservation group in Cornwall UK an area where invasive grey squirrels are a pest issue, threatening the survival of native red squirrels.

“We’re hoping to export the technology,” Matt says. “There are 2 key things we need to do – SmartTrap needs to be very robust and we need to keep costs down. We’re really struggling with a lack of funding though,” he admits. “If we had more funding, we could make 1000 units per week instead of 100/week. With funding the units would be cheaper.”

“We are proud of the fact SmartTrap nodes are made in New Zealand, and with efficient micro manufacturing the costs are only marginally more than getting SmartTrap nodes made in China. Likewise we are keeping costs down by using open source software”

Recently Econode teamed up with another group of kiwi innovators, Paekakariki-based GroundTruth, the developers of the Trap.NZ website and free app for pest control project management.

“We believe in environment, community, collaboration and opensource /opendata,” Matt says.

The two companies have been collaborating for about a year now, working on a remote-monitoring project for the Kapiti Biodiversity Trust. It’s an exciting project – an offshore island standing sentinel over a 30 km coastal mainland trapping network.

More on that story soon…

The post Robot in garage assembles Econode circuit boards appeared first on Predator Free NZ.

Kathryn Marshall, helped by a team of Waimea Menz Shed volunteers, with some expert advice from ornithologist Peter Gaze, has designed and tested predator proof nest boxes for kakariki (parakeets) – and it all came about because she wanted to help another rare bird, the mohua (yellowhead).

But before kakariki, before mohua even – it was cheeky, inquisitive weka that got Kathryn’s attention, which just goes to show how one wildlife encounter can so easily lead to another and another…

Kathryn explains:

“With trapping in the hills around Nelson, western weka came back into properties. It is the first time in my lifetime that weka have been around Nelson city. They were breeding in my garden so I started helping the birds and their chicks, putting out water and food. They would bathe in the water dish and were great parents, raising a number of chicks over a year.

“Mohua had been bird of the year (in 2013) and I thought it would be great to try and bring back mohua to the Nelson region. They used to be locally common and they’re good breeders, but they’ve not been seen in a lifetime. I thought we’ve done it for weka, let’s do it for mohua!”

Kathryn carries out predator control on her own property and is well aware of the threats they pose to a hole-nesting bird like mohua.

“I made a list of the problems:
• predators
• wasps (competitors for honeydew and insects)
• a long time on the nest which is a hole in a tree, making females, eggs and chicks vulnerable

“They’re too long on the nest – but on the positive side they have up to 4 eggs, twice a year and nest in beech forest. Nelson has the right environment, but not the right predator control.”

“Then I talked to people about the best and quickest ways to help mohua, how to control predators and increase their numbers.”

It was Kathryn’s father who suggested predator-proof nests. But what sort of nestbox design would work?

“I talked to (Project Janszoon) ornithologist Peter Gaze who told me about a research paper on riflemen from Canterbury University. It showed that a simple nestbox, where it had a very small 2.5cm hole, most predators couldn’t get it.”

Most, but not all.

There were more questions:

“How do we build it? How to secure it to a tree and secure a lid? What were the best materials cost-wise and for durability? I asked the Menz Shed at Waimea to make one up and we problem-solved with the prototype. We made a variation with a metal plate on front which meant that predators couldn’t get a grip and couldn’t enlarge the small entrance hole.”

“After 3 goes, we came up with 2 prototypes which we showed to Peter Gaze. He thought they were really good! I asked Peter if we could trail them at Brook Waimarama, but it’s a fenced sanctuary without predators, so we trialled them in the ‘halo’ region outside the fence. Peter helped devise a layout and we put 50 up. We worked with Friends of Flora and Project Janszoon to get some trial nest boxes installed this spring. Previous research showed there was a statistically significant increase in riflemen population.”

It was at this point that kakariki came into the picture.

“Natureland in Nelson is breeding kakariki for release and they asked if we’d try and come up with something for them to trial. Rats can even cause problems for the breeders,” Kathryn explains.

Like mohua, wild kakariki usually nest in holes in trees, making adult females and the eggs and chicks very vulnerable. Once again, Menz Shed were keen to help.

“They said ‘we’ll work with you’. Alan Kissell facilitated and Graham Fittock from Menz Shed started looking on ‘Google’ at research. Graham found a pipe design that had been devised for the North American song thrush. The pipe, 15cm diameter was cut on a 49 degrees angle , with cut edges sanded, so that it was too long for predators to enter from the bottom, 18cm, and they couldn’t drop down from the top 36cm. The thrush nested within the tube but kakariki are too big to do that.”

More experimentation followed.

“We took a kakariki nestbox from Natureland and stuck a pipe on the end,” Kathryn says. “Natureland have yellow and red kakariki nest box designs, so we standardised those into one nestbox that we could make. We also needed to look at the core material, because kakariki gnaw nestboxes and we had to provide a safe, chew proof ladder at the bottom for the chicks to fledge.”

“We knew we could keep predators out, but would red and yellow kakariki use the boxes? Would a smaller pipe work with a metal plate?”

The smaller pipe option turned out to be a ‘no’, then a message came through from Natureland. ‘Yes – the kakariki are using the nestboxes’.

In fact when Kathryn and a journalist went along to Natureland to check the results out, they put a nest box up and 3 kakariki immediately started arguing over it. Not only were they using the boxes – they loved them!

The predator-proof nestboxes are currently being used in Natureland’s rat-free breeding areas and are a precaution should rats ever get in. It also means that kakariki are familiar with the boxes and, when birds are subsequently released, nestboxes are put out at the same time for them to use.

The basic pipe design has proven adaptable for all sorts of nestbox variations but Kathryn and her team are yet to test the extent of this usage for additional species of birds.

“Natureland asked for South Island kaka nestboxes,” Kathryn says, “so we refined Zealandia’s North Island kaka nestbox design and the orders were done last week. We’ve had orders for morepork boxes and requests for a South Island saddleback.”

On a personal level, Kathryn is also determined that mohua will soon have their own nestbox design too. It was, after all, why she began this journey.

“It’s all an interim measure before 2050,” explains Kathryn. “We’ve created an option for right now and there has suddenly been heaps of interest. Even though there are predator-proof islands, many of them are short of nest-sites.”

After all, we can’t put all our rare natives on islands. Safer mainland options are very important too, not least in order to maintain genetic diversity.

“MP Nicky Wagner asked if we could roll out the project around all the Menz Sheds in New Zealand,” Kathryn says. “We’re hoping to produce a CAD design that’s easy to share. There’s more to it than you’d think, but we’ve now got a product that works made of materials that are safe.”

What is, perhaps, most amazing of all is that this has all happened in a very short space of time.

“We only started, as a hobby, at the end of last year,” Kathryn says. “Now is the first full breeding season.”

Check out these related stories:

Predators vs Parakeets

Brook Waimarama Sanctuary

Friends of Flora

Project Janszoon

The post Predator proof nestboxes more than a pipe dream appeared first on Predator Free NZ.

The secret lives of Taranaki’s pet cats are currently being revealed – thanks to project funding from Curious Minds which has enabled the purchase of 60 cat harnesses fitted with GPS tracking devices. If you live in Taranaki and you’ve always wondered where your cat goes when it’s not at home, now is your chance to find out. The result may surprise you.

Wild for Taranaki are managing the project – titled ‘Tracking Furbabies’. They have been assisted by M.A.I.N. (Mapping, Analysis and Information Network) Trust and New Plymouth Vet Group. They’ve enlisted the help of children from 3 local schools, Highlands Intermediate, Central School (New Plymouth) and Makahu School (East Taranaki).

Elise Smith is Chairperson of MAIN Trust NZ.

“We are the ‘Science Partner’ for the Curious Minds project. The Trust runs the online office services with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), hosts the online maps and videos, coordinates the surveys, data management and the interpretation. I like the GIS work and making the videos,” Elise says, “I also facilitated the original application with the schools and the New Plymouth Vets support, and like visiting the schools with Jo.”

Jo Fitness is a zoologist and studied cave weta taxonomy and systematics for her PhD.

“Jo is the Administrator – setting up all the GPS units and distributing them to the schools,” Elise explains. “Her role involves demonstrating how to fit harnesses, retrieving the units, downloading the GPS data to the online office system, doing GIS work, and also visiting and talking to schools.”

As well as tracking their own pet’s movements, the school pupils wrote questions for an online questionnaire. Taranaki cat-owners who complete the initial questionnaire are also asked whether they wish to take part in the second, tracking part of the research, where their cat’s movements are tracked night and day for 7 days.

