Muriwai residents attack rat problem
‘‘Everyone’s talking about rats,’’ Muriwai Environmental Action Community Trust chairman Gerry Henley says.
The Auckland environmental group is getting its community involved in tackling a pest problem.
The Muriwai Environmental Action Community Trust (MEACT) was leading the Pest Free Muriwai project and was focusing on longtailed rodents - rats - in particular.
‘‘Doing it as a community, we have a chance of getting on top of it,’’ Henley said.
Muriwai resident Warwick Peterson got on board recently and had been approaching residents to get them involved.
‘‘The census gives Muriwai a population of about 1200 people. Basically, it’s small enough to be involved in this sort of project because it is a fairly confined area within that,’’ Peterson said.
Peterson said the vermin were getting into the eggs of Muriwai’s birds.
‘‘They’re a significant problem and if you are hitting the rats, you are going to get the mice,’’ he said.
Residents could help fund the project by purchasing their own bait station and poison.
It would cost $28, Peterson said, and he said the majority of people had been positive about the project.
Gecko NZ Trust’s Richard Chambers said the project would act as another barrier to protect Muriwai’s birdlife.
This included gannets, blue penguins and grey-faced petrels.
Chambers said Auckland Council already had pest control in place around the gannet colony, but the community using pest control would create an extra barrier.
‘‘With the community behind it, it makes it that much easier. You’ve got a buffer,’’ he said.
Chambers said the process they would use to kill the pests was called ‘pulsing’.
The bait stations would be left locked up with poison in them for two weeks. It would then be checked and, if necessary, poison would be replaced. The stations would then be left with poison inside them for another three weeks.
The bait stations would be checked again and left empty for six weeks. The process would then start again.
Peterson said the plan was to have a bait station every 50-metres in Muriwai’s residential area.