Locals help blue duck bounce back
Pest-trapping efforts allowing pairs to breed
The sun is beating down as a group of rafters make their way down the Tongariro River. They’re on a welcome calm stretch of water, after several hair-raising sections of whitewater rapids.
Then a murmur ripples through the group. Standing on rocks at the edge of the river is a breeding pair of whio, also known as blue duck.
They’re rare, with fewer than 3000 throughout New Zealand. But it’s a sight that’s becoming more common, thanks to the community stepping up for a monumental pest-trapping effort.
Nine years ago only two breeding pairs of whio were on the Tongariro River. This year there are 17 breeding pairs. Eleven pairs nested this season, and fledged 40 ducklings between them.
It all started when Garth Oakden wanted to start a conservation project through his company, Tongariro River Rafting, and approached ecologist Nick Singers for ideas.
“[Singers] suggested trapping rats and stoats, and all I could think was ‘how on earth are we going to do that’?”
Parts of the Tongariro River are only accessible by raft, and other parts take a long time to walk to.
The answer turned out to be the perfect mix of technology, community and business.
The group opted to use traditional one-use traps and the self-resetting A24 trap, developed by Wellington company Goodnature, which could kill 24 pests before needing to be reloaded.
Workers from Tongariro River Rafting cleared and reloaded some of the traps, hunters were responsible for others, and inmates at Rangipo Prison took on the rest.
With that, the Blue Duck Charitable Trust was born.
It turned out rafters loved seeing the ducks and the boost to his tourism business was icing on the cake.
Goodnature technical expert Nick Graham said the selfsetting A24 was key to trapping stoats, which were the biggest problem for whio.
“You can set a single-set trap, and it would be set off that night by a rat rather than the stoats you want.
“But with this technology, you can kill multiple rats, and the trap is still available to kill the stoats.”
Singers said the rise in duck numbers couldn’t have happened without the effort from the entire community, including Rangipo Prison.
Inmates check 160 traps along 8km of river and this has saved $15,000 in labour costs.
“We couldn’t pay that, and we’re a little community so we couldn’t get enough volunteers,” Singers said.
“The prisoners love it, it’s the perk job for them.”