“So far 58 people have completed the questionnaire and have their cats in the tracking programme, with more in the pipeline,” according to Elise. “Privacy will be protected,” Elise is careful to point out. “People who are participating can choose to share their cat’s photo or mapping if they want to, but otherwise the results will be private.”

The results of each cat’s travels is then mapped, and published on the Furbabies Gallery to show the tracks, and day and night preferences. The range of each cat has also been calculated.

If other pet cats are anything like ‘test cat’ Cinnamon, then their owners may be in for some surprises. Check out the video map of her week of travels. Her daytime strolls are coloured yellow, with night-time adventures coloured pink:

Cinnamon’s extensive travels not only put her own safety at risk, but could easily take her into sensitive wildlife areas.

“Cinnamon is a favourite,” says Elise, “because she is so energetic, and she demonstrates just how far pet cats can wander.”

It will be revealing to see whether Cinnamon’s roaming is typical of cats in the study. But what do we know about Cinnamon herself?

“Cinnamon is a beautiful ‘Moggie’. She lives with two other cats in a peri-urban area and was adopted from a Trade Me advert,” says Elise. “She is very independent, 5 years old, and does hunt. She brings in rats, mice, ducklings and lizards.”

Cinnamon’s wandering is currently completely unrestricted by her owners.

“She can come and go from the house as she pleases,” says Elise, “and has access to food at all times. She has companionship – with two stay-at-home cats, and a scratching post. Her owners did not know where she was going to, as she spends a long time away from home, and were keen to discover her secret life. They thought that she travelled long distances, well beyond the neighbours … and she does!”

The tracking devices are small and shouldn’t interfere with the daily activities of the feline participants and so will be a realistic picture of how far Taranaki’s cats roam. The GPS unit ‘pings’ the cat’s position 24 hours per day at 3 minute intervals.

“The GPS devices are tiny – about the size of an electronic car key,” says Elise. “They’re bundled in tape so that they don’t get chewed and attached to a soft harness. It’s light and – like a walking harness – fits behind the ‘armpits’ of the cat’s front legs. They don’t seem to get hooked on things (like a collar might).”

After one week, Jo Fitness collects the harness and downloads the GPS data to computer where GIS software converts the data to dots on a map. Jo and Elise then check for obviously wrong ‘pings’ where the satellite hasn’t been working properly. If the cat enters a tunnel, the system can get confused at the lack of signal and give a clearly incorrect position – out at sea for example!

A further step in the visualisation process is to use the QGIS ‘time manager’ software.. That generates a ‘video’-style sequence of where the cat is going over a time period – showing the actual travels, rather than just a static picture of all the dots on a map.

Once the survey and mapping results are in and the secret lives of pet cats revealed, children from the 3 participating schools will be making recommendations about how cat owners might better protect vulnerable wildlife and keep their pets safe from potential dangers such as road injuries or consuming poisoned rats or mice. Cat owners will be able to see if the cat range reaches into gullies with wildlife, protected bush areas, or Key Native Ecosystems which have pest eradication programmes. The GIS can show the owners where their cats range, and the danger areas.

Ultimately it’s about encouraging responsible ownership.

“I’ve got a bag of data from the vet,” says Elise, “It’s all the details about injured birds that have been brought in. We want to know if cats are going into ecological areas. We want to engage people and get people thinking.”

Already the school pupils have had some interesting results from tracking their own cats. Makahu School, for example, is a rural school in East Taranaki.

“They’re rural cats and can go anywhere, but we found that they stay away from open paddocks and go where there are clumps of bushes,” Elise says.

The school is also near where North Island robins live, so the children – and researchers – are interested in whether the robins are at risk from Makahu pets.

“There are key native ecosystems for Taranaki that are under covenants,” says Elise. “We want to know if they are also hangouts for pet cats.”

Here’s country cat ‘Sooty’ from Makahu:

The schools have all had one turn with the GPS devices but some are going to have one more go – now that the weather is better – to see whether there are seasonal differences in the wanderings of their pets. Elise is keen to get results in and complete the project with the children before the end of term. And – with the school research nearing completion, it’s time to invite the public to take part.

So if you live in Taranaki and want to learn more about your pet’s secret life, check out the survey and permission form on Wild for Taranaki’s website. Elise and Jo would love to hear from you.

The post Curious Minds project lets kids keep tabs on their tabbies appeared first on Predator Free NZ.

Inventing a new kind of trap can be a slow kind of process. Sometimes you don’t even know you’re on that journey until you’re well on your way. Take the podiTRAP for example. It’s probably still a year away from commercial release, but the podiTRAP may well be ‘the tool to use’ in the future.

“I never expected it to be where it is now,” says its inventor, Pouri Rakete-Stones. “It’s evolved into this big monster project!”

Pouri is an engineer by trade. He spent 10 years as a fitter/welder, doing research and development work on machinery, before getting involved with Hawkes Bay kiwi conservation and outdoor education organisation ECOED in 2010.

Not only did engineering and conservation come together at that point, but that was when Pouri and his wife Wendy first worked with then-General Manager Al Bramley. Al is currently CEO of ZIP (Zero Invasive Predators). Pouri, Wendy and Al also worked together during the early development stage of the Poutiri Ao ō Tāne project, a sister project to Hawkes Bay’s Cape to City. It was on this project that they started talking about what sort of trap they wanted to use for their 8000 hectares predator control programme.

“We had the idea of using a run through tunnel trap,” Pouri explains, “So I started working in my garage to see what I came up with. We came up with some ideas of what we wanted. It had to have good usability. It needed to be easy for farmers, landowners or even volunteers to service and the trap needed to be DOC 250 size because we wanted to include ferrets in the target species. So I developed a flip open lid for the tunnel so that the whole thing folds open.”

Kiwi were also a factor in the tunnel design.

“We had to consider the length of the tunnel and the size of the entrance hole so that kiwi couldn’t reach the trap inside,” says Pouri.

The team then tested the tunnels, with DOC 250 traps inside, against the standard DOC 250 setup, with 50% of each trap type in their predator control network.

“The data collected over the trial showed that tunnels were the way to go,” says Pouri. “The tunnels were catching more ferrets and 2 times as many rats. The number of stoats caught in each was about the same.”

When the Cape to City project started in 2015, there were aspects of the prototype traps that the project team wanted to keep – the run through tunnel and the easy, flip-open lid – but other factors that still needed to be improved.

“The traps needed to be easy to set,” says Pouri. “The DOC 250 traps need a tool to set. They can be dangerous and hard for volunteers to set.”

Pouri’s solution was to change the design, introducing a handle.

“The handle on top of the tunnel was attached to the DOC 250 trap inside so that the trap could be set from outside,” he explains. “The handle on the outside also works as a ‘flag’. When the trap is set, the handle is up, so when you’re servicing the network you don’t need to stop at all the tunnels. It makes in quicker and more efficient to service the trapping network.”

The new handle feature worked so well that even Pouri’s 12-year-old daughter could safely set the traps.

“It’s also locking,” says Pouri. “When the handle is up and the trap is set, you can’t flip open the lid.

The new tunnel-trap design was trialled in the Cape to City project during 2015-2016. In mid-2015 family-owned Dannevirke sheet-metal manufacturing company Metalform also became involved in development of the product.

“Our role is take ideas and commercialise them,” explains Campbell Easton, Managing Director of Metalform. “We’ve taken all the knowledge that Pouri has, the years of tinkering and refining an original ‘bespoke’ trap and we’ve used our expertise to develop a commercially viable product which can be mass-manufactured accurately and easily. We’ve got a lot of automatic robotic welding and laser-cutting equipment,” he adds. “With the podiTRAP, the key thing has been to ensure that there is a very consistent trigger weight.”

“I hadn’t been thinking in terms of product manufacture,” Pouri says. “Metalform helped develop a new shape and box size so that it was robust and stronger – but still keeping the key design features.”

While Metalform has manufactured other products for the conservation sector, the podiTRAP is the first kill trap they’ve worked on.

“Years ago the firm used to make something called a ‘jam-gun’ for pest control,” says Campbell, “And nowadays we build componentry for pest-proof fencing, fence capping for the fence at the Cape Kidnappers sanctuary.”

With Metalform on board, the next design step was getting the podiTRAP NAWAC (National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee) tested as a humane trap for killing ferrets – one of the target species in the Cape to City predator control project.

“In 2016 we took the trap to Lincoln and put it through its paces,” says Pouri, “And it failed three times. It was a good process,” he says. “It tested the boundaries and we took it away and sent it back to Metalform and they were really good and made changes in a couple of days. Then it failed again, so we had more ideas on how to change it, like increasing the spring strength.”

