Bream Head’s traps are very quiet at the moment with no sign of any mustelid (Ferret, Stoat, Weasel), Possums or Feral Cats. This is fantastic news for all our endemic species recovering in the reserve who are producing offspring over the next few months, survival rates should be very good indeed. It’s great to see the possums that were being caught at Dead Horse Bay has now finished after the initial knockdown saw 19 caught within a coupe of months in just one small area, by just two traps. Fingers crossed our traps and stations stay quiet over the usually busier spring/summer months.
Our awesome Busby Head volunteer group have continued their pest control and managed to tackle some weeds around Busby Head. The tracks, gorse and thistles around this part of the reserve have also had the fine treatment from the small, dedicated mid week team consisting of Colin and Marjorie Edwards, David Munro, Jane Barr, Terry Dyer and Roger Clarke. Keep up the good work guys!
The restoration group have been very productive clearing weeds at Ocean Beach, replanting stream banks and planting shade trees around our operational Headquarters. I spent a wonderful morning at Whangarei Heads School and we developed a really great interactive game all about what New Zealand/Aotearoa was like prior to and post introduction of mammalian predators. I am working on developing this very educational game to a stage where we could use it with visiting schools so as to demonstrate very tangibly why restoration is so important and how this is being done presently.
Read the September 2015 Rangers Report (1.2MB pdf) for more details on this and other stories.