40,000 fewer rats in park

Conservation workers and volunteers have between them reached the milestone of removing more than 40,000 rats from the Abel Tasman National Park.

Figures from Project Janszoon show that, as of October, 41,469 rats, 1881 stoats and 336 weasels had been trapped in the park in the last seven years.

Project Janszoon director Bruce Vander Lee said it was a huge accomplishment and it was the partnership between the Department of Conservation, Abel Tasman Birdsong Trust, Air New Zealand and Project Janszoon that made the milestone at such a scale, achievable.

Project Janszoon was established in 2012 as a privately funded trust with $25 million to spend on restoring the park’s ecosystems over the next 30 years. The resulting collaboration between organisations and local iwi has been hailed for its innovative approach to conservation. Vander Lee said regular visitors to the park often spoke of the change they had noticed in the birdsong over the last seven years.

‘‘That is just showing us that controlling rats makes a difference, and we love that people are appreciating that.’’

The trapping network now covers about 20,000 hectares, or 90 per cent of the national park and Vander Lee said there were around 3500 trap boxes with more than 5000 traps in them.

He said it also showed how tough conservation work was, with each rat representing someone walking to and clearing a trap.

‘‘Putting out those thousands of traps, walking tens of thousands of kilometres to check them, hundreds of thousands of times – it is a real story of what conservation work is.

In the past seven years, kākā, kākāriki and pāteke had been reintroduced to the park. Vander Lee said it was starting to work on a plan to reintroduce kiwi. ‘‘There’s people still around who can remember hearing kiwi calls in the park and I think it would be nice to come full circle so they can hear that again.’’