As the spring size increased, the trap then needed to be re-engineered for the increased spring tension. By the time the podiTRAP passed the NAWAC test as a ferret trap on its 4th test cycle the springs were 4 x stronger than a standard DOC 250 trap. The standard ferret test weight for the NAWAC test has recently risen from 0.900kg to 1.800kg, this makes the new NAWAC test standard much more difficult to pass.

“It was a 3 month process,” says Pouri, “And the 4th time it was tested it passed with flying colours. It’s now got very big, strong springs and the podiTRAP, along with the DOC 250 which was NAWAC-tested about 10 years ago, are the only traps which have passed the NAWAC test for ferrets.”

Other modifications to the trap included a redesigned shape for the handle so it was easy to reset. Once the design had got its NAWAC ‘tick’, 1000 traps were made up by Metalform and are currently being field-tested in the Cape to City project.

“There have been a few little bumps,” says Pouri. “We’ve now got the trigger setting sorted so that when you pull the handle back, the trap sets every time. And initially the traps had no bases. They were fastened to the ground. But there were problems with grass growing through, so now we’ve got a plastic base and that’s working well.”

The design process continues with Metalform now working on the architecture of the container.

“The last step of the process is to get the plastic injection mould tooling done,” says Campbell.

“Metalform came up with a design that was plastic-injected, not made of plywood, so it lasts longer,” Pouri adds. “They’ve made a 3D printed version and now they’re fiddling with the design so that it’s nice and not bulky,” he explains. “They’re also working on a modularised design so that the traps stack on top of each other and can be stacked on a quad-bike okay. With the ply traps you could carry 3 or 4 at a time but with the new, modularised plastic they’re light and you can probably carry 20 at a time.”

It’s an important practical modification as the product comes closer to being commercially released.

“Metalform have been fantastic with the redesigns,” says Pouri. “In the future, it will be a fantastic trap moving forward, especially for big male ferrets. It’s about 95% ready now but we’re finishing work on the design of the outside container. By the middle of next year it might be on the market. We don’t want to release it prematurely. It has to be 100% ready first.”

So keep an eye out next year for the launch of the podiTRAP – a product that has been seven years already in the design and the making.

The post New podiTRAP a long time in the making appeared first on Predator Free NZ.

A while back the Squawk Squad team were thinking about how they could get people more interested in birds in the lead-up to the December launch of their Squawk Squad app. Conservation Week in October seemed like an ideal opportunity just waiting to be grabbed.

“We were thinking about how we could blow it up and make it the biggest ever” says co-founder and team leader Fraser McConnell. “We decided to put together an online digital conservation education pack that was interactive and engaging, pulling together lesson plans and resources that were already out there.”

The team sourced material from organisations such as DOC and Zealandia, bringing together a host of resources in one easy-to-access location.

“We set it up and did some user testing. In the first week we thought we might get 2000 sign ups, instead we had 23,000 and after 3 weeks there were 40,000 kids signed up across 800 schools.”

Those 40,000 Squawk Squad Rangers weren’t just sitting hooked up to their computer screens learning about birds online.

“We used the digital platform to get kids outside,” Fraser explains. “It got kids making and setting rat-tracking tunnels, there was a bird trading card game and we ran a competition for kids to find the classroom that could recruit the most whanau and friends to sponsor traps for a sanctuary.

The winning classroom was Room 14 of Belmont Primary School in Auckland who then got to come to the official Squawk Squad app launch at Ark in the Park.

“They were New Zealand’s greatest Squawk Squad Rangers,” says Fraser. “They were incredible. One boy signed up the school principal on the first day and another made a video of himself. Kids had playdates where they were handing out hand-drawn posters.”

The Squawk Squad team live-streamed a video each morning, giving updates… on which class had won the daily prize and announcing the top 10 classes in the competition.

“We got videos back made by the teachers showing the kids excited reaction when they learned they were No. 2 etc,” Fraser says.

Come December, Room 14 were there for the app launch, along with other guests including Maggie Barry, MP Alfred Ngaro, DOC’s Predator Free Ranger Katharine Lane and the Ark in the Park Team. But what exactly is the Squawk Squad app and where did it all begin…

It started with a conversation. Fraser and co-founder Alex Hannon are mechanical engineers and mates from University days. They got together and got talking about wanting to do something that wasn’t about the money – something that would benefit New Zealand. The conversation turned to conservation and when they looked into the issues facing New Zealand wildlife, they realised they’d found their mission. Conservation needed all the help it could get.

But how could they make a difference? What could any – or better still MANY – New Zealanders do to help? Sanctuaries and volunteer trapping groups are doing great work but need more funding for more traps. They need more volunteers – and/or more efficient, less time-consuming trapping methods to make the most of the volunteer hours they have. Not everyone can volunteer – but everyone can potentially help fund self-resetting traps.

Fraser and Alex wanted to do more than persuade people to donate money, however. They wanted everyone to see what their donation was doing and to get more closely involved.

Their idea was for donors to help sponsor a trap and, through an app, have a live connection to the trap they helped fund, with a notification to their smart phone when their self-resetting trap was triggered.

The real initiation was made when they decided to take their idea to Start-up Weekend Auckland in November 2016. They grew their team, including the addition of their Marketing Technologist and developer, Racheal Herlihy and Operations Lead, Odette Colebrook – and came home winners. They continued to win awards in 2017 including a WWF Innovation Conservation award and being awarded highly commended at the NZ Innovation Awards. All in all, 2017 was a hectic and successful year.

“We started our kickstarter in May, aiming to raise $20,000 to help North Island kokako at Ark in the Park in the Waitakeres,” says Fraser. “In one month we’d raised $70,000 so we upscaled the first project and funded a second project. The second project was decided by audience vote – the Te Rere Penguin Reserve in the Catlins.”

A third project – Thames Coast Kiwi Care – has now also been completely funded, with a lot of new people coming on board as funders and many ‘gift traps’ purchased for friends in the lead-up to Christmas. Fund-raising is now underway to purchase 60 self-resetting traps for Squawk Squad’s fourth project at Pukaha Mt Bruce.

The self-resetting traps are manufactured by Goodnature, with sensor nodes designed by Encounter Solutions.

“Self-resettable traps can be expensive so a Squawk Squad is created to break down the cost of conservation into bite size pieces. Each Squad member contributes to the total cost of the trap, sensor node and full set-up. Sanctuaries receive our traps and technology and are only responsible for the gas and lure replacements and the minimal ongoing data costs. Each member of the Squad sees where their trap is deployed and is notified every time the trap activates. Key metrics such as number of pests trapped, the sanctuary leader board, bird noise level and reintroduced species are relayed back to the Squad members.”

Not only do sanctuaries and volunteer groups receive the full trap setup for free, but the labour cost-savings can also be huge.

“Over 3 years a 500 trap grid of our trapping systems can save over 10,000 hours of labour time or 1,300 worker days! Locating, checking, clearing and resetting conventional traps is extremely inefficient and can consume as much as 80% of a sanctuaries time. We equip sanctuaries with a live view of all funded traps, when they activate and therefore when they need refuelling. This means that instead of having to check a traditional trap every week, whether it has or has not triggered, the sanctuaries can leave the funded traps for up to 6 months!”

While the basic Squawk Squad app is now live and notifying, Fraser and the team plan to add new features soon – including a feature showing the bird noise level in the park where the trap is situated. So Squawk Squad members, even those stuck in an office in the city, can check out how their trap is doing and, over time, how birdlife in their park is responding, to a newfound freedom from predators.

Too busy to check a trapline – no worries – help sponsor a trap and check your phone app instead…

The post App launch tops successful year for Squawk Squad appeared first on Predator Free NZ.

Jordan and Mikayla Munn are recent winners of $25,000 in the WWF 2017 Innovation Awards with their venture to use top-of-the-line, military quality, thermal imaging technology to detect and help in the removal of invasive animals. ‘Trap and Trigger Ltd’, the young couple’s conservation and wildlife management company, has already invested hugely in the technology – both in time researching the best equipment to use and in the significant outlay (in the region of $100,000+) needed to buy and adapt the thermal imaging camera gear.

Jordan, a keen hunter, is committed to making a difference when it comes to deer, pigs and goats living in sensitive conservation areas. His expertise is utilised in areas like island sanctuaries and remote locations containing highly endangered species. The operational areas tend to be out of reach for constant recreational hunting pressure and require a systematic approach with reliable techniques to remove the target species to low enough densities to have positive impacts in the ecosystem.

“Ground hunting generally has detection rates of 50% following dispatch rates of 50% leaving an unsuccessful encounter rate of 75%,” Jordan explains. “A daily coverage is also limited to an average of about 170 hectares.”

Compare that to what can be achieved with a Thermal Imaging Detection System (TADS).

