March it is and marching on we do. Great month and the weather finally settled a bit. Good stretches of sunshine and no rain. Good for trapping and outings. In fact, we had 18 of them. The good weather enabled me to finish two new lines: Top Fairway and Lower Fairway! And hard work it was too cutting a path through dense undergrowth.

These lines are just below the golf course and go through some beautiful native bush full of broadleaves and fuchsia. In between lots of ferns and pittosporums. Unfortunately, there are also quite a few sycamores. But Ecan seem to be taking care of that. There were some patches of brambles too. Very hard to get through. But now all sorted. The traps will go in shortly. They might not yield many possums but certainly the rats will get wakening up!

There are rather a lot of birds in there too. Usually, bellbirds and grey warblers but also many fantails. At some point, when cutting through the undergrowth, I was surrounded by about ten fantails all going on in crazy acrobatics and very excitedly as if welcoming my intrusion or disapproving. Almost a telling off! I just love these little birds. Cheeky, trusting, noisy and nosey. What’s going on Trapman?!

Well, we are trapping as never before. And getting those critters in big numbers. Watch out we are going to get you! And here are the numbers: 23 possums, 35 rats, 3 stoats and 3 hedgehogs. The possums are a bit of a mystery. They are well up on our average catch for March and way more than the average of the last few months. It is sort of disappointing. It is almost a record number!

Most of them were caught on the edge of the forest where we have traps as a sort of virtual predator fence. So maybe these are attempted re-invasions caught just before entering the forest. The rats are a bit all over the place, but the catches are very much lower on Piccadilly Line, which is the first line we established. That is good news. The stoats are just unpredictable as they have such a large range of territory.

The birds are certainly there. Plenty of bellbirds, silvereyes and grey warblers. The fantails are prolific too and so are the kereru. Mind you not hundreds of them, but enough to be able to observe them almost every day.
​
Then we had two special outings to the Totara Tree! One with Marcel, chief trapper, and Jon and Sue, also chief trappers, plus Christine, chief trapper wife, who managed to get there without too much complaint albeit with a little drama. Now that is exactly five people who have seen the Totara, a five hundred year old tree in the Rakaia Gorge! It does not get much better than that in my world!

Talking about trees we have also discovered a stand of old narrow-leaved lacebarks. At first, I was not sure what it was, but when I put a photo onto iNaturalist, it was confirmed as being a lacebark. It is endemic to New Zealand and officially named Hoheria angustifolia from the family Malvaceae. Late in summer or early autumn it is full of lovely white flowers. It is evergreen although some trees might lose part of their leaves in winter.

I always thought that it was a bush or a shrub rather than a tree, but when I came upon this specimen it had very smooth straight trunk, dividing further up, with weeping branches hanging low down. The bark was sometimes used by Maori to make traditional textiles. The Latin name derives from the Maori name: houhere.
​
Hugh Wilson, biologist over on Banks Peninsula, and guardian of the Hinewai Reserve, found a lacebark with a diameter of 130 centimetres, which is very unusual as they normally are only about 30 centimetres thick. However, ‘our’ tree is at least 60 centimetres in diameter making it also older than the average. Just wait a few years and we are going to beat Hugh Wilson! 

The shop performed exceptionally well too during March. In fact, we run out of things to sell! Anybody out there keen in producing little tokens or souvenirs for sale in the shop? Jon cannot keep up with painting the stones. Christine has not enough clay to make more souvenirs and Juliana is stressed with printing more cards! Maybe we should make the shop bigger too. Who would have thought of that.

A Swiss couple were so impressed by the shop and our work that they donated a substantial amount to the cause and wrote this email: ‘During our holiday in New Zealand we experienced so many beautiful things, above all in nature, that we would like to leave something behind… we hope that thanks to you many more birds and other animals will find their way back into the Rakaia Gorge’. It makes for a fuzzy brain or heart.

The visitors’ book too is full of encouraging comments and makes very inspired reading. I usually open the book when passing and just have a look as to who has been visiting. People from New Zealand and from all over the world. And the post box is amazing. I pick up every time a few cards to be sent to Australia, America, England, all over. We even had to order more stamps. The Fantail Trust stamps of $2.90.

