Kiwi stars of 20 years' pest protection

It’s amazing what video footage you can find on a trail camera after 20 years of predator control.

For Guy and Angela, from the Coromandel Peninsula, that has been plenty of kiwi, including a male who faces the camera and just belts out his call to mark his territory or perhaps stay in touch with his mate. 

“We’ve seen two kiwi fighting, which was pretty amusing,” says Guy of what they’ve recorded on trail cameras set near traps on the couple’s property.

“We had another who must have heard the camera activate. He stopped and had pine needles sticking to his feet which he tried to shake but couldn’t, all the while looking at the camera in disgust.

“We’ve seen gecko, kākā, tomtit, and we even had a weka on camera.

“If we hadn’t been trapping for the last 20 years we wouldn’t get videos like that.”

The couple’s property has regenerating native bush and mature stands of kauri – “four people can hold hands around them, so they are pretty big”.

Guy and Angela trap possums, stoats, rats, mice, hedgehogs, rabbits and mustelids to leave a legacy and because they love what New Zealand has to offer.

Their traps come in all shapes and sizes, and are checked a number of times each week.

Guy says they’ve been applying every year for about five years to Waikato Regional Council’s Small Scale Community Initiatives Fund, which supports volunteer community groups and individual landowners undertaking ecological restoration through animal and plant pest control.

Applicants can ask for up to $5000.

This year they have received $2817.90 to maintain and expand their current trap system, and to monitor native species and maintain native plantings.

“Some years we have missed out because there is always more projects than money, but we have been pretty lucky.

“We love doing the pest control but it is time consuming and also expensive. We just had our trail cameras stolen after some intruders came onto the block and helped themselves!”

It takes about an hour to do the rounds of all the traps if nothing has been caught or no trap maintenance is required; or about an hour and a half otherwise.

Guy and Angela, who have a YouTube site called Kiwi Success Story, have been recording their pest kills for the past 10 years and have just hit 1000 possums. Almost 100 mustilids have been trapped and over a thousand rats have also been dispatched.

As they say: If you want native species on your property then you need to put in the work to reduce pests.