FOR THE BIRDS
Jean’s a rat-catching legend
The Pukawa Wildlife Management Trust was set up in 2002, around the same time the area, on the southern shores of Lake Taupo, was being developed.
There was a group of about half a dozen of us who would get together for morning tea. Someone made a comment about how there were no birds in the bush up behind us and that’s really how it started.
The Department of Conservation (DoC), who administer the land, said they would help us, but wanted to know how much time we were prepared to give it. They didn’t want any fly-by-nights who would start something and then just drop it. I remember saying we’ll probably give it an hour a week, which makes me smile when I think about it now as that isn’t very much time at all.
Anyway, my husband Russell and I got impatient waiting for DoC to give us a few traps to start us off, so we went to the hardware store and bought an ordinary old wooden household rat trap. Russell cut a hole in the end of a box, which we turned upside down and placed over the trap. Well, we caught 10 rats over 10 consecutive nights. We knew then we had a problem.
We’ve since moved on to what’s called the DoC200 trap, a steel trap in a box – there are regulations around trapping, meaning you have to use instant kill traps – and self-setting ones.
There’s something like 200 houses in Pukawa, but there’s only 12 permanent residents and not all of them are into trapping, so we very much depend on holidaymakers and others that come in for short periods of time to help out.
When self-setting traps were introduced, we thought, great, we won’t have to do so much work, but because we rely on volunteers, that means we’re short of feet on the ground.
There’s about eight of us − how do I put this – older ones involved in the trust. But I also have what I call my ‘good guys’. There’s three of them – holiday homeowners. They’re fit and love nothing better than loading themselves up with the gear, then away they go.
They roam all over the bush and love it, and I love them for what they’re doing. They do the more difficult lines that
I’ve had to give up.
I’ve just turned 89. It’s rather daunting, actually. Friends think I’m crazy heading off into the bush, but I have a system with my son Douglas whereby I never go out without him knowing where I’m going. I send him an email at night if I’m going out the next day to tell him where I’ll be.
I leave the house early – when my energy levels are highest − and when I get back, I text him so he knows his mother hasn’t fallen over somewhere in the bush. I also have a search and rescue locator beacon too. I hope I never have to pull the plug on that!
I head out once or twice a week these days. Like I said, friends think I’m mad, but my doctor said, ‘Don’t stop, keep walking.’ And that’s what I do.
In the last year, we’ve caught a total of four cats, four ferrets, 22 hedgehogs, 94 mice, 14 possums, 29 rabbits, 349 rats, 12 stoats and three weasels.
I like to think we’ll get to the stage where we’re not catching any more rats, but even keeping the numbers down means the birds have a better chance of survival. When we first started, a DoC guy told me that in two years’ time, we wouldn’t know the place – that there’d be so many birds around. And that’s turned out to be true. We’ve now got birds that hadn’t been seen for many years, such as the native robins and tomtits, re-establishing themselves.
I’m sure my interest in conservation came from an uncle. When I was eight, my father died, so we moved from a farm near Kimbolton to Feilding. I hated it. My mother always seemed to be telling us to keep our voices down. But each school holidays, I would go back out into the country to stay with an uncle and aunt. My uncle would take me out with him and teach me about the wildlife.
Russell and I also shared conservation interests. Our married life was spent on farms, so life revolved around nature and raising animals. It is very unlikely that I would have become interested in predator control had Russell not also been involved.
Nearly every town has a public garden or park. If people got together, approached their council and offered to check traps, I’m sure councils would find the money to provide them.
Think of how wonderful it would be if every park and every garden in New Zealand became predator free.”