Bike trail sets course for bush renewal

Volunteers Ric Balfour, Kim Fraser and Logan Murphy prepare to hike up the Waiotahi Track near Thames to check the Thames Mountain Bike Club pest animal trap line.

The sound of silence in the bush above Thames was a key trigger that led a local group to take action to nurse their beloved environment back into shape.

Working with community volunteers, the Thames Mountain Bike Club set up a trapping line in February last year to help control the possums, mustelids (ferrets, stoats and weasels) and rats that have taken a heavy toll on the local fauna and flora in the vicinity of the Karaka track.

The club also recently received support from the Small Scale Community Initiatives Fund (SSCIF) to supplement their 20 manual traps with 10 automatic traps. The Waikato Regional Council fund provides around $150,000 each year to support volunteer community groups and individual landowners undertaking ecological restoration through animal and plant pest control.

Members of the Thames Mountain Bike Club are frequent users of the Karaka track that climbs up to a peak of 550m in the hills to the east of
Thames. Along with the nearby Waiotahi Track, the two tracks form a
12km loop.

Logan applies a lure to a new AT220 automatic trap provided with the support of Waikato Regional Council, while Ric updates the status of the trap on the Trap NZ application.

‘We realised that we were just not hearing any birds up there,’ says club vice president and trapping manager Ric Balfour, an impression backed up by a year’s worth of bird counts.

‘It is quite different from around my home in Thames where there is lots of birdlife.’

Ric says club members also noticed the lack of tree seedling regrowth in the bush: 'There are so many possums and they have even been eating the mamaku tree fronds. It shows the pressure on the bush and so we are trying to do something about it.’

New automatic traps supported by Waikato Regional Council will help to alleviate some of the pressure on the local flora.

The club has worked with Predator Free Hauraki Coromandel Community Trust on the best placement and spacing of the original and new traps. A recent grant from the Seagull Centre in Thames has provided funds to buy an additional 8 DOC200 traps made by local Pare Hauraki runanga at the Ngāti Maru office.

A group of local volunteers—many not members of the club, but instead hikers, walkers and runners—help to check and maintain the traps.

The advantage of the new automatic traps that the Thames Mountain Bike Club has received through the SSCIF is that they often have a bigger positive impact on the local environment than manual traps. This is because automatic traps reset themselves after each pest caught, meaning they are in action more of the time. The result is that they remove a larger number of pest animals from the environment than manual traps. They also reduce the amount of volunteer time required. The traps only operate during darkness when predators are most active.

Ric installs a found branch as an impromptu ramp to encourage pest animals towards a new AT220 automatic trap.

The additional traps will effectively suppress the numbers of possums and other pests, giving the trees a break from pest browsing and contributing to regeneration. Each trap covers a radius of about 500m of pest activity.

Volunteers use the Trap NZ app to update information about each trap and this information is collected online to build up a picture of the trapping progress.

Some 120 pest animals were caught in the past 12 months, before the automatic traps were installed. Further progress is expected with the new trapping equipment in place.

Over the past decade, the club has put around $150,000 worth of improvements into the Karaka Track, clearing about a 4km stretch, building bridges and maintaining the route which is also popular with hikers and runners.

Going forward, the club plans to work with the Department of Conservation and Thames Coromandel District Council to upgrade the remainder of the Karaka track all the way up to the peak, subject to funding.

‘We hope to get traps along the whole of the Karaka and Waiotahi tracks and so help to protect all of that area from pest animals,’ says Ric.

‘Our community is very supportive of the work we are doing, including both people who volunteer with us, local businesses, the district council and Waikato Regional Council.

Ric says the club really appreciates the support from Waikato Regional Council and the SSCIF that has enabled them to install additional traps on their new trapline on the Waiotahi Track.

‘The impact will be more than additional pests being removed from the bush,’ says Ric.

‘It has opened a whole new opportunity to engage and mentor young locals like Logan Murphy, who has started volunteering for us as a trapper. He is learning about these new traps, the TrapNZ app and all the tricks of the trade that go with successful trapping projects.

‘That is the multiplier effect of supporting community groups like ours," says Ric.