All the trappings of Christmas
This great summer season has been a time for everyone to thrive, and this unfortunately includes the predators in the Kaimai-Mamakū conservation park. Regular visits by volunteers to clear their traplines around The Blade in Whakamārama halted in mid-December for the Christmas break, but some volunteers were able to keep working their traplines and found they were trapping large numbers of possums and rats.
There’s no better motivation for predator controllers than to see results, so they kept baiting and clearing traps. By the time the whole group of volunteers came back in mid-January for the first full muster of 2022 there had been a total of 54 possums removed from the bush.
The full team of volunteer trappers returned on Friday 14th January, and a total of 60 possums was recorded that day. The overall result of trapping during the four week period over Christmas was 114 possums; a very impressive tally for the group.
The southeastern boundary of the area cared for by Friends of the Blade saw the biggest influx of possums. Juvenile possums that have graduated from the ‘back rider’ stage when they were still travelling on their mothers’ backs, will strike out on their own to establish a territory for themselves. The possums caught over this Christmas time seemed to be mostly young males coming in from neighbouring, untrapped areas, looking for the chance to occupy territory left vacant when older males had been removed.
Their opportunistic movement into bush that had fewer possums and less competition also brought them into contact with the external traplines so their quest for new territory ended abruptly.
The Friends of the Blade volunteer group is heartened by the success of their summer trapping and hope to keep the results up. New volunteers who could give some of their time to this group will be very welcome and they will have the happy experience of seeing and hearing native birds - the reason for the work we do.
Anyone interested in finding out more about Friends of the Blade should email noelenetaylor57@gmail.com or find out more on the Bay Conservation Alliance website.