“Surveying the same vegetation type, TADS has the ability to detect 90 – 100% of the current population and then remove up to 60% in double canopy forest and 100% in low scrub and alpine tussock. These rates and efficiency can only be increased with more research and better quality equipment.”

So, after researching the possibilities, Jordan invested in the best quality equipment he was able to buy and set about adapting it to New Zealand control and eradication ‘real world’ situations. For example, research models were restricted to the rear seat, creating a break in communications between the pilot, shooter and thermal operator. Trap and Trigger operate their system with the camera operator seated beside the pilot in the front of a helicopter and the shooter positioned directly behind. Both pilot and shooter can see the thermal imagery and work together to line up their target.

“The camera is aligned with a military grade laser pointer to assist the pilot and shooter in the direction of the detected target until it presents itself for identification and dispatch. In the right environment, we can detect ungulates at over a kilometre away,” Jordan adds. “At the moment we are also working on feeding the live footage to a HD headset to fully emerge us in the cameras view therefore giving higher ability of detection.”

Thermal technology has been around for 20 years or so, but it’s the way that Jordan and his team are adapting it to better suit their own conservation operation needs in New Zealand that is new.

“We have studied trials and methods and created an innovative concept based on their limitations such as increasing the field of view or increasing clarity through pixel density and tracking systems through surface temperature readings and increasing mobility with our free floating harness system. We obtained a permit to import an industrial laser to turn our detection device into a tracking and removal system.”

The whole development process has been a new experience for Jordan who started out working as a possum-trapper as a 16-year-old. Now, 9 years later, at 25 years old, he is not just a very experienced contract hunter but has suddenly found himself negotiating laser permits with the Ministry of Health and arranging harness certification.

Jordan’s mobile harness setup has the very practical advantage of not needing to be permanently attached to one particular helicopter. If he gets asked to help with a Search & Rescue callout, for example, he can just grab their thermal imaging gear and mobile harness and hop in any S&R chopper.

Jordan got his ‘commercial hunting break’ as a 17 year-old, just a year after he started possum-trapping for a living.

“I was working for a possum contractor in Southland,” he says. “I was a rural kid and like every outdoors teenager I loved hunting. There was a DOC deer-culling operation and someone got sick midway through an operation, so I was called to step in and join the team – and I cleaned up the older guys. I found out I was a reasonably good hunter,” Jordan explains, “so I trained up my dog as a hunting dog and started getting hired by professional hunters and building up a hunting reputation.”

He was lucky enough to be involved in a few high-profile eradication projects early on in his hunting career, helping to build that all-important professional hunter profile.

“I was involved in the deer eradication on Secretary Island and in a sheep eradication in the Virgin Islands. On Secretary Island there was a massive team – 7 or 8 hunters on a 2 week survey, but because of the vegetation there still wasn’t 100% coverage. Secretary Island is about 8140 hectares,” Jordan says. “Now people are talking about eradicating pigs from the Auckland Islands and that’s about 56,000 hectares. It’s scrubby and almost impenetrable in places and its remote and sub-Antarctic so the weather systems are severe.”

Eradication on a bigger scale isn’t anything like as simple as just upscaling what you did last time.

“You can’t just get 50 hunters instead of 7 or 8 and leave them to it,” says Jordan, “You need better technology as well. Eradication is the pinnacle of a hunting career,” he adds, “because you’re doing something that has a long-lasting effect.”

Jordan credits Te Anau-based DOC senior ranger, sharp-shooter and world-renown eradication expert, Norm Macdonald, for encouraging him to have a progressive attitude to hunting.

“Norm is a huge influence,” says Jordan. “He got me involved in eradication contracts and taught me to look at limitations with a progressive mindset. He’s done eradications all over the world. He’s 62 now and at the moment he’s working on an eradication project in Guam.”

Jordan too has begun to work on international eradication projects and used the profits from a Canadian operation as the deposit for his TADS purchase.

“It was a deer eradication,” Jordan explains. “There was a thermal imager on the project and it wasn’t planned that way, but it became a primary detection tool. We found a lot more deer than expected. So we decided to find the best thermal imager we could and put it to use in our upcoming projects. We went for the highest quality and worked on the limitations. We looked at what had been found in research studies and what worked in the New Zealand situation.”

Jordan had been looking for ways to ‘step up’ the work his company does – part of the philosophy that mentor Norm Macdonald helped instil in him.

“I’d moved from hunting to working on eradications. The aim was then to step up by moving from the ground to the air in a new form,” he says. “People have tried trapping and snare collars and Judas animals, there’s just not many areas left to improve.”

In eradications a single remaining pregnant animal can undo everything.

“So you need many tools,” Jordan says. “You have to use every aspect of detection so that no remaining targets can go undetected.”

Jordan is careful to point out the difference between the eradication work he does and areas used by recreational hunters. One is not a threat to the other, he emphasises. Control on mainland New Zealand isn’t about wiping out all deer and pigs and killing off recreational hunting in the process.

“I’m also a recreational hunter,” he says. “Deer control operations in New Zealand are carried out in specific areas where the aim is to control deer, not remove them. They are controlled because they’re reaching high numbers or to stop them getting somewhere that has high conservation values. There’s always a purpose,” he explains, “Like controlling deer in an area to benefit the kokako. At the moment DOC and HealthPost are looking at removing pigs from Farewell Spit. A lot of different ground-nesting birds breed there and the pigs eat the eggs.”

While deer are introduced mammals, they’re not predators. Pigs, however, are predators and while his TADS equipment is currently being developed for larger introduced mammals, Jordan can see it evolving over time to be used for smaller introduced predators too.

“At the moment the thermal camera can spot possums in the canopy,” he says, “But it’s not worth flying around to get possums. What we have now won’t help with stoats and possums, but it will help with pigs.”

In future, possums and stoats may be in the sights too. The technology could also, potentially, be developed for monitoring native wildlife such as bats or takahe in remote, inaccessible Fiordland Valleys.

“Mikayla and I decided to dedicate our company to wildlife management,” Jordan says. “We want to make a difference – to be at the front, not at the back – moving forward and getting results.”

It’s that progressive, innovative mindset that makes Trap and Trigger Hunting well-deserved winners of a 2017 WWF Innovation Award.

The post Trap and Trigger takes out Innovation Award appeared first on Predator Free NZ.

Gerald Dickinson has a busy year ahead. He’s just won a WWF Innovation Award for his Grid-i pest-detection development project and is aiming to have commercial units available by December 2018. It is – he freely admits – an ambitious timeline.

“The Innovation Award is a huge boost,” Gerald says. “The various hardware components are available, but I need to write the software that will glue it all together.”

So what is Grid-i?

“It uses modern technology to detect and identify invasive mammals,” Gerald explains. “A low-resolution sensor reads the thermal heat signature of the animal. The heat signature is slightly different between different species. The software will detect whether it is a possum, stoat or rat. It’s a bit like recognising a face. There are big features and also little features that define that face. So we are determining what big features are required.”

At the moment Gerald is working with Bruce Warburton’s team at Landcare Research, Lincoln to determine what level of data is needed to reliably identify the key predator species. They have built a data recording tool to record thermal and video data in low-resolution onto an SD -card.

“After forming the new business called iDetect-IT, the aim is to get enough data for identification, but not too much data,” Gerald says. “I approached Landcare Research about using recording devices in their animal pens. We’ve set up the test tools in the animal pens and we’re in the middle of collecting thermal and video data. So far we’ve done possums and stoats and rats are next. There are 3 pens with 3 recording devices set up – the low resolution (video) recorder, a thermal device recording the heat signature and a standard high resolution infra-red device that can see in pitch black. The 3 devices are gathering data which we will then compare and correlate between.”

The aim is to:
• Determine if different target species have different heat profiles;
• Determine if target species can be identified remotely using thermal imaging;
• Determine if thermal data resolution from thermal sensor is enough to distinguish species.

And that’s just the beginning of Gerald’s work-plan for 2018. The next stages are:

• Analyses heat-signature data from the 3 targets (requires building PC based tools to analyse the data);
• Develop heat signature template library of the 3 species;
• Incorporate template library into working software operating on embedded processor;
• Develop AI (artificial intelligence) software utilising template library to extract key features from raw thermal data and detect target presence;
• Build prototypes (unit with battery) to test in home urban environment around a compost heap for rat activity;
• Expand prototype trial into wider area (with help from Ngaio Predator Free trapping group);
• Commercial units December 2018.

Phew! That’s a lot to pack into the next 11 months.

“Analysing the data will be the interesting part,” says Gerald. “There are no software tools to analyse so I’ll be building up software test tools in ‘Python’. It’s a software language that allows you to do big number crunching on a home PC with good memory. Then I’ll be able to load in data files and process the data for information, by filtering out the unwanted and enhancing the wanted, you get more useful information.”

