Omaui Landcare Trust gets trap funding
Rats living in the Omaui reserve are entering their final days.
The Omaui Landcare Charitable Trust has received more than $100,000 in funding to set up a network of automatic traps in the seaside reserve.
The trust is made up of a core group of Omaui residents whose aim is to improve the health and integrity of the forest by reducing the numbers of pests.
Omaui Landcare Charitable Trust chairwoman Kaye McNeill said the trust was awarded a grant from the Department of Conservation of just over $66,000 and received $15,000 from the Invercargill Licensing Trust Foundation.
The Leslie Hutchens Trust donated $25,000, to be used over three years for trap maintenance.
With the funding, the Omaui Landcare Charitable Trust would install 471 Goodnature A24 automatic rat and stoat traps in a grid pattern throughout the Omaui reserve, McNeill said.
The trust had not yet received the money from DOC but was working through the funding process.
The automatic trap grid would replace an existing line of traps around the perimeter of the reserve, she said.
The trust wanted to use the automatic traps because it they required just a six-monthly check, and it meant poisons like 1080 could stop being used in bait stations, McNeill said.
The trust carried out a 1080 bait campaign in a 200-hectare area of bush targeting possums, stoats, rats and feral cats in December 2015 but started investing in alternative ways to rid the area of rats last year after numbers started to rise only three months after the 1080 campaign.
‘‘We’re not keen on using poisons; we want to keep that to a minimum.’’
The traps presently being used had to be checked by volunteers every two weeks, she said, and the trust hoped to have the network in place before spring when rat numbers would start to rise.
About 30 volunteers would be needed during the coming months to mark out the trap lines and carry out other work, she said.