Community collaboration secures greater protection for coastland birds

Hurunui’s coastal bird species are enjoying greater protection with the latest in high-tech predator traps safeguarding their eggs and habitat.

The community project is the first to receive funding under the newly formed Northern Pegasus Bay (Hurunui) Coastcare group. The group received a MainPower Hurunui Environment Fund grant of $4,172 at this year’s Hurunui Community Awards to expand the predator trapping programme at Ashworths Ponds.

The group’s secretary, Kevin Roche, says the grant allowed for the purchase of new traps to replace some existing older traps, and have automatic rebaiting and trap resetting.

“This means they are active 24/7 and require checking only every two to six months, when the data on hits can be downloaded to a smartphone. This saves a lot of time compared to manually inspecting the traps and removing dead predators.

“With this reduction in the time spent servicing traps, volunteers can now focus more on undertaking bird counts, which aligns with the changed policy of the Predator NZ Trust to ‘count the birds, not the bodies’.”

Roche says the smaller traps catch mice, rats, stoats and hedgehogs, and the larger traps catch possums – significantly reducing the numbers of predators threatening bird populations in the area.

“These predators kill the chicks of native birds and eat their eggs. They also eat native tree seeds, inhibiting propagation, and mice will also eat whitebait eggs on streambanks.”

Hurunui District Council’s Land and Water coordinator Rima Herber says the network of inland ponds along the east coast of the Hurunui are important to the district as historical mahinga kai sites and valuable birdnesting sites for species such as pied stilts and banded dotterels.

Herber says the new traps are proof of the strength in the community working together.

The bird nesting sites previously relied on fencing for protection from vehicles and dogwalkers. During the April 2020 lockdown, local resident Caroline Elliott noticed the fencing was damaged and she and her husband, Jeff, repaired the fencing and set up 15 traps, to begin protecting the nesting birds from predators. These, says Herber, required fortnightly checking and clearing.­

In February this year, the Coastcare group became an incorporated society, “linking everyone who is doing conservation work within the Pegasus Bay coastal communities and making it easier for projects to get funding”, Herber says.

The Society is currently seeking funding to undertake work on biodiversity regeneration in the wetland and coastal dune areas from the "Rocks" to Ashworths Beach.