Volunteers want you to join ongoing battle against pests

• Published date: 11 May 2023
• Publication title: Te Awamutu Courier

Winter is traditionally the time more rats and mice become evident in the walls and ceilings of your home — but luckily Te Awamutu has an answer

Predator Free Te Awamutu was established in August last year, the aim is to join the Predator Free 2050 movement to trap ourselves free of pests — mainly rats.

Members are encouraging residents to join the movement and set up traps in their backyards to eradicate the pests.

Volunteers are also using the approved trap boxes and traps, and with the support of Waipā District Council, setting up traplines in parks and walkways within the township.

Predator Free Te Awamutu trap boxes are marked with the group’s logo and volunteers ask that they be left for group members to monitor.

Te Awamutu is not only home to a great community to stand behind the Predator Free initiative, but it’s also in a prime position at the centre of two ecologically significant maunga, Maungatautari to Pirongia, each home to their own successful predator-control projects with Pirongia Restoration Society and Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari.

The ecological corridor project, Taiea te Taiao — Ma Mangapiko, mai i Maungatautari ki Pirongia ahu ake, is now under way and aims to link the two maunga.

To support these native species to move between the maunga, and find habitat within the corridor, predator control is crucial.

But it isn’t just native species that are at risk from the likes of rats and stoats — they pose a danger to human health as well, and they can ruin your home.

For this reason, more members of Predator Free Te Awamutu are welcomed.

Traps are for sale at Te Awamutu i-Site. They come with instructions on their use and how to sign up to trap.nz, and then to Predator Free Te Awamutu to register your trap and any kills.

Te Awamutu i-Site has partnered with Predator Free Te Awamutu and sells the traps and boxes at the discounted price offered by the group.

If you are already trapping you can also check out Predator Free Te Awamutu on trap.nz and ask to join.

The group is also looking for more volunteers for other roles — find the group on Facebook.

Why trapping is important for NZAotearoa New Zealand’s unique and ancient native species of plants and animals will be safe from extinction and flourishing once more if our lands are free of predators.

Predator Free 2050 builds on the achievements of hundreds of scientists, ecologists, iwi and community conservationists and is inspiring thousands more to join the movement. It offers the unifying vision of an endgame, and an action plan to win it. That culture of care and responsibility to nurture the welfare of the land and, by extension, the people, is called kaitiakitanga.

Return the voices of the insects...