Newsletter for our Neighbours

Posted on February 18, 2018February 18, 2018 by David Peters

Greetings, neighbors of Aongatete Forest. This is the first of more regular newsletters from us, to keep you informed about our activities. Pest Levels We regularly measure the pest levels in the Forest. Monitoring done in early February shows that OUTSIDE the controlled area, our traps showed a 65% incidence of rats, compared to 8% within our controlled area. In one part of our forest where we have recently deployed 50 or so Good Nature traps, our rat indice is now 0%. Possum levels out...

August 2017 – Predator-free 2050

Posted on August 12, 2017August 12, 2017 by Ann Graeme

Can we rid New Zealand of possums, rats and stoats by 2050? ‘Yes, we can,” says Forest & Bird’s Advocacy manager, Kevin Hackwell, who will be the guest speaker at the AGM of the Aongatete Forest Restoration Trust. But Kevin cautions that this is an ambitious goal and will require new techniques and a co-ordinated team effort across communities, iwi, and the public and private sectors. Caution doesn’t come naturally to this dynamo of a man who has been on the frontlin...

May 2017 – Tracking tunnels and discovering geckos

Posted on May 12, 2017 by Ann Graeme

You have to be lucky to see a native gecko in the forest. The little lizards are rare because rats, cats, dogs, stoats, pigs and possums eat them. So it was a red letter day four years ago when a volunteer putting out rat bait came face to face with a gecko. It was a brown and grey forest gecko, an endemic species, which means it is native only to NZ. Then two years ago on a guided walk led by the Aongatete Trust an observant participant saw a green gecko, just as another walker trod on i...

Checking the Timms trap line

Posted on April 3, 2017April 3, 2017 by Barbara McGillivray

Joined Jenny Lucey and Mike Madigan to check a Timms Trap line Aongatete Forest Project. Lovely weather for a bush walk, caught 2 possums in the 18 traps and treated to visits from 4 different NI Robins along the way. Delightful! " order_by="sortorder" order_direction="ASC" returns="included" maximum_entity_count="500"]

Pests of Aongatete Forest – video

Posted on December 16, 2016December 23, 2016 by David Peters

These are the enemy of native biodiversity. This film was compiled in 2014 (no sound). We use game cameras to understand the behaviors of these species, in our mission to control them. Thanks to Barry and Pam Pethybridge for filming and editing these clips. https://youtu.be/OB5eUsfExKw The next video is a slideshow of still photographs compiled between January 2010 and June 2013. https://youtu.be/pN1y3KA4d3I

June 2016 – A major offensive in the pest war

Posted on June 15, 2016February 17, 2017 by Ann Graeme

Say ‘cyanide’ and people rear back in horror. It is a lethal killer. One lick, whether you are a possum or a person, and you are dead. So cyanide use is strictly regulated and can only be used by qualified operators. But because it is so toxic, cyanide is also a very fast and humane killer. Some wily pests have learned to avoid the less toxic bait which volunteers can handle so cyanide is another tool to kill the possums, stoats, and rats that are killing our forest and its wildlife. Thank...

February 2016 – Killing for Survival

Posted on February 15, 2016February 17, 2017 by Ann Graeme

In New Zealand conservation is all about killing. It’s tragic but it’s true. The animals we kill we call ‘pests’. Before people came, bats were the only mammals that had made their own way to these islands. New Zealand was a land of birds, lizards and invertebrates including giant weta and metre-long earthworms which were eaten by enormous worm-eating snails. All other warm-blooded furry animals in native forests are foreigners – rats, stoats, ferrets, feral cats, hedgehogs, deer, goats and p...