Anti-pest device a design winner
It lures the rodent in, crushes its skull, spits it back out, and nature takes care of the rest.
And while it may sound pretty nasty – it’s ‘‘super humane’’ – and is set to dominate the world of conservation.
It’s a rat-trap, but not your simple, traditional kind, it’s one that can reset itself up to 24 times before it needs to be reloaded by a human.
On top of that, it kills 20 times more rats than the single action traps.
The rat-trap invention – called A24 – is the brainchild of Wellington company Goodnature and has won the top prize at the Best Design Awards in Auckland.
It received the coveted Purple Pin award for the ‘‘dramatic impact’’ the trap has had on the Department of Conservation’s pest control efforts.
The device has increased the department’s kill rates, and reduced labour costs by up to 90 per cent.
The ‘‘world-first’’ system removes the need for the labour-intensive checking and resetting and release more resources to fight pests threatening native birds.
Goodnature co-founder Robbie van Dam said the traps were designed to humanely kill pests, rather than make them suffer a slow death.
‘‘It’s much better to whack them in the head – killing them instantly – than lure them back [with poison] and they slowly, slowly die.’’
What made their trap different was that it only had to be checked twice a year, as opposed to up to 32 times a year with traditional ‘‘medieval’’ traps, van Dam said.
‘‘It’s all about controlling rats and doing it faster than they reproduce.’’
The tree-mounted trap can detect when a pest climbs up, attracted by the bait.
When the rodent peers in, its presence trips a see-saw mechanism which triggers the piston into its head, immediately killing it.
The pest then falls to the ground, and video evidence shows that other animals come along and drag the carcass away.
In November 2014, a network of 467 traps was installed over 200 hectares of forest at Harts Hill in Fiordland National Park.
The plan was to control rats during a widely publicised beech mast and rat plague event.
The traps successfully reduced the rat population to zero within 12 weeks and sustained that for the remainder of the project.
Van Dam believed the product would help the Government achieve its target of a predator-free New Zealand by 2050.