So, it is all good news about the Fantail Trust. But other people have been at it as well. All working to the common goal of making New Zealand predator free or as I would prefer to call it, making New Zealand a paradise for birds and all native species. The movement, if it can be called a movement, seems to be getting traction.
​
There was the good news that Otago Peninsula near Dunedin has been declared possum free! What a milestone and what an achievement. It took a huge effort with many organisations involved, like the Halo Trust, City Sanctuary, Predator Free Dunedin and many others. They removed more than 26000 possums in an area of over 9000 ha. It took 15 years of sustained effort to get to this point, more than a 1000 volunteers and Scout, the possum dog. It proves that with support from industry and the public that it is possible to clear large-scale areas of possums. 

Another good news story is that near Stewart Island, on Anchor Island, the first kakapo chick hatched on Valentine’s day! Remarkable as they only breed every two to four years and then face many challenges of survival.
​
According to Predator Free 2050 this season there are 187 eggs of which 74 are fertile. Not all of them will hatch but it is a good number and brings a lot of hope of having one day a sizable colony of kakapo on Stewart Island. You can watch the chick growing up on the webcam:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB00JW39528

Yet one more little uplifting story, if you are in the business of trapping, is one also from Otago, but this one among the mountains in the Rees Valley. The one I walked last year where I spotted four takahe. Well, staff from the Southern Lakes Sanctuary, while putting in a new trap line, saw a pair of Whio in the Rees River!
These birds have not been seen in the river for more than 50 years! What a return on effort and investment! It is a significant milestone and of great importance to Ngai Tahu. A Taonga is returning to a stunning river valley deep in the mountains of New Zealand. Important surely for all of us. We must keep going and as Paul Kavanagh, of the Southern Lakes Sanctuary, says:  “Our conservation efforts, it just has to keep going. You can't take your foot off the gas so hopefully this pair of whio stay in the area, others naturally return and we get a breeding population of whio soon”. Here in the gorge, we are eagerly awaiting the arrival of Tuis!

So, a lot is happening all over New Zealand. But so much more needs to be done. If the goal of Predator Free 2050 is going to be achieved we need more efficiency, better traps, better lures and maybe better poisons too. We should not completely disregard humane poisons that kill effectively, fast and are not a burden on the environment. Because how otherwise are we going to get large, rugged areas, say Fiordland, predator free?

There are many people and organisations working on that, to develop a next generation of tools and technologies to achieve the goal. We use some of these tools like the AT220 automatic traps and the A24 traps for rats. Our network has now grown to just about 600 traps all along the walkway and further into the bush as well. We also use cameras to monitor different areas of the forest just to see what is happening and what predators are still around.
​
But as clever as new technology is, it will not be enough to become predator free by 2050. It needs people. It needs you! Therefore, thank you all who have contributed in some way to the future native bird and plant sanctuary in the Rakaia Gorge. And a special thank you to the Chief Trappers! Sue and Jon, Marcel and Mel, Paul and Jo. 

February started a bit like January ended, lots of rain and bad weather. But it got better in the end. At least we had many more days out there trapping and looking after our trap lines. In fact, we had 21 days out there. And good results which ever way you look at it.

There were seven possums, 47 rats! one stoat, four weasels, eight hedgehogs and rather unusually two ferrets. It is pleasing to have a possum number below ten, and two of these possums were caught in my vegetable garden! The rat number is pleasing too for a different reason. We are making some progress in eliminating them as well. Or at least suppressing them a bit. The stoat was close to the golf course as also three of the weasels and one of the ferrets. The other ferret was down on Circle Line in D61.

I just wonder where the ferrets come from. Were they released by someone who has them as pets? Are there more around than I think? Previously we only had four ferrets and all of them in the bush. Theoretically we should not even get them as the DOC150 traps are not designed to catch ferrets and we hardly, if ever, put fresh meat into the traps. Nevertheless, it is good that we get them but how many more are out there?!

Also, we have never actively tried to catch the stoats and weasels. They are almost a by-catch. Do we just get the easy ones? Everybody says how hard they are to get. It is most likely the egg we have in the DOC traps rather than the peanut butter that lures them in! But I also noticed that the golf balls attract them. One stoat got caught in a DOC trap just with a golf ball inside!

Below is a graph showing the difference between a stoat and a weasel. They are quite different and the easiest give-away is the bushy tail of the stoat with a black tip. Weasels were introduced to control rabbits and in greater numbers than stoats because in England there are more weasels than stoats.
​
Here that changed over time. Weasels naturally go for smaller prey such as mice, skinks, frogs and birds. But as these smaller prey declined the stoats were better placed to survive because they went for bigger prey and out-competed the weasels. Now we have more stoats than weasels! 

