Our pilot programme on Arapaoa Island is underway! Our trustees Steve Dawson, Mark Denzie, Ben Wybourne, and with the expertise of a very experienced trapper Darren Peters from Good Nature, we installed and placed 48 traps and 11 cameras to date around the southern end of East Bay. This is the pilot trapping area as outlined in our Operational Plan. The traps placed were mainly Good Nature A24 stoat traps and we still have a large number of DOC200 traps to be placed, delayed due to slips on a track.
Our thanks to Lotteries who funded this first stage of the project to eradicate stoats and reintroduce kiwi onto Arapaoa Island in the next 5-7 years. Also, a thank you to Darren and Good Nature for coming out to the island and assisting us.
The Pilot Programme will verify and confirm the proposed methodologies of trapping, monitoring and organisational systems prior to rolling out the traps on a much larger scale.