Gerald likens the process to using something like ‘Photoshop’ by using sharpening filters to fix a blurred image.

“This is the key to the design, having an efficient algorithm extracting useful information. The benefit is the software can operate in a lean and mean state with no unwanted features. This reduces the need to have a powerful processor or operate the processor at a slower speed. A faster operating processor uses more power. By improving the software efficiency, it improves the battery life.”

With a background of 20-25 years in electronic software design in private industry, Gerald is clear about his key requirements for the final product.

“Grid-i needs to have a long battery life (many weeks), be robust for the outside environment and be reliable with a high degree of accuracy,” he says.

Those priorities were developed when Gerald was developing embedded software devices for the military such as bomb disposal work in Afghanistan.

“I was building devices with a transmitter and a receiver. The receiver was put next to a detonator. The transmitter at a safe distance sent a “blow up now” message to the receiver. The devices had to be robust (with bombs detonating nearby!) and very safe. So I learnt to build rugged, long-lasting devices with a long battery life. They needed to go when you wanted them to ALL of the time.”

Gerald is also aiming to make the devices affordable so that it is feasible to have multiple units forming a ‘grid’ information picture of predators – for example with each house in an urban environment having one unit.

“They should be commercially available for $200-$250 per unit,” he says. “The product will look like a ‘fat cellphone’. It will be a ‘surveillance box’ with a battery, electronics and software aboard and it will be a sensor. It won’t have a display. Devices will record and detect anything in their field of vision (eg ‘rat’ at 0300 hrs located at address ) and will be able to ‘talk’ to each other. A central data repository will collect the data (what is where) from the individual devices.”

Gerald will also be building applications that will pull out the data to a website-based display. The grid of devices will show what is happening, where it is happening and how it changes over time (eg seasonal differences or trapping programme effectiveness).

“What makes it so interesting, is knowing that it can be done, but not knowing how,” says Gerald, who clearly likes a challenge. “It’s about solving problems so that things can be done efficiently.”

He’s looking forward to testing prototypes in his compost heap later this year.

“In the real world things happen that you’re not expecting,” he says. “Grid-i has many potential applications. This technology will help backyard trappers in the war on urban pests, so we can see the return of our native species into our cities. These intelligent devices (with machine learning, AI algorithms) would be beneficial for conservation operations by helping target specific species more accurately and moving away from current indiscriminate pest removal methods (eg 1080). Grid-i also has great potential for eradication operations to locate and remove the last 1% of difficult pests from an area in the move towards a Predator Free New Zealand.”

The post Ambitious plans for Grid-i detector appeared first on Predator Free NZ.

Not long ago, a door-knocking volunteer from a community trapping group offered to lend Phill Waddington a DOC 200 trap to put in his back yard. What the volunteer didn’t realise – and probably most New Zealanders don’t know – is that Phill Waddington, Hutt Valley wildlife artist, actually invented the DOC Series of humane kill traps.

(You can buy your own DOC 200 trap from PFNZ Trust here)

Phill assured the volunteer that there was no need to lend him any traps – he had one or two of his own! But how did an artist come to invent one of the most well-known and widely used humane kill traps in New Zealand, utilized by conservationists, farmers and government agencies across the country?

It’s a story that goes back a lifetime…

Art and conservation are deeply entwined in Phill Waddington’s story. He has always loved birds, always been a conservationist and often paints the birds and plants that he loves. His paintings are stunning.

“I grew up in a family with animals,” Phill says. “I had pet birds from a young age – about 4 years old – and used to breed them. Then later when I became a full-time painter in the early ‘70s, I spent many years in the Urewera, living with and painting the old kuia of the Tūhoe with their moko. I became entrenched in māoritanga (culture) and kaitiakitanga (guardianship/conservation).”

The Tūhoe kuia called Phill their mokopuna (grandchild/great nephew). They taught him about rongoā (Māori natural medicines) and have been a huge influence on how he has continued to live his life since.

“Throughout my 20s I was also making my own possum traps and learning about the ecology of the bush,” Phill says. “I could see what happens when you control possums. I also spent a lot of time in the field with people from Wellington’s DSIR Ecology Division (the former ‘Department of Scientific and Industrial Research’).”

He learnt to understand the bush deeply from an artistic, kaitiakitanga and scientific perspective.

“I always wanted to own a piece of land, to look after it through kaitiakitanga, to work on my own balance of bush,” he says. “I got my opportunity over 20 years ago. It was a piece of pre-European bush in Stokes Valley – 57 acres, owned by a developer and going to be developed.”

Phill knew the remnant bush was very unique, a reminder of how the Hutt Valley used to be.

“I sold all my paintings, gathered together every cent I had and borrowed more to buy it,” Phill says. “I saved it from development. There was a wetland area with kahikatea and I knew it had rare plants and native species.”

Phill placed a QE II covenant on the land and named it ‘Te Oranga Whenua’.

“It means ‘The Healing Land’,” Phill explains, “The name had two meanings because the land was healing and it also had rongoā, the Māori healing plants.”

Phill painted many bush scenes in the forest block and began to protect it by carrying out trapping.

“When it was put under QE II covenant, they did the weed control and I did the predator and browser control. That’s where the (DOC series) traps came in. Because of my background from both the Māori and scientific side, I was very against using poisons and upsetting the ecology. I wanted to use just traps. I tried all the traps on the market. The Fenn trap was the only trap available for stoats and they were nasty and didn’t work well. They were inhumane. All poisons are inhumane too. So I started looking at making my own traps.”

Phill had a pretty good trap that was working well, when he heard through the media that the Department of Conservation was losing the battle to save kiwi from stoats.

“I contacted DOC and they came straight away. That’s how the DOC series of traps came about. I was taken all over New Zealand by DOC. We went through a long process of trials throughout New Zealand, convincing people that DOC traps were as good as or better than Fenn traps.”

The DOC series are, in fact, twice as efficient at catching stoats compared to the Fenn traps and, importantly, they are humane.

“The DOC series passed the NAWAC test for humane kills with 10/10. The humane tests on Fenn traps and stoats resulted in 9/10 fails! Only 1/10 stoats was killed humanely,” Phill says. “At the time, the Fenn was the only trap on the market and imported from the UK. The Department of Conservation’s supply of Fenn traps was irregular and had problems and the traps themselves were reliant on good trappers being able to set them and have a result.”

Phill has had his own painful experiences of catching his thumb in the difficult Fenns.

“Community groups were coming on the scene and DOC wanted a trap that anyone could use safely and effectively” he explains. “The DOC 200 passed the NAWAC tests for stoats, rats and hedgehogs and only failed on one very large ferret. So we developed the DOC 250 – a bigger version for ferrets. It’s the only humane ferret trap on the market in the world.”

Meanwhile, Fenn traps are now being banned in the UK and British trappers are importing DOC series traps instead.

“I gave the intellectual property rights for the traps to New Zealand,” says Phill, “on the proviso that they are still manufactured in New Zealand, so that they create employment and also we can keep an eye on the quality of the traps.”

Phill also had one other, more quirky proviso for the traps.

“The DOC series has a safety catch – a clip on the top so you don’t catch your fingers. When I invented the staple, I insisted on it being made from No 8 wire to keep the ‘kiwi touch’ and reflect the No 8 wire technology of the first DOC traps I made, even though the traps themselves have now developed into something very professional looking.”

Although Phill gifted his claim to intellectual property rights for the DOC series, he has been disappointed to learn that the traps have been sent to China by others and copied for the New Zealand market.

“The Chinese rip-offs are being sold in New Zealand as DOC traps,” Phill says. “They’re sold as humane and they’re not. They even have my name and DOC stamped on them. The worst part is that people come back to me and say they don’t work properly.”

During the trap testing process, Phill spent a lot of time with Department of Conservation trapping expert, Darren Peters.

“Darren said once that the reason the trap is so successful is because it was invented for conservation, not for making money.”

The DOC series of traps have gone on to win a BearingPoint Innovation Award – a prize of $1000 awarded to the Department of Conservation – while Phill himself was named a ‘Wellingtonian of the Year’ in 2013, receiving the Environmental Award in recognition of his gift of the DOC series traps to New Zealand.

“I didn’t know I’d been nominated until I saw in the paper that I was a finalist,” says Phill. “It was lucky I turned up. I was shocked when I won!”

After the award Phill was approached by Wellington Zoo to be their inaugural ‘Artist in Residence’, painting the animals – another example of how conservation and art follow and interweave with each other in his life story. Phill also donates some of his paintings to fundraising auctions for trapping programmes.