Weasels also breed super-fast. Almost impossible to eradicate as they produce offspring faster than we can catch them. Like a female weasel born in spring can already give birth in late summer! Another difficulty is that most weasels caught are males. They are just a bit less shy in entering a trap plus they also roam much further so the chances that they stumble upon a trap is much greater.

That is the frustrating thing that stoats, weasels and rats reproduce so fast that we can hardly keep up with eliminating them. They are always a step ahead of us or so it seems. My theory is that at least where we have traps, below a tree say, then that tree is kind of protected, or the birds in it are a bit safer. So, each trap creates a sort of safe haven of around a 25 metre radius. That is how far a rat might forage for food each night. Plus, here in the Rakaia Gorge we also have the problem of re-invasion. Especially the possums thrive on the surrounding farms.
​
The good thing is that our efforts are paying off! There are more birds, there is more bird song and the sound of the kereru flying in and out of the bush can be heard on a daily basis. They are hard to spot sometimes and on occasion, when I am looking for them, they are perched right above my head. Just sitting there, without a sound, looking out over the gorge. Beautiful to see and to me the most obvious proof that the reduction in predators has worked as two or three years ago there were hardly any kereru around. 

Isn’t it a magnificent bird! And right in our backyard in the Rakaia Gorge! The other day, when we installed a panel not far from the bridge, we looked up and saw four of them in the same tree! How wonderful! And most people I talk to on the walkway tell me they saw one or two of these birds.

While they are not threatened, they still need our support to thrive and survive. They are important birds for our forests as they are the only bird left now who is able to swallow large seeds of miro or karaka trees which they disperse over long distances. A very important function of forest renewal!

Kereru were traditionally hunted for meat and feathers, but that activity is now prohibited. But sad to say in Northland the kereru is threatened with local extinction due to predation, competition and would you believe  it, hunting!

The biggest threat for kereru is predation by rats, stoats, cats and possums. They all eat the eggs and attack the fledglings. Stoats will even go for adult kereru! The possums also compete with the birds by eating the preferred food of kereru, leaves, flowers and fruit especially of the kowhai.

As mentioned above we had 21 outings this month. It was mainly checking traps, it was also stocking the shop. For a while we ran out of stock! No more postcards, no more pottery trinkets, no more painted stones. I had to put an apology into the shop saying that we just have no more things to display! It is one of my great pleasures when down there and then I open the post box and find a handful of cards in there. Sent to all corners of the world! Then taking them home, putting our own stamp onto them and sending them off!

Then we get lovely messages in the visitors’ book. Pages are sometimes not big enough for all the comments. But this week I received a very special one from Melanie, who had sent four post cards to America. She wrote:

‘P.S. the fantail shop brought me such an immense amount of joy while on the hike - it is whimsical and sweet and thoughtful and an invitation to slow down in nature (all incredible things the world needs more of) so thank you!!’

How could I not be happy. And thank you Melanie for writing to us! The postcards are well on their way and will delight the recipients.

Other things we did was the removal of two wilding pine trees. They had annoyed me for a while growing bigger all the time. One was just down from the stile and the other near the coalmine. Jon and Sue helped with the removal of these trees. For safety reasons we also used a rope to get down to them and then carefully cut them with our little chainsaw and very sharp handsaw.

Here is a link to the felling:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2diuykou8swmqag1wks78/20260205_114313_1_1_1.mp4?rlkey=38l98e01kwzzqtdfvm3ehs2hx&dl=0

​​

​Then at last we installed two panels on the walkway. One down close to the bridge and one at the stile and seat where we cross over from Terrace Downs onto the walkway. They are information panels on the work of the fantail trust, warning walkers that trapping is being undertaken all along the path. In a way they also alert to the trouble the forest is in and that something is being done about it. 
​

In last ‘Trapper Monthly’ I boasted about ‘our’ Totara and about a very large lancewood. Now for this month it will be about a massive broadleaf I found some time ago. It is well hidden in the forest on the line called ‘Route 66’. That name comes about because the last trap I installed down there has the number A66!

Broadleaf, or Grisellina littoralis, Kapuka in Maori, is quite a hardy tree. It grows from the coast right up to maybe 1000 metres above sea level. It can tolerate sea breezes and strong winds and is therefore ideal for shelter. It can also be clipped into shape and will easily regrow. They are susceptible to possum predation and in my observations the seedlings often disappear from the forest floor where possums are present. So, when there are lots of seedlings coming up it means there are not that many possums about.

