Takaka Hill landowners' trapping network to extend predator control efforts
Monday, 14 September 2020
Landowners on the Takaka Hill have received funding to boost their trapping efforts and support the work being done to protect birdlife in the neighbouring national parks.
The Takaka Hill Biodiversity Group was formed in 2018 when a group of landowners first met to discuss what they could do to support conservation in the area. Co-founder and project manager Charmaine Petereit said the group had since met every month and developed a predator control strategy.
A $97,000 funding boost from the Department of Conservation Community Fund meant the group was now able to install the first stage of a trapping network across 4000 hectares of land between the Kahurangi and Abel Tasman national parks.
“We are right between the middle of two national parks and all the predators could just be hanging out here and re-invading, so we felt we needed to do our bit.”
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**
The group of 24 landowners formed a trust in March and Petereit said the first of 25 kilometres of trap lines would be installed at the end of September by local contractors.
“It is fantastic we have this funding to support the work we are doing.”
The group would be collecting data from the trapping lines, to build into the wider picture of predator distribution and inform future decision-making.
“We will also do footprint monitoring and bird count monitoring, so we can see how effective our trapping is. Not only how many rats, stoats and possums are we catching but what is the outcome of that.”
Petereit, who has a background in environmental projects, said residents trapped possums, stoats and rats on their own land and along old tracks, but members decided to pool resources and work together to maximise their trapping impact.
“There was nothing co-ordinated or routine but all the landowners recognise this collaborative approach allows us to do it on a bigger scale and it is something we can manage collectively.”
She said it showed how seriously landowners took their role as kaitiaki.
In 2017, the Department of Conservation purchased a 169-hectare block of land on the Takaka Hill connecting the two national parks.
Petereit said the funding would allow the group to work towards the Predator Free 2050 target and build a long-term legacy of predator control work for oncoming generations.
The area was home to birds like the South Island robin, kea, kakariki and carnivorous snails the carnivorous snails Powelliphanta hochstetteri and critically endangered Rhytida oconnori.
Retired DOC ranger and hill resident Graham Helleur said seeing more bellbird and tui return to Takaka Hill over the last few years was an incentive to keep going.
The trust received funding from DOC last year for a pest plant survey, which showed wilding pines, old man’s beard, banana passion vine, wild kiwifruit and tradescantia to name a few.
Peterit said the pest plant survey showed the location of the wilding pines on the hill and the extent of the problem which allowed it to work out the cost to remedy it.
Last week, Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor announced $36 million funding as part of the Jobs for Nature programme to control wilding pine infestations in the next year.
Of that, the Takaka Hill Biodiversity Group was granted $119,750 to control wildings on the Takaka Hill.
The group also recently signed an agreement with DOC Motueka to support work on conservation land, doing restoration planting, weed control and predator control at public reserves on the hill like Hawkes Lookout.