But the trap inventing was far from over yet.

“DOC asked me to make a humane possum trap, so I made the ‘Trapinator’. Once I’d invented that as well I’d made the set,” he says. “It passed the NAWAC humane tests but hasn’t been widely publicised. It’s made up Auckland way and used widely in that area.”

Although Phill is New Zealand’s own inventor of traps, he has a lot of respect for the animals he is targeting. It’s one of the reasons that building humane traps is important to him.

“I don’t like to call them ‘pests’,” he says. “I call them predators and browsers. They’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. I spent a lot of time studying stoats with the traps and I do have respect for them. Inventing the traps all comes back to my dislike of using poisons and wanting to heal the land.”

Phill also uses his wildlife paintings to promote conservation.

“I use art to push the barrel about endangered species. Some of my bird paintings – the rare and endangered birds – have a little trap logo on the end of my signature. The birds that I paint and love are protected by the traps I invented.”

His traps have even helped to save the kiwi in the remote valley where he first knew and painted the old Tūhoe kuia.

“One kuia, Te Onewhero had a picture on her mantelpiece of herself and her husband in kiwi cloaks. The cloaks were later presented to Royalty. She said to me, ‘when you have grandchildren they (kiwi) will be gone’. I was in my early 20s then. In an amazing coincidence, I went back with the Department of Conservation and DOC 200 traps to save those very kiwi in her valley 40 years later!”

Unfortunately Phill had to sell his own bush block in Stokes Valley a few years back, but the bush is still in good hands.

“Hutt City Council bought it and made it a reserve. They renamed it Horoeka Reserve and now it’s exactly how I envisaged. It’s open to the public and used by schools and a team of local conservationists all look after it.”

Phill went back for a visit recently and made a surprising discovery.

“When I owned the property, a neighbour’s little boy couldn’t read well, so I made a Gnome House in the forest where he could exchange letters. He had to write and ask permission from the gnomes before he could do things in the forest. The boy wrote letters and learnt to read and now he’s grown up, in his 20s and works for a computer company. The original Gnome House was in a big old black beech tree next to the old historic Bridle Track. Well, when I went back recently there are Gnome Houses everywhere now!”

Perhaps gnomes are the new kaitiaki of Horoeka Reserve…

Meanwhile, Phill is planning to bring his art and conservation interests together again soon in a Wellington exhibition of art and traps. The opening date is yet to be confirmed.

“It will have all my drawings of traps and the early demo trap. It’s about connecting my art and traps and saying what I’m passionate about,” he says. “I was just trying to save my 57 acres, but now it has a life of its own. The DOC 250 has been used overseas for trapping mongooses. In Hawaii it’s helping to save leatherback turtles!”

You can now buy your own DOC 200 trap online through the Predator Free NZ Trust. Check out our online shop here.

The post Phill Waddington – Wildlife artist and DOC Series trap inventor appeared first on Predator Free NZ.

Community conservation is in trouble and without clear objectives and support structures the risk of volunteers losing interest is high, according to a new report commissioned by Predator Free New Zealand Trust.

The report by leading researcher Dr Marie Brown from The Catalyst Group, highlights the need for adequate support structures for community conservation; a clear strategy for outcomes to be monitored against; and streamlined funding processes that are prioritised based on ecological need and other objectives.

“Conservation volunteers provide a huge resource in our war on predators” says Predator Free New Zealand Trust chairman Sir Rob Fenwick, “but they are poorly supported and largely unacknowledged.”

“To retain their energy and ensure they are being as effective as they can be, we need to be a bit more strategic about where they fit in predator projects and streamline funding processes to support them” he said.

The report draws on the previous Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan Wright’s, penultimate report “Taonga of an Island Nation” which raised issues around the funding environment for community groups as well as support structures to help alleviate administrative burden. The report recommends a national network of regional hubs to help support community conservation groups in each region. There are core services that all community groups are doing (and don’t necessarily want to) that a centralised support structure could alleviate.

It also recommends an updated strategy so that funding can be aligned with ecological need. Lack of clear strategy means effort and funding is not being aligned with priority. Volunteers have various reasons for the work they do and ecological outcomes are just one of those but if we want to encourage effort into high priority sites then we need to align funding with ecological outcomes to achieve our goals. Funders aren’t sure how to best fund conservation, where they should put their funds and what questions they should ask to report successful outcomes against objectives. If agency funders, such as DOC, MFE, DIA etc aligned their funds with priority and outcome then it would provide a framework for others to follow.

Interest in community conservation has never been higher but we aren’t winning the fight against biodiversity loss and if we do what we’ve always done we will face more extinctions. Volunteers want their efforts to make a difference so if we are able to show where clear outcomes can be achieved and direct funding to those places we can be more strategic in our efforts. Community conservation is not the same as agency-led conservation – it usually lacks the scale, expertise and financial backing to undertake transformative conservation alone. This means it is a complement to agency-led efforts (rather than a replacement) and this report offers solutions and recommendations with that in mind.

Sir Rob says “these wonderful people give up their weekends to protect our ailing biodiversity. We need to ensure their efforts achieve the best outcomes we can.”

Download the report.

The post Saving community conservation appeared first on Predator Free NZ.

Kelvin Hastie describes himself as a positive person. He doesn’t do negativity – and lately he’s had plenty to feel positive about.

“The other day I was in a reserve and I saw seven kakariki in one totara. I could hear others nearby. There were about 10 kakariki in one spot. Kakariki are doing really well in Crofton Downs and surrounds,” he says. “And tui are dripping off the trees.”

Kelvin has become one of the Wellington suburb’s better-known residents since instigating ‘Predator Free Crofton Downs’ and helping to create New Zealand’s first predator-free suburb. Around 140 households in Crofton Downs now have a trap in their backyard and locals are noticing a huge difference in birdlife as a result.

At 1900 square metres, Kelvin’s own backyard is slightly larger than the average and, like his neighbours, he’s loving the changes he’s seeing.

“Every year tui nest in my backyard and often kereru nest there as well. People are saying it’s the first time they’ve ever seen juvenile tui – and they’re seeing them in their backyard! The other morning I walked down my driveway and within 30 seconds I heard kakariki, kaka, tui, fantails. Piwakawaka/fantails are a good indicator species for us and people are saying they have piwakawaka on their property some for the first time, some after 35 years living there. A fantail came into my house twice recently, getting the houseflies.”

This year Kelvin has located five kaka nests in Crofton Downs. (Okay, a couple were just a few metres over the official suburb boundary.) He’s been keeping an eye on them over the nesting season and reckons 19-20 kaka chicks have fledged successfully. The first known successful nests outside of the Zealandia Sanctuary occurred four breeding seasons ago in Crofton Downs.

“The nests were in reserves, but they were literally about 20 metres from people’s backyards.”

Crofton Downs even has a local falcon-karearea.

“The suburb is surrounded by reserves,” Kelvin explains. “There’s one on every side. It’s hilly in parts with rivers and streams. There’s remnant forest with mature rata and a 500-year-old rimu in nearby Otari Wilton Bush. It’s really rewarding to help protect it in partnership with other groups.”

For the last two years, Kelvin has also been helping other suburbs – around 40 groups now exist across Wellington – to get their residents trapping too.

“It involves our neighbouring suburbs. In our area there are about 2,500 backyard trappers over an area of about 4000 hectares. I think that makes it the densest trapping grid in the country!”

Kelvin reckons keeping things simple is the key to backyard trapping initiatives.

“The idea at the start was for people to have a rat trap in their backyard. It’s a simple way to help – not a big tax on your life – not a life-changing event. We stay in touch with people and talk as a community on a Facebook page. We gave everyone a mousetrap at Christmas to put in the tunnel behind the rat trap, because once the rats are gone, people start noticing mice more.”

The Crofton Downs trapping community continues to grow.

“New people move into the suburb and more join up. They email asking for a trap.”

Once predator numbers get really low, Kelvin reckons other aspects recorrect themselves very quickly. Nature finds its balance again.

“There’s been an explosion of butterflies this year – monarchs and admirals. I don’t know if butterflies (or caterpillars) are predated or if it’s a response to the weather.”

Once people start to get involved and enjoy the increased birdlife, Kelvin finds they often want to do more without any prompting.

“The birds belong to us all – they’re there for all to see. It’s a natural progression. A lot of people are sugar-feeding birds and lizards in their gardens. I’m now planting a lot more kowhai, for example.”

The group also continues to expand well into the rural zone, in part to create a barrier to reinvasion.

“We’ve had two years with no stoats, but have still carried on the protection for kaka. Then in the last 4 months we’ve had 13 stoats. In the last month we’ve caught 18 hedgehogs in reserves. It’s been a hot year – a mast year.”

