Rob McIntyre (left), Andy McKay, Amelia Geary, and Maree White.
Rob McIntyre (left), Andy McKay, Amelia Geary, and Maree White.
Paekākāriki is working towards being predator free — and the community is loving it.
A team of five volunteers — Rob McIntyre, Andy McKay, Amelia Geary, Maree White and Chris Lowe — started up Predator Free Paekākāriki about 2020 in an effort to save Kāpiti’s native species.
There arepredator-free movements throughout New Zealand, but the Predator Free Paekākāriki team noticed a significant lack in Paekākāriki.
“In Kāpiti we have a predator problem,” McKay said, who is also the team leader of environment and ecological services at Kāpiti Coast District Council.
The Paekākāriki community has bought more than 100 traps for personal use, and Wellington Zoo donated a further 25 DOC150 traps for use in bigger, communal areas.
“There’s been an incredible community buy-in,” Geary said.
Predators are becoming a big issue in Paekākāriki with mice, rats, stoats, weasels, hedgehogs, and even cats becoming a huge threat to native wildlife, destroying fruit and native trees, and carrying diseases.
A rat in a fig tree Photo / Andy McKay
They have been caught preying on various bird eggs, skinks, chickens, and little blue penguins.
“The problem with stoats in particular is they kill for fun,” White said.
“It’s about the thrill of the chase, not because they’re actually hungry.”
In fact, these predators will even take on each other, and White recalled being told about a stoat chasing a rat along the rocks in front of Paekākāriki Beach.
The team wants to encourage native species to return to Paekākāriki, including its namesake, the kākāriki bird.
“I have had a few of them fly over my house,” said Geary, indicating their work has been effective.
Since Predator Free Paekākāriki started, the group has noticed an increase in tui and kererū numbers — a promising sign.
They use peanut butter donated by Fix and Fogg in Wellington in their traps, and Geary and White said it’s highly effective.
Fix and Fogg has donated more than 60 litres of peanut butter and it’s available to community trappers free at Paekākāriki Fruit Supply.
Not only are the Paekākāriki community setting traps, but many are volunteering to check the various traps, and people are doing a good job of keeping on top of their traps.
Community trapping has been such a popular idea that other parts of Kāpiti have been asking Predator Free Paekākāriki for traps but unfortunately, the team has the capacity to deal with only Paekākāriki.
