The team that placed the traps along the disused rail line. Photo / Supplied
The team that placed the traps along the disused rail line. Photo / Supplied
A new collaboration between the East Taranaki Environment Collective (ETEC) and Forgotten World Adventures will protect kiwi.
Forgotten World Adventures, which runs converted golf carts along the former Stratford-Okahukura rail line, has partnered with ETEC to place 69 of the DOC 250 pest animal traps along a 10-kilometre stretch of rail through rugged hill country at Te Wera, 35km east of Stratford.
Last week representatives of ETEC, Forgotten World Adventures, Taranaki Kiwi Trust and the Taranaki Maunga project placed one of the traps every 150 metres along the stretch of rail line Mohakau Rd to the mouth of the tunnel under Pohokura Saddle.
The rail line runs along the southern boundary of a recently enlarged ETEC pest management operational area, which now covers more than 18,000ha from Okoki to Te Wera.
Taranaki Kiwi Trust's Maia Gibbs behind the wheel of a rail cart as she delivers several of the traps along the line. Photo / Supplied
Prior to this expansion, the area was already home to large numbers of western North Island brown kiwi, and the increased acreage will now provide substantially more protected habitat.
ETEC general manager Rebecca Somerfield says the agreement allowing the placement of traps along the rail line is the perfect solution to what was potentially an expensive problem.
“The line runs alongside State Highway 43 which is actually the southern boundary of our enlarged area under pest management. If we had placed the traps along the highway, we would have had to prepare safety plans for the use of SH43 to regularly check them, which could have been an expensive exercise.”
Jono Walter (Taranaki Kiwi Trust, left), Shane Reed (Forgotten World Adventures) and Maia Gibbs (Taranaki Kiwi Trust) load up DOC 250 traps for delivery along the rail line. Photo / Supplied
She says the collaboration will allow ETEC to use Forgotten World Adventures’ rail carts to check the traps.
“This will be a lot safer and logistically far more convenient. We’re delighted.”
Forgotten World Adventures general manager Kara Matheson says her organisation, which leases the disused rail line, is excited to enter the partnership and is happy to donate time, staff and resources to the project.
“It will be great to see the rail corridor utilised for the protection of our native wildlife,” she says. “It’s going to be a unique way of transporting and checking traps along ETEC’s southern boundary.”
Forgotten World Adventures runs its tourism operation along 143km of the disused rail line, and would be keen to see pest animal traps placed along the entire corridor, she says.
“But this would be too big for us to do ourselves. Our core business is tourism, while ETEC’s core business is animal pest control. It makes sense to collaborate, and we’ll have discussions regarding the potential for this to happen sometime in the future.”