Kelvin and the team will be monitoring for rats and other predators again soon too.

“We monitor every May – it’s the rattiest month. Last year we had 1 chew over the 130 hectares core area. I put a trap out and got three rats and there’s been nothing since then.”

Lately Kelvin as also been working with the Predator Free Wellington project group comprised of the Next Foundation, Greater Wellington Regional Council and Wellington City Council, sharing what he’s learnt from Crofton Downs as more and more suburbs across the Wellington region are primed to get involved.

“The project is ready to go,” he says. “It’s now close to being consulted in Wellington’s long-term plan. Mayor Justin Lester and Andy Foster, the councillor who holds the Predator Free Wellington portfolio, have shown a lot of support. We currently have 5000 households trapping in Wellington and another 1000 in Porirua. The next goal is to have 12,000 households trapping in Wellington,” he says.

All in all, it’s been a busy few years and now Kelvin, along with trappers all across Crofton Downs and other suburbs, are looking to reap the rewards.

“So much has happened in 3 years! It’s been an overwhelming, all-positive journey and a lot of fun! It’s an ongoing legacy,” Kelvin says, with well-earned satisfaction and pride.

The post Crofton Downs is bursting with birdlife appeared first on Predator Free NZ.

A large-scale predator project, the biggest of its kind in New Zealand, was launched in Taranaki today supported by more than $11 million from the Government.

Taranaki aims to be the first predator free region in the country under the project, called Taranaki Taku Tūranga – Our Place, Towards a Predator-Free Taranaki and is led by the Taranaki Regional Council.

It is the first large-scale project to receive funding from Predator Free 2050 Ltd, the company set up by the Government in 2016 to help New Zealand achieve its predator-fee 2050 goal. The $11.7 million of funding support over five years was announced today by Conservation Minister, Hon Eugenie Sage.

Towards a Predator Free Taranaki will cost $47 million in the first five years with the ultimate aim of removing stoats, rats, and possums from all land types across the region – farmland, urban land, public parks, reserves and Mt Taranaki – by 2050. It is the first time this has been attempted in New Zealand, and the latest technology and trapping techniques will used, with lessons shared, helping New Zealand achieve its predator-free aspiration.

TRC Chairman David MacLeod says strong community support will be vital to succeed and he’s confident Taranaki people will get behind it.

“This is a massive opportunity for the region and for New Zealand. The support from Predator Free 2050 Ltd enables our region to protect and enhance native wildlife and plants, building on existing predator-control work, “he says.

Remote sensors, wireless nodes and a trapping app will be among IOT (Internet of Things) technology used to remove predators and prevent re-infestations. The high-tech equipment makes trapping more efficient, particularly in rural areas, and provides live trapping data – sending a smartphone alert to the user when a trap goes off. Data will also be collated about how, where and when predators are caught, helping the Council identify clusters and tweak the trapping network.

A virtual barrier, made up of natural barriers, traps and remote sensors, will prevent re-infestations and will be moved across the region as predators are removed from each area. The region will be divided into pizza-slice sections and different phases of work will be rolled out around the mountain, starting in the New Plymouth area, Oakura and the Kaitake Range.

“Taranaki has unique advantages that can make it the first region in the country to remove introduced predators – its relatively compact geography, its regional and national expertise in biodiversity and predator control, and strong community collaboration and enthusiasm at all levels,” Mr MacLeod says.

The project will link with successful predator work in Egmont National Park by Taranaki Mounga Project, which has already reduced predators to low levels and allowed the reintroduction of several species including the North Island robin (toutouwai) and blue duck (whio).

The project will also build on existing work in urban and rural areas, including the Council’s voluntary urban possum control programme in New Plymouth, and its rural Self-Help Possum Programme, one of the biggest programmes of its kind in the country which is keeping possum numbers at low levels.

Predator Free 2050 Ltd Chief Executive Ed Chignell is excited about the opportunities to advance the rest of the country’s predator work using lessons learnt from Towards a Predator-Free Taranaki.

“I’m thrilled to support Towards a Predator Free Taranaki. This exciting project is uniting a community against predators, using traditional and new methods to remove possums, rats and stoats from the region. A project of this size and covering all land types has never been attempted before and the lessons learnt will be shared with the country, advancing New Zealand’s predator-free 2050 goal,” Mr Chignell says.

“The Taranaki Regional Council is a leader in biosecurity and biodiversity and I’m convinced the people behind this project have the experience and expertise to succeed and contribute to New Zealand’s predator-free aspirations.”

Towards a Predator-Free Taranaki will rely on collaboration between TRC, the region’s three district councils, residents, Taranaki Mounga Project and the region’s biodiversity coalition, Wild for Taranaki.

“This project is taking Taranaki forward and its success is in the hands of the people of the region. We’ll be reaching out to schools, community groups, farmers and residents in different areas in the coming months as we enter new phases of the project,” Mr MacLeod says.

Further info: including a fact sheet www.trc.govt.nz

The post Towards a Predator Free Taranaki appeared first on Predator Free NZ.

What’s a broken-down washing machine got to do with backyard predator control? Not a trick question – just an example of the creative and inventive lengths some entrepreneurs will go to in order to nab rodent compost bin raiders.

Hannah Smith in Auckland, had a problem. She wanted to recycle food scraps and garden waste in an environmentally responsible way. But rats kept raiding the compost bin and, with all those tasty food scraps on offer, they were turning their twitchy noses up at the bait in her everyday rat traps.

There was no trouble attracting rats to the compost, but they wouldn’t go into her traps – so what if the compost bin WAS the trap? The germ of an idea was born and Hannah, an industrial design graduate, was up for the challenge. She would design a rat-trapping compost bin.

Over the next couple of years that’s exactly what she did.

“The rats needed to be able to access the compost easily, but get killed when they tried to exit,” Hannah explains. “I was working making props in the film industry and asked the engineers at work about it. They thought I was crazy.”

Undeterred, Hannah worked at developing a bin and even attempted to come up with her own trap mechanism.

“Trying to make a trap myself was hilarious and difficult,” she admits. “The old ‘snap trap’ is fantastic engineering. My attempts were just elaborate tickle devices.”

So Hannah abandoned her early trap-design attempts and focussed on the compost bin itself.

A normal compost bin with an entranceway doesn’t work. If you want to compost a dead rat without a bad smell your compost needs to be alive and vigorous and rotational compost bins help that happen.

An escape-proof, rotating, fast-acting compost bin… Hannah knew what she wanted, but not how to get it. Then came the all-important ‘lightbulb moment’!

“Using a washing machine drum was a great development! It’s weatherproof, it has perforations for the compost to breathe, it’s rotational and its rat-proof, so the rats can only get in through the entrance.”

The composting unit is positioned over a raised garden bed, so that when the bin is full it can be emptied into the bed and then when the raised bed is full the unit can be moved to the next raised bed. It’s designed to be easy for rats to get into, but they need to take an alternative and deadly route out. Hannah has branded her invention as ‘Urbins’ – bins for urban backyards.

“At the moment I use Gorilla rat traps, but they’re plastic and I’d prefer not to use plastic. They’re also quite hard to set. But I like that they’ve got a really chunky spring so it’s a clean kill. I also like the idea that rats and mice are having a nice time before they’re snapped.”

The condemned rodents get to have a hearty meal – a smorgasbord of rodent delights where they can eat all they like, but they never leave!
“It sometimes takes the rats a while to become familiar with the set-up, but I set one up for a lady recently and she caught a rat the next day. Last week we caught 2 mice in 1 trap. They must’ve both jumped in at the same time.”

Hannah entered her Ubin idea in the WWF New Zealand innovation competition, where the proposal got a lot of support.

Entering was a real boost to getting the design sorted. The WWF entry was a pretty hokey, bodged together atrocity!” Hannah admits. “But now it’s a really cute unit. It looks like a real product. A friend, Rob Askew, is a 3D modeller and he came up with a plywood design and there’s been a lot of interest.

Hannah is now catching up on orders.

“There are about 20 urbins out there, including a couple that were sent to Wellington. The units are handmade and the fittings are stainless steel making an Urbin pricier than your average plastic compost bin especially when you add shipping.

Hannah does, however, sell plans for the units for those outside of Auckland who are practically minded and have a spare washing machine drum.

“Eight very brave people have bought the plans so far and I know at least one of those people has built an Urbin” Hannah says. “Drums are the limiting resource and I’m waiting for some at the moment. They’re a high energy item to manufacture so it’s great getting to re-use them.”

She may soon have some help with sourcing the drums.

“I have been in touch with Abilities Group which is a non-profit, incorporated society that provides work for people with disabilities. They already dismantle washing machine so its perfect.”