Anyway ‘my’ broadleaf has survived a lot of predation judging by its size. It did not grow straight like the totara. In that way it is a bit messy. No straight trunk, not useful for much at all. No ships’ masts or waka to be made of it. A bit useless really for human use. But the good thing is that branches go everywhere and when there are no possums around new shoots appear all over the old tree trunk. It must harbour a lot of life and provide shelter for birds and insects. Maori used it to treat infections of the skin. 
​
I put a trap right underneath this broadleaf to protect its inhabitants from rats. It is an A24 trap. Fully automatic. A rat goes in, gets taken care of, falls out and another rat can go in. Very effective and it does not need clearing out. On this particular trap you see my mascot. He comes with me everywhere and is called ‘Swissie’. The colours might have faded a bit, but it was red and white. Like the Swiss flag. There you go. My big broadleaf. I challenge anybody to come up with a larger one! 

Ah, what is it all about? Mucking around in the forest day after day. Getting rats, and stoats and cats and possums. Who would have thought of it. Not something we do in the Swiss Alps, I can tell you. They would call me crazy! And maybe that’s what it is, a bit of madness. The song of John Lennon ‘Imagine’ comes to my mind. Imagine a New Zealand free of predators and full of native birds, and insects and lizards and creepy crawlies and forests all thriving and growing and all kind of a Gondwanaland.

Whoever came up with the idea of predator free 2050 New Zealand has had the idea of an almost impossible goal. Yet more and more people jump onto the bandwagon and a whole industry has developed leading towards this outcome. To me it is also an idea far more broad and wide, almost like my broadleaf, encompassing so much more, like caring for the environment, caring for this earth and caring for everything that lives and thrives on it. An idea of treading more gently, more considerate and more lovingly.
​
Therefore, thank you all very much for your help, for your interest and no doubt for your care and love.
Robert and Christine 

​The Trapper Monthly has its first birthday! It seems much longer than twelve months but then the months and years just go by in a flash. A Fantail Flash! I would love to grow the audience or the readership somehow. So, if you have a friend or somebody interested in nature and maybe a slight inclination towards the gory business of trapping then please forward the letter and send me their email address!

The month of January has been a wet one to say the least. The constant rain thwarted many outings and delayed many projects some of which are now scheduled for February or even March. The good thing is that the birdies are now almost over their breeding season and the young ones leave their nests filling the forest with more bird song!

The whereabouts of some of the birds is sometimes hard to understand. Where are they all? I know they are there somewhere but on some days the forest is not as full of birds as I would expect and as I have seen it. Especially the fantails seem to disappear and some days I see none of them at all although they have come back again in these last few days of January.

The lack of trapping days shows in the catch rate. We had 10 outings and caught 11 possums, 14 rats, 2 stoats, 1 hedgehog and 1 weasel. The possum number is somewhat large considering the last few months. And most of them were caught on the lower part of the track towards the bridge on District Line. Along that line there is a huge re-invasion problem as behind it a gully leads up to almost Terrace Downs and there is no trapping undertaken. There are some strategically placed traps along that line, like T98, which form a kind of virtual fence, to prevent too much of re-invasion.

Due to the bad weather not much maintenance of traps has been done. I just managed to visit twenty of our AT220 traps which all needed the batteries re-charged and fresh lure bags. The batteries last about six months after which the trap just won’t work. The traps often also need cleaning as a dead rat might be stuck in there disabling the trap.

It is astonishing how well the shop has done in January despite the rain. People sometimes still walk the track in the wildest weather as I can see when they sign the visitor’s book and then buy a token from the shop. The mailbox too is used much more often than I anticipated. The post cards that Juliana produces are irresistible. She has also created a special edition stamp, an official New Zealand post stamp. A $2.90 stamp which covers postcards all over the world. 

Furthermore, we have now also ‘Adopt a Bird’ certificates for people who donate $50.00 into the trust and specify that they want to ‘adopt’ a bird. It comes with limited edition art print which is a hand finished artwork by Juliana. She describes the process like this: 

A/P = Before ‘The Edition’ begins, the ‘Artists’ Proofs’ are made. It allows the artist to try different inks and papers and to hand finish and hand colour those prints, before an Edition begins. These artists’ proofs are few and far between, thus adding to their value.

