Senior Team Lead of the Wild Side and Kaitorete projects out in Banks Peninsula, Tim Sjoberg, said that Kaitoreti faces struggles unlike most conservation sites, so this achievement is a big one.
"It’s out the gate from a biodiversity perspective. There's nearly 200 that use tuahora throughout the year. There's endimich plants, animals, insects that only live on Kaitoreti," he said.
Sjoberg explains that for years they've been targetting six different pest species, including rabbits, feral cats, stoats and hedgehogs. With stoats out of the picture for a select few locations, he called seeing the result of his work rewarding.
"The outcome of doing the predator control here is that we get to protect the species that aren't doing that well, and hopefully secure them for future generations."
They use a combination of older trapping techniques, such as Predator Free 2050 trapping tunnels and the DOC-series 150 through 250 traps. However, they are also expanding their resourcing to custom made live capture Pestgard traps.
As of recently, it was announced by Conservation Minister Tama Potaka that feral cats were added to the Predator Free 2050 target species list. Feral cats are one of the most pervasive pests in the Kaitoreti region, after possums.
