News Articles

Wētā motel. Photo – Fern Kumeroa.

Taranaki Daily News

Research projects by two post-graduate university students have revealed more about the dietary behaviour of predators on Mt Taranaki.

Massey University zoology graduate Fern Kumeroa​, and Lincoln University natural resource management and ecological engineering graduate Katie Coster​ were involved in separate studies with similar aims during the summer.

Kumeroa, of Ngāti Ruanui, researched the effect rats had on wētā populations in the region’s national park Te Papakura o Taranaki.

The Ngā Pae o Te Maramatanga​ scholarship recipient worked with the Taranaki Mounga project to set up 17 ‘wētā motels’, or artificial shelters, on tree trunks within a 1000ha block in the national park, for wētā to crawl into, safe from predators.

Fifty-eight tracking tunnels were placed inside, and outside, the control block, to gauge whether insect and predator activity increased, or decreased, the further away the shelters were placed from the control area.

Previous studies have found invertebrate populations, such as wētā, respond well to rodent control and increase in number with fewer rodents around.

Footprint tracks, monitored by Kumeroa over an eight-week period, showed wētā tracks increased inside the A24 block, and decreased the further away from the block.

The opposite was true for rats, with numbers down within the block, and more away from it.

Read the full Taranaki Daily News article here.

Auroa School students Ella McKenna, Sophie van den Brand, Lily Malo and Maddi Goodchap have won a national title for their science project making sound lures to attract predators to traps. Photo – Andy Jackson.

Taranaki Daily News

When it comes to trapping the predators that harm New Zealand’s native wildlife, a group of South Taranaki students are making a big noise.

Instead of only relying on food as bait, students from Auroa School, near Hāwera, have made sound lures, electronic devices that use noises such as baby birds cheeping, to attract predators including stoats and possums into traps.

The lures are now being trialled on farms near the school, at the New Plymouth Airport, on Taranaki Maunga by the Department of Conservation, and by private trappers in the McKenzie Country and the West Cost of the South Island.

And the work has also won the national Tahi Rua Toru Tech challenge, a team-based digital technology competition for schools.

Sophie van den Brand, 11, Lily Malo, 11, Maddi Goodchap, 10, and Ella McKenna, 11, are the second team of year 6 students from Auroa School to work on the project, which is led by deputy principal Myles Webb.

Read the full Taranaki Daily News article here.

A combined effort to bring kiwi back to the Kaitake Range. Photo – Andy Jackson.

Taranaki Daily News

Adult kiwi are soon to be re-released onto Taranaki’s Kaitake ranges for the first time, prompting a warning for dog owners to keep their pets leashed around the park area.

The kiwi are to be released onto the range in about three month’s time, following extensive trapping and aerial 1080 operations that have decimated rat, mustelid and possum numbers in the Kaitake and Pouakai ranges.

The re-release is a significant milestone in the Restore Kaitake campaign, undertaken as part of the Taranaki Regional Council’s Towards Predator-Free 2050 programme.

Kaitake Conservation Trust member Robbie McGregor​, who helps set predator traps on the Te Papakura o Taranaki boundary, said people should be vigilant in having their pet dogs leashed during the release period.

“It’s definitely a ‘no go’ area for dogs with kiwi around,” he said.

Read the full Taranaki Daily News article here.

Tane Manu (Nga Mahanga a Tāiri), Wayne Capper (Te Kāhui O Taranaki/ Conservation Department), and Sera Gibson (Taranaki Mounga) with Mataroa Island in background. Photo – Andy Jackson

Taranaki Daily News 

After years of sporadic pest control efforts, an intensive barrier of traps has reduced numbers of rats and other predators on Nga Motu/Sugarloaf Islands, offshore of New Plymouth, to almost zero.

Around 19 species of seabirds, numbering around 10,000 birds in total, including endangered shearwaters, nest on three of the five offshore islands – Mataora​/Round Rock, Pararaki and Motuotamatea​/Snapper Rock – within the Tapuae Marine Reserve, close to Port Taranaki.

Intensive trapping over many years by the Department of Conservation, and more recently in collaboration with Taranaki Mounga, Ngāti Te Whiti hapu and Ngā Mahanga a Tāīri, has almost wiped out rats and mice on the islands.

Since October 2020, only four rats have been trapped on Mataora Island, while no sign of predators had been detected on Pararaki and Motuotamatea during routine weekly re-servicing of 10 specially designed traps, Taranaki Mounga project manager Sera​ Gibson said.

The traps contain a DC200 stoat trap, a mouse trap and A24 resetting trap, as well as a rat lure formulated by pest control company Zero Invasive Predator (ZIP) to reduce manual servicing.

The reduction in predator numbers meant the group will now re-service traps every fortnight instead of weekly, she said.

Mataora is the closest island to the mainland and low tide provided easy access for rats and other predators to target nesting seabirds, Gibson said.

Together with a 100-trap network and bait stations, in collaboration with New Plymouth District Council, and Francis Douglas Memorial College students, and Taranaki Mounga and iwi, the predator-trapping programme had further significantly reduced pest numbers around Centennial Drive and Paritutu Rock on the mainland above the port, she said.

Read the full Taranaki Daily News article here.

Taranaki dairy farmer Fiona Henchman can now smell her roses. Photo – Andy Jackson.

Taranaki Daily News

Taranaki dairy farmer Fiona Henchman​ can now declare victory in a personal war of the roses she has waged against possums for a quarter of a century.

With husband John she has fought a backyard battle against thousands of possums hopping over the boundary fence from Egmont National Park to munch on fruit trees, grass pasture and treasured climbing roses.

Pasture near the national park boundary has also taken a hammering, with the pests’ eating habits leaving the ground resembling a mown strip.

Anything the couple attempted to plant and grow on the 130ha Upper Weld Road property was gnawed to the stem by the nocturnal marauders, she said.

The only nutrient area untouched was the vegetable garden.

“I’m not a serious rose grower. It was just that the possums wouldn’t let me grow anything. It’s been a war ever since.”

Although thousands of possums, some weighing up to 4.5kgs, were killed, with their fur sold to dealers to fund eradication, the pests kept coming, she said.

To combat the never-ending raids, Henchman wrapped rose buds and stems in glad wrap, laid poison cyanide and phosphorous baits, set traps, used thermal imaging detectors and attached ‘red dot’ night vision to a rifle, while leaving the window open at night, for a clear shot when they came on the verandah.

“We put a lot into getting rid of them – I called it saturation bombing – but it made no difference. The possums still stripped everything bare, but I wasn’t giving up.”

Henchman now thinks the possums are on the run after a concentrated trapping and aerial 1080 programme during the past 12 months in the Kaitake Ranges and Egmont National Park, work co-ordinated by the Department of Conservation, Taranaki Mounga and Towards Predator-Free Taranaki (TPFT).

“They came back a little during lockdown when the traps were not being checked, but now we have contractors on the farm every day monitoring the traps, and there has been a huge difference,” she said.

“The tui among the banksia are deafening.

“They’re (possums) still around but they are well under control.”

Read the full Taranaki Daily News article here.

START Taranaki Mounga trainee Trevor Walker, 16, with his mother Leonie Schuler, wants to lead his own trapping project in future. Photo – Simon O’Connor.

Taranaki Daily News

A South Taranaki teenager who outgrew the classroom walls has found his calling helping protect the whio/blue duck population in Egmont National Park.

Trevor Walker’s efforts have been so successful that a whio, one of more than 200 in the park, was named after him.

Trevor , 16, is one of two first year START trainees working with the Taranaki Mounga predator-free programme.

START, or Supporting Today’s At Risk Teenagers, established in 2003 and based in Kaponga, has partnered with Taranaki Mounga predator-free project to mentor and provide employment pathways to young people.

Walker spent a year with the START basic programme before joining the project, learning how to build and set predator traps, cutting tracks and lay trap lines in the national park boundary.

“I used to go into the bush with my uncles but it was still a bit of a mission building the traps and setting trap lines up to 15km,” he said.

“It was hard cutting the tracks and heavy work carry ing the traps across streams.

“There were a lot of days walking through the bush in wet boots from crossing streams.”

Working on his own, Walker built 300 DOC200 wooden traps before helping lay out 25km of trap lines from Mangawhero Rd to protect whio along the Waingongoro, Mangawhero, Kapuni and Kaupokonui Streams on the south east boundary of the park.

Read the full Taranaki Daily News article here.

The whio (pictured) census, held between January and March, located 15 pairs in total, and another 18 single whio were also discovered as well as 17 juvenile birds. Photo – Tony Green.

Radio New Zealand

A five-yearly census has revealed Egmont National Park is experiencing a whio population boom and raised aspirations for its population beyond the park boundaries.

Department of Conservation biodiversity ranger Joe Carson said the 2020 survey monitored 11 new rivers in the park to see if the native blue ducks were moving into previously uninhibited territory.

“And of those 11 rivers there were whio in every single river and eight pairs were found to be breeding so it’s spectacular it’s certainly beyond our expectations that’s for sure.”

The census, held between January and March, located 15 pairs in total, and another 18 single whio were also discovered as well as 17 juvenile birds.

Carson said the whio were establishing new territories was a particularly good sign.

“It’s awesome to see how well the whio are doing. Every river we surveyed had whio living there and several showed presence of fledged offspring. It is really exciting and has completely expanded our aspirations for ongoing growth of the whio population across Taranaki.”

Whio are found nowhere else in the world and are rarer than some species of kiwi, but population in Taranaki has been growing with a 71 percent increase in ducklings located during the 2018/19 breeding season.

Fiercely territorial and a pair need about a kilometre of fast-flowing river or stream for themselves. Including birds at eight other rivers in the national park, which are monitored annually, it’s now believed there are about 200 whio in the national park.

Carson said it was amazing to think just a few short years ago there were no whio in Egmont National Park.

“They were pretty much functionally extinct in the 1940s. The last confirmed sighting was about then and then slowly since the late 1990s we’ve been releasing captive reared birds and the population is booming.

“They just keep producing young and we were just hoping those young were settling and making their own territories and trying to breed and now we’ve found the evidence that they are and it’s very inspirational actually.”

Read the full Radio New Zealand article here.