Like the gardens that Hannah’s rat-infused compost is nurturing, the Urbin composter idea is one which grows and grows.

“It ticks all the boxes. It’s good for predator control, good for composting, good for the garden and good psychologically.”

Even disposal of the dead rodents is sorted and, for the more tender-hearted trappers, there’s satisfaction in knowing they died quickly and well fed.

Contact Hannah about the urbin at: http://www.mopsock.co.nz/urbin-composting.html

Read about Phill Waddington, inventor of the DOC Series traps.

The post Rat-trapping compost bin disposes of rodent problem appeared first on Predator Free NZ.

When the Waitaki hydro system was developed, 7,400 ha of open braided river habitat and 3,900 ha of swamplands were lost in order to ‘bring power to the people’. As well as increased electricity generation, we gained 22,250 ha of lakes and 290 ha of lake shoreline, but at a cost.

It is the iconic braided river systems of the South Island which are internationally rare and absolutely essential for specialist river birds such as the black stilts and wrybills which breed among the shingle islands and river braids. Lakes and lake shoreline – nice – but hardly unique!

Project River Recovery was established in 1991 as compensation for habitats lost from building the Waitaki hydro system and is an award-winning, world-leading conservation effort. Managed by the Department of Conservation with support from Meridian Energy and Genesis Energy, the project’s work includes weed and predator control, wetland construction and research and monitoring of the region’s plants, birds and invertebrates – many of which are not found anywhere else in New Zealand or the world.

Rivers Rare (by Neville Peat, with Brian Patrick and Aalbert Rebergen) tells the story of the first 25 years of Project River Recovery and, as the authors show, an impressive amount has been achieved by a well-supported, small but dedicated team.

With new dairy farming ventures currently being proposed for the region, along with associated irrigation schemes and canal developments, this book is particularly timely for another reason: it’s not just a 25-year anniversary publication. It is also a compilation of the stories of the many strange creatures, tiny rare plants, birdlife and reptile life now facing these new threats to survival.

So what lives in the Upper Waitaki?

Most New Zealanders have probably heard of the black stilts/kaki which now breed only in the Upper Waitaki. In 1981 the total adult population was just 23 birds, with 4 known nesting pairs. According to the authors, in February 2015 the known population comprised 77 adult kaki, 43 subadults and 18 juveniles (138 birds in total). That year 114 chicks hatched in captivity from 141 artificially-incubated eggs and 106 of those juveniles fledged. The Kaki Recovery Programme is managed by DOC separately from Project River Recovery, but PRR manages kaki habitat.

Far fewer New Zealanders are likely to have heard of the robust grasshopper. It’s chunky, as its name suggests and it’s our rarest and one of our biggest grasshoppers. Until 1984, only 3 individual robust grasshoppers were known – 2 from Kurow and 1 from the Ahuriri River.

Nowadays, a number of isolated populations are known to live within Project River Recovery’s boundaries: on the Tekapo, Pukaki and Lower Ohau rivers and their associated streambeds and river terraces. Not only do these rugged little grasshoppers have to contend with new predators such as cats and hedgehogs. New weed species like hawkweed and Russell lupins can slowly change their habitat. Predator and weed control and translocation are all carried out by Project River Recovery to enhance robust grasshopper survival.

Lizards also make their home in the Upper Waitaki, with 7 skink species and 3 species of gecko known to live there. The long-toed skink, scree skink and spotted skink are all classified as Nationally Vulnerable. Chafer beetles, various endemic grass moth species, a knobbled weevil thought to have been extinct since the 1920s (rediscovered as recently as 2004) – the list goes on. A ‘lost plant’ also thought to be extinct – the pygmy goosefoot – was rediscovered in the Ruataniwha wetlands by one of the book’s authors in 2015.

Generously illustrated with beautiful photographs, Rivers Rare tells the stories of these and many other little-known creatures, the unique habitats such as river braids and ‘kettle holes’ where they live, along with the story of the Project River Recovery team and their supporters who have helped to protect this special wilderness area for the last 25 years.

Some of these species would undoubtedly have been lost already without their efforts. Long may their work continue.

Rivers Rare – the first 25 years of Project River Recovery 1991-2016
Neville Peat with Brian Patrick and Aalbert Rebergen
Available from: The University Bookshop, Dunedin, instore and online.

(Proceeds to Project River Recovery).

The post ‘Rivers Rare’ tells success story of Waitaki braided river conservation appeared first on Predator Free NZ.

University student Hayden P. is a Lego enthusiast with a passion for New Zealand birds. If his latest Lego design – a kākāpō – reaches 10,000 supporters on the Lego Ideas website then the design will be considered for commercial release as an official Lego product to be sold worldwide.

Come on New Zealand, let’s get voting! Who wouldn’t want to make a Lego kākāpō – vote now!

“It’s up to 7,150 supporters at the moment,” Hayden confirms. “About 4 times a year, Lego reviews the designs that get to 10,000 supporters, but they’re not guaranteed to produce them all. They might make none – or all of them.”

The kakapo’s international ‘conservation icon’ status may help it appeal to the Lego executives however.

“Lego is pushing a more sustainable product for the future,” says Hayden, “like making sugar-cane bricks rather than plastic made using fossil fuel.”

Maybe there’s scope for a whole ‘Lego Conservation Series’ of international wildlife models.

It’s the first time that Hayden has entered one of his designs on the site, but not the first native bird he’s designed in Lego.

“My latest New Zealand bird is a kakariki,” says Hayden. “I’ve also got a tui, fantail, North and South Island tomtits, a silver-eye and a kea, but the kea needs to be redesigned. I like to try and promote native birds, but I’ve also recently done a goldfinch and I’ve made male and female sparrows in a nest that is popular.”

If you visited the Auckland ‘Brick’ exhibition in November last year, you may have seen Hayden’s designs on display.

“I took about eight Lego birds and set up photos of the actual birds behind the display,” says Hayden. “I decided not to include the names of the birds which was good, because it got people asking and guessing. A lot of the young kids were getting it correct and some of them knew the Maori names as well,” he says. “But some of the adults were right off! It was pretty popular,” he adds. “A lot of people were pretty stoked.”

Hayden has been building with Lego since he was about 3 years old.

“Dad was buying sets for me before I was born,” he says, “So some of my sets are older than I am.”

The initial build for Hayden’s kākāpō design took about 15-16 hours, initially working with a digital programme for Lego designing.

“You can build along with the screen and see whether it works and how you might do it,” Hayden explains.

Hayden reckons he’s probably done another 30 hours work on improving the initial design since then.

“A couple of days ago I did some changes,” he says. “It’s up to about its 5th redesign.”

Hayden usually tries to build his new designs with bricks he already has.

“I get more creative if I’m restricted by parts,” he says. “I like to challenge myself, but I usually end up buying something. I sometimes buy a set to get parts or visit an online ‘store’. There are overseas stores that are ‘pick a brick’ on a site called ‘Bricklink’, where people have taken apart sets themselves to sell the bricks” he explains. “You can look at the site and order the parts and quantities you want.

The ‘Lego Ideas’ platform has a number of target stages along the way with an initial deadline of 60 days to reach 100 votes.

“Anyone can upload their Lego design to ‘Lego Ideas’,” says Hayden. “Once you’ve got 100 supporters, you’ve got another 365 days added to get to 1000, then 6 months to get to 5000 supporters and another 6 months to get to 10,000 supporters. So the whole process can take up to 2 years 2 months.”

So far, however, Hayden’s kākāpō is well ahead of the deadlines for reaching each target stage.

“I put it up on ‘Lego Ideas’ in June and got my first 100 supporters in 24 hours,” Hayden says. “You need to get about 13 supporters per day and I’ve been averaging about 33 per day. It’s had a lot of comments internationally too – maybe because people have seen Stephen Fry’s ‘Last Chance to See’.”

With 7,150 supporters at last count (and probably more by the time this story is posted), Hayden is tantalizingly close to reaching his 10,000 target.

“I designed the kākāpō as I am passionate about New Zealand and the conservation of its native species,” says Hayden. “I also feel that this product would be a fantastic way to teach people about a critically endangered species and get them interested in wildlife. If a commercial release went ahead, I would love some money to go towards ‘Kākāpō Recovery.”

So how about giving Hayden – and kākāpō – some support!

To support you need to register on the ‘Lego Ideas’ site first – it’s a way to discourage one person from casting multiple votes – but registering is free and every supporter counts in helping the kākāpō hit 10,000 Lego supporters!

Do it – do it now! Visit ‘Lego and Cast Your Vote for Kākāpō!

Read more information about our unique kākāpō here.

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