Good Nature Traps wipe out Rats
Environment Southland (ES) has been undertaking animal pest control in the Lower Mataura covenants for a number of years now. They have used a variety of control techniques - DOC200s, Timms traps, leg hold traps. Over this last year they established a 100m x 50m grid of Goodnature self resetting traps in the 20ha Stirling Block. This proved to be most successful with monitoring showing a drop in rat numbers from 25% in May to 0% by August. The monitoring remained at that level in November as well, eliminating the pressure of rat predation on breeding birds. Meanwhile in another uncontrolled block to the south east about 1km distance away, the Smith Block, the rat monitoring showed an increasing population through the year, to a rate of 90% by November. Comparing the cost of control using the DOC200 traps versus the Goodnature traps, due to the lower maintenance required, ES felt that the latter were the more cost effective option.
Posted on: Thursday, 11 February 2016
