Note: These blogs are in date order. Hence, the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
 

Friday October 25th, 2024 - Meeting Eigill at the Kahikatea Walk (by Ian Anderson)

Emma and I'd met Eigill several months earlier at the DOC workshops in Hokitika. He's DOC's trapping expert and has been in the business for more than 20 years. A planned 15 minute visit turned into more than an hour of questions and explanations. We'd gone in there not knowing what we didn't know about trapping, and left much better informed but also knowing there was much much more to learn.

Fast forward to late October and Emma, Elizabeth Sawkins, Liz Holland, Paul Dunn, Waikohatu Scott and I were standing in the Sunny Bight carpark at the Kahikatea Walk entrance chatting with Eigill.  We'd arranged for him to give us guidance on where to place traps around the Walk.

Eigill taught us to think like a rat or stoat... finding the easiest path through the grass, travelling along paths and edges of water ways, sheltering from the rain, and looking for its next meal.  We also talked about the design of the traps, why stoats are mostly caught in the second trap in a double-trap tunnel only after the first trap has caught a rat, and how he's designed a break in the floor of the trap to stop sympathetic firing of the second trap when the first goes off.

It was a fascinating field trip, with one hour turning into two very quickly. We had plenty to think about and plan over coming weeks. Our short term ambition to place and maintain 20 traps around the Kahikatea Walk seemed very doable compared with the 3000 traps Eigill and his team have put in and maintain to protect the Whio in the mountain rivers.

Tuesday - Thursday December 10th & 12th, 2024 - Building and placing traps in the Kahikatea Walk (by Ian Anderson)

Thanks to the generosity of the Lake Kaniere Community we got sufficient funds to build the first 20 traps for the Kahikatea Walk and material for another forty to go into the backyards of properties around the lake. The first priority has been to build and place the traps in the Kahikatea Walk and special thanks for this stage needs to go to:

• Mike Cole - ITM Greymouth, for supplying free of charge much of the timber needed for the first 20 traps
• Hamish McMullen - ITM Hokitika, for supplying more timber for the next tranche of traps at a discounted price
• George Cooper - Collecting timber from ITM Hokitika and cutting and routering it into kitset form for another 25 traps
• Liz Holland - Doing the research and grid mapping of trap and monitoring station placements, and designing the trap stencils
• Eigill Wahlberg - DOC Hokitika, who spent half a day helping place and adjust the traps for best results
• The team involved in the trap placements and set-up including Elizabeth Sawkins, Liz Holland, Neil Challenger, Eigill Wahlberg, Paul Dunn, Richard Mackley and me.

By late Thursday we'd got all the traps, tracking tunnels, and bird count stations in place and recorded in the Trap.NZ App. There's been a great sense of shared purpose and achievement amongst our group and we look forward to enabling the many volunteers who've put up their hands to be involved in some way soon. In the meantime, here are some relevant pictures:

Twenty trap boxes (each containing 2 x DOC200 stainless steel traps, ready for placing around Kahikatea Walk:

Placing traps in the bush:

Placing a tracking tunnel using an ink pad to gather footprints of local critters:

All the traps, critter tracker tunnels, and bird count stations are recorded in Trap.NZ:

It was a very busy week for all those involved. It also provided some important lessons for the future:

• The most efficient trap building process requires a construction jig and two people. 
• Add the bait and egg nails before assembling the box.
• 25% of the stainless steel traps need adjustment and it's best to do this before putting them into the field.
• GPS location recording on Trap.NZ is pretty ropey when amongst 60M high Kahikatea. Marker tape will help narrow down where they are.
• It's best to keep your hand well clear of the pulverising plate when testing it - eh Paul!

Monday, December 23rd, 2024 - Bang, Bang! We're off to a good start! (by Ian Anderson)

"Don't expect any catches for at least three months" was the advice from Eigill. Apparently, rats and stoats are 'NewPhobic' i.e.: they're super wary of new things in their environment and it can take many months for them to get used to a new trap box before getting curious and brave enough to have a look inside, regardless of the lure of the bait.

It was less than two weeks since we'd built and placed the traps in the Kahikatea Walk so, when Paul Dunn said he was planning to check them on Monday, my thought was the best we could hope for was that there'd been no human interference with them. 

So there was great surprise and excitement when Paul sent through a photo of trap box KW014 with a dead rat in one trap, and a dead stoat in the other.  The picture below (don't look if you're squeemish!) shows how the stoat was attracted by the rat, coming in from the same end and over the top of it before being trying to exit over the second trap. 

Rats, stoats and other pests kill 25 million NZ birds a year.  That's two less to worry about.

Rat and stoat caught in KW014 in the Kahikatea Walk: