No Rat Prints

Jeff supervising another local volunteer with gully monitoring, photo credit J Morgan

More good news ... this week, our team helped long-standing volunteer Jeff to collect monitoring cards from Tamahere Eventide's restored section of the Mangaone gully. These inked cards with peanut butter bait are left overnight to track our pest control progress. Footprints on the cards tell us what’s around and help us detect any rats that might be avoiding our traps. Excitingly, this time, we found ZERO rat prints, no hedgehogs or mustelids and only one card with mouse prints.

This is really good news because we want to keep the rat (and stoat) tracking rate below 5%, ie less than 1 in 20 ink cards with footprints, to protect tui and korimako/bellbirds, especially during nesting season. However, achieving effective pest control is challenging if there is constant re-invasion pressure from neighbouring properties.

Jeff recorded zero rat prints in the Tamahere Eventide gully back in November 2021 but, six months later, monitoring proved what he suspected, that there was a significant resurgence in rat numbers again.

After a concerted effort of regular baiting and trapping by Jeff, who's an absolute legend, plus getting more neighbours involved in ongoing pest control, rat numbers in this restored gully are thankfully under control again. And it’s obviously having a positive impact because native seedlings are flourishing as well, rather than the seeds being eaten by rodents.

Thank you to all the Eventide gully neighbours on Bollard Road and Cherry Lane who are helping make a difference. We're really stoked about this result!

Kākā Sightings

Thanks to Nathan and the Sanderson Group