Pounding the pests
Residents in a Palmerston North suburb are leading the charge to rid pests from their corner of New Zealand.
Andrew and Leanne Davidson have started Pest Free Summerhill, a group dedicated to making the suburb rodent free.
Summerhill is best known for its large houses worth plenty more than the average property in the city.
The suburb also has a lot of gullies, which have been planted with native fauna to encourage bird life to go from the hills to the city.
Andrew Davidson said the idea came to them after they went into the Ruahine Range with friends to inspect a trap line.
That motivated them to get a trap for home.
After a slow start – ‘‘we didn’t get anything in the first month’’ – they netted a weasel, a stoat and five rats in three months.
If pests were getting on to their property, they had to be coming from in the neighbourhood, so they started thinking how they could deal with the problem.
‘‘One thing led to another and we have now got 30 traps,’’ Andrew Davidson said.
The traps were provided by Palmerston North City Council.
Andrew Davidson said they made a circuit, mainly following parts of the Te Araroa trail and also going through an old pine forest on Massey University land. The circuit was just the first, though, as there are plans to get more across the suburb, as well as possum traps, he said.
Other communities were doing similar trapping programmes to help with making New Zealand predator free and more needed to get involved to make it a reality.
But the Davidsons’ first goal was to get more people involved in Pest Free Summerhill.
If people could not help financially, they could check traps or help with maintenance, he said. More information about Pest Free Summerhill can be found on its Facebook page.