11/200 = this number shows how many copies of this artwork are ever printed ( eg. 200 prints is the absolute limit) and where in ‘The Edition’ your artwork was printed (eg 11th). Records of this are kept. The embossed stamp proves this is an original print from that artist’s studio – not a copy.

So far, we had five adoptions! The prints which Juliana produces are really special, very beautiful and collectable and very suitable to be put into a frame. If you like to see more of Juliana’s work then go to Methven, where she sells it in the information centre shop.

And now there is the Totara tree. Previously I wrote about this totara tree I found in the depth of the Rakaia Gorge unknown to everybody. Even the Botanical Society in Christchurch was not aware of it. So naturally I am quite elated having found it. A magnificent tree it is too.

Two weeks ago, I passed it again and measured it! The circumference of the tree is 3.3 metres which gives a diameter of just over one metre. From here we can estimate a possible age of the tree, and it seems that most experts agree on around 500 years! Imagine 500 years ago a small sapling emerged in the forest and kept on growing until today! It is a marvel. No Europeans had ever been to these islands before and the Maori population would have been minimal. It just shows that nature does not need us. That it evolves, grows, mutates and just is on its own. I declare the Totara tree in the Rakaia Gorge a Taonga!

For Maori the totara is a chiefly tree. A chief of the forest! So much so that when a chief of a tribe died, a great chief, a venerated chief, then the saying was that a mighty totara had fallen! I am not sure how they reconciliated that sentiment with their cutting down totara for building canoes. For the wood of the totara is suitable above all other trees to construct canoes, to build houses, tools and weapons and for carving. 

A single tree for instance could be carved into a war canoe capable of carrying a hundred warriors. That is a big tree! But that is not all. Researchers have extracted from the core of the totara a compound they named Totarol, It is effective against many bacteria including Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

On the funny side, and bear with me, it is also said in Maori lore that the totara is a windy tree. There was once a contest between trees who met in a forest and argued as to which one was the tallest of them all. Totara tried first and he stretched and stretched towards heaven, straining and heaving, with all his strength, and then he popped. The other trees started laughing and for shame the totara disappeared into the thick of the forest. Maybe that is why ‘my’ totara is so well hidden in the gorge.

There are other massive trees in the gorge that probably nobody has seen before. There is a huge broadleaf hidden away and there are a few really large mature lancewoods around. I was in Akaroa this week where our friends Jack and Charlotte establish their own predator free reserves and when we did a walk around the farm Jack pointed out a huge very old looking lancewood and declared it to be the oldest of its kind in the world! No, no I said. There is a bigger one in my patch! It’s a good rivalry and one I lose on the account of Jack having more Tuis! We have no Tuis. But our neighbour, Cathie, has seen one in her garden quite recently. So maybe they are not far away and then Jack will have a problem!

Another investment in nature is being done by Landcorp. The people who import agricultural equipment, like harvesters, Claas machinery. They have supported for years now the initiative by Mike Fisk, a retired eye surgeon, of the ‘Valleys Project’. It covers an extensive area in remotest Fiordland, the Cozette, Iris, Irene and Pandora valleys with over a thousand traps.

The Valleys Project

These traps need servicing at least twice a year. And it is on one of these servicing trips that I had an accident severing my ligaments in my biceps and being rescued by helicopter. Never mind I survived but probably will not be going back to Fiordland.

It is initiatives like this one that gives hope than maybe one day the goal of predator free New Zealand 2050 will come true. The example of Claas company should be publicised much more to get other large corporations on board the predator free movement. It’s got to become fashionable! Because somehow the funds available by the government are not going to do it. The main thrust of the predator free 2050 movement, its finance, its research and implementation must come from private interests and philanthropic organizations.

For that to happen we need success stories. Stories that entice people to come on board and do their bit. Like the ISAAC Conservation and Wildlife Trust in Christchurch. They just managed to hatch 30 shore plovers who are now looking for safe wild place to live. Somebody needs to love them; somebody needs to care for them. Only around 250 of them survive! None on the mainland, only on predator free island and in captivity. 

What a world we live in! Full of wonders, full of beauty, full of life. Things we need to protect, to care for, to love. I am constantly amazed on my walks down the Rakaia Gorge of all the forms of life, of all the thriving mass of nature and its various manifestations.
​
So, thank you all for caring and be part of the project of making the Rakaia Gorge a safe haven for native flora and fauna. It is a very special place. And a special thank you to Juliana Child, the artist.
Nga mihi.

Robbie and Christine