Stoat Trapping

Some good outcomes this month with the new Pickford’s line now in operation thanks to Margaret Murnane. I have also organised two new volunteers to help with trapping and will show them around the new lines next month. If they are happy to pick up these lines it will mean we have just 2 (Karaponga and McIvor Rd) out of our 8 lines are being run by single trappers. Our goal should be to have every line with at least two volunteers running the traps.

Rat Control

We carried out a rat the monitor in the Cell Tower and Pickford’s block and again we got a great result with no rat prints (so 0% tracking index), no possum interference and a good number of insect prints. This result indicates we have kept the rats at a low level through the crucial breeding season. Thanks to our volunteers Gavin, Liddy and Jude. It was nice to see Robins, Tomtit and White Head as well as the usual bush birds.

To maintain this low number of rats through the winter we will need to do a baiting round in April.

Kokako Monitoring

I have also done a few volunteer days helping out with the Kokako monitoring and have seen and heard birds on each of these days. This is an ongoing process as they try to get a clearer picture of the breeding success and I will continue to help out where I can.

General

With the warm wet weather the blackberry and other weed have had a bumper season so I have spent some time clearing tracks so trappers can get to their lines and also as our traps age I have also done some repairing and replacing of